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Study Says No Future for Video iTunes
eldavojohn writes "Reuters is running a story on a study that claims "Online video sites that sell shows and movies such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes will likely peak this year as more programming is made available on free outlets supported by advertising." Many channels have wised up to offering their content hosted from their own sites for free — with commercials — to cut out iTunes as the middle man. End result? Predictions that services like iTunes-Video have no future."
I can't be the only one who'd rather pay a couple of bucks to watch without commercials...
However, IF you can watch the same thing for free, with similar quality, only the irritant of commercials remain. However, this is a big irritant and I think most people would skip them if possible. As long as people are able to skip the commercials somehow, then the free option will prevail, however, the providers will never stand for this.
Buying content will allow people to play said content on portable devices. Commercials fed services will have to be streaming to keep the user from skipping commercials. So, different users will want different kinds of content.
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
Actually, iTunes shows are not without commercials. Many of the shows have commercials embedded in the movie file. What they are is without commercial interruptions. Commercials are placed on the tail end of the video where you can choose to watch them or shut off the playback. This is vastly superior to the DVD solution of, "you MUST watch these commercials every time you turn on this DVD."
I don't know about anyone else, but I actually like seeing occasional advertisements. Especially things like movie trailers and new show promotions. My problem is that I don't like being forced to watch them repetitively. iTunes gives you the best of both worlds in that respect, and in a way that is unlikely to offend the die-hard anti-commericalists. (Dare I say it? Anti-commercial Nazis?)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's one thing sitting at your desk and getting to watch a TV show, and syncing it with a mobile device and watching it during your lunch hour at work. If I'm home I'll watch it on TV, but if I dont have time and want to watch it whenever I want from wherever I want then a video ipod sounds nice. So there will be a market for it. Plus I'd rather pay a couple bucks for on-demand ad free content then free and usable only via the web with ads.
Have you seen the videos on NBC.com? The difference between the NBC.com videos and iTunes videos is like night and day. I'm probably one of the least picky people about my video quality, but even I think that NBC.com looks significantly worse than your average CRT television. It reminds me of watching television with rabbit ears, only worse.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm not sure they've taken every aspect into account. While 'free' sounds good, I'm pretty sure people don't want to hunt all around different sites, all with different viewing/codec requirements, all with different site logins and other logisitcal hoops, just to find something they might want to watch.
On the contrary, I believe sites that will survive which can collect the most shows/movies from all the content providers in one place, all with short previews, all encoded reliabily the same. While the 'Net allows for wild west style secluded towns for each studio, it doesn't have staying power. People tend to prefer a centralized distributor they can count on.
iTune's biggest issue IMHO is that they need more studios to supply content in order to make them a one-stop shop. The studios need to get past this walled garden idea.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Starting four years ago, I had a Dish network subscription plus a TiVo. I haven't seen a TV commercial since, except for the rare occasions I was doing something and couldn't get to the fast forward button. Two months ago, I realized:
1. I really don't watch too much other than movies and a couple of TV shows that are available on iTunes. I definitely never watched anything when it was actually being broadcast -- usually several days later.
2. The total monthly cost of these things is more than my motorcycle payment.
3. I could get a Netflix subscription, buy the entire seasons of the shows on iTunes, give up nothing, and save a few hundred bucks a year.
So I cancelled the satellite, unplugged the TiVo, and haven't really missed them since (except when my girlfriend is over and wants to watch something; all that's hooked up to the TV now is a DVD player and the XBOX 360.)
I call shenanigans on this study.
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
There was a time in our history when the world-as-you-knew-it was the same one that your parents knew, and would be the same one that your children would know. The division of social classes, their economic wants, their means of fulfilling those wants, their cultural values, etc., did not change over one, two, or even three generations. In that environment, the concept of the "economic man," and the whole business of making predictions based on the science of economics, had some genuine effectiveness to it.
In these times, all the above listed factors change every decade. Not only do we know very little about what world our children will face, we know very little about what our own values, needs, and means will be in the next ten years. Because of this rapid pace of change, by the time any sort of economic model has enough data upon which to base predictions, all the data no longer apply.
Therefore, as far as I am concerned, all such analysis are little more than crystal-ball review.
The risk-takers are the ones who shape our world from one decade to the next, and the unknowns are just too high to say with confidence which risks are worth taking. There are no safe investments, but the betting window never closes.
Wait until you have kids.
Thomas, Caillou, Disney movies, over & over & over again.
Can't get the songs out of my head....
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure