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Apple Pushes Studios to Offer 4K Content for Upcoming Apple TV at Lower Prices, Report Says (bit.ly)
Apple appears to have ambitious plans to attract people's interest in its streaming device Apple TV, according to a new report. An anonymous reader shares a report: The company, which is widely expected to refresh the Apple TV next month to bring support for videos in 4K, is in talks with Hollywood studios to bring Ultra HD content at lower prices, WSJ reported on Tuesday. Apple is widely expected to unveil new iPhone models - including one called the iPhone 8 - next month. The publication reports that the iPhone-maker is pushing Hollywood studios to agree to sell Ultra HD editions of movies at $19.99, the usual price the company charges for full-HD of new movies. But Hollywood studios, which have seen a significant portion of their business go to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, are pushing for higher prices. Hollywood studios, according to the report, are asking Apple to increase the asking price from proposed $19.99 per movie by $5 to $10.
"Hollywood studios, according to the report, are asking Apple to increase the asking price from proposed $19.99 per movie by $5 to $10." Pushing even more people to Netflix...
I hope Apple stands firm on this because the average person is not going to pay more for UHD content to be streamed.
Streams are not as good as buying the Disc, and doubly so for 4K and beyond, this is due to the compression. Every time we get an increase in resolution it has come at a cost of the color fidelity because we're still doing 4:2:0, so all increasing the resolution does is make the slices smaller so we don't see the compression artifacts as readily. But what Cable and Streaming sources (eg Netflix) have done is scaled back the compression from what is supposed to be a 25Mbit stream to a 6Mbit stream. 4K at 6Mbit is gross. Unless we're going to be permitted to download UHD Blueray quality, paying BD prices for non-BD content is just not going to happen. Instead of buying 10 movies per year, it will just be cut back to 5, and the rest will be "watch on netflix"
Holywood just never learns. You cannot price digital content even higher than physical media. People will and do vote with their wallets. This d-move will be followed by much wailing about how "piracy is killing the movie industry". Yes, if you spell piracy G R E E D, then there's a case to answer.