“Apple Computer recently held discussions with major recording companies, seeking to license music videos to sell through the company’s iTunes Music Store, according to a report in Monday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. The talks are a possible prelude to a version of Apple’s hit iPod music player that plays video — a version of the gadget that the Journal says the Cupertino, Calif., computer and electronics company has told some entertainment-industry executives could be unveiled by September,” MSNBC reports.
“The videos, which could go on sale as early as September, would likely cost $1.99 each according to the newspaper, with the possibility of a discount if consumers buy a music video and a song at the same time,” MSNBC reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: First music videos, then TV shows and movies? If so, it’ll take awhile to download longer content on a cable modem, that’s for sure. We look at any iPod video lineup from Apple not so much being about watching video on the go on a tiny color screen (although that will certainly be an option) and more about easily connecting to existing screens, so you can take your iPod video out of your pocket and play content wherever a screen happens to be available; your living room, your friend’s living room, at your desktop computer, in your kitchen, in your car, on the plane with your iBook or PowerBook, etc. No more quoting Animal House lines, you just scroll your iPod video’s Click Wheel to the proper clip and play it.
The Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) is here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
More info about Apple’s reported iPod+iTunes video talks – July 18, 2005
Cringely: Apple working on HD movie download service and Video iPod – July 15, 2005
Apple’s shift to Intel really all about Hollywood, owning the living room, and Transitive – June 05, 2005
New York Posts looks at possibility of Apple ‘iPod video’ player – May 22, 2005
Apple quietly makes video move, offers music videos via iTunes Music Store – May 19, 2005
Now with integrated video support, will Apple’s iTunes soon become iLiving Room? – May 10, 2005
Apple bundles videos with select music albums via iTunes Music Store – May 10, 2005
Apple releases iTunes 4.8; now supports QuickTime video along with contact, calendar transfers – May 09, 2005
Cringely: Apple prepping Video iTunes, Video iPod, and setting stage for iPod clones – May 06, 2005
Apple debuts online QuickTime 7 High Definition Video Gallery utilizing H.264 codec – April 29, 2005
Apple continues to lead the industry in the adoption of HD Video at NAB2005 – April 17, 2005
Will QuickTime 7’s new video codec help Apple launch iTunes-like movie and video service? – April 16, 2005
Report: Apple Computer to launch ‘Video iPod’ by 2006 – April 11, 2005
Can Apple do for movies and video what they did for online digital music? – April 06, 2005
RUMOR: Apple building satellite-based High Defintion Video Delivery system – March 22, 2005
Apple Computer will own the living room, not Microsoft – January 10, 2005
Yeah and if it does take off when will we see it in Australia…2015? Sounds great for the rest of the world but not in Australia eh?
Thumbs down to this one. Who wants to buy music videos and even more so, who wants to watch them on a 2″ iPod screen?
Bring on MOVIES for sale!
word: City
Video iPod, yada yada yada.
What I want to know is, will the download videos be in HD by any chance?
I just hope they’re quality h.264 versions that you can play in full screen, or at least in the same res as they were filmed and not the tiny ones they currently have in the videos section.
My only fear, and I lose the word losely is that itunes is gonna begin to get a bit bloated with all these additional features.
A bit bloated! Have you seen the Windows version.
I welcome this with open arms. No more Tivo-ing every episode of Metal Mania on VH1-Classic just to get a couple of tasty clips. I’ll just buy all the videos I would ever want from iTunes and put them all together on my ultimate “Headbanger’s Ball playlist” or on DVD.
This would work really well with an Apple media center too – put together “libraries” of music videos that you can organize in playlists.
considering the quality of songs from iTMS is not really that great, I’m assuming video quality might be disappointing as well. That might be fine for music videos but probably not for movies.
This is something I would like to see, I always watch movies round at my mates and have to pack up my laptop, power, tv connecting cables, discs ect….
Whether we will see it is another matter.
>king- alvarez,
considering the quality of songs from iTMS is not really that great,>
I’ll bet you even have monster cable in your toilet.
All of a sudden everyones 10 gigers wont be enough. If Apple does get this to work with movies, man the revenue stream will never end.
is there a desire for this kind of functionality? i would like to see video capabilities in an ipod, however it would be more of a novelty.
how is using your ipod as a video player more desireable than burning a dvd to play on your friends computer, tv or whatever?
so is this ipod going to have some crazy dock that needs to be carried around too?
can you even spin a 1.5 inch drive fast enough for hd content? even if you can, your ipod is probably going to last only 4 months with all the wear and tear.
yes, i realize the yankees won 3/4 this past weekend
Yes, Yankees do suck. They won 3/4 and they’re still trailing.
And we’re about to go on vacation. I mean, D-Rays? HA!
Oh, and selling music videos is retarded. They’re supposed to be a promotional tool, you nitwits! Videos & video podcast-type material should remain free, test the tech, and then start the selling with episodes of just-run TV programs and other original content.
Not HD. Not on the iPod. What’s the point?
And for the love of god, no video-dock attachment!
“considering the quality of songs from iTMS is not really that great”
– yeah, well the quality of DVDs is pretty crap compared to a 70mm print, but it doesn’t stop people buying them, does it?
I’d love to see this in H.264 but given the huge CPU demands of this codec, I can’t really see a humble iPod being able to play them.
to me:
Baby steps, my friends… first test the water with music videos and build from their. The content providers have to see the demand before they are going to do anything else.
to Follower & M.X.N.T.4.1:
Why would Apple promote the newest most advanced and scalable HD video format if they weren’t going too incorporate it into a miniature device design to display full-screen HD content?
to yankees suck:
I somewhat agree that this would be a novelty and that if it is to display on an external monitor or TV, it should have a very simple and convenient connection. But isn’t music in general basically a novelty? The iPod itself is a self indulgent device purely for your entertainment and occasional education. Do you still burn CD’s when you want to listen to music in the car or at a friends? Aren’t all of those sleeves or cases or books cumbersome? That’s why we have the iPod for music and why we’ll have another brilliant Apple device for video (I’m not quite sure I believe it will be an iPod… maybe this elusive tablet we keep hearing about).
to PC Apologist:
I’m sure that there will still be a lot of independent and free podcasts and videocasts available no matter what level of commercialism is reached through this potential device. But I look forward to being able to carry my media with me, whatever form it may be, if the need or desire so arises.
It’s much like the adage from “Field Of Dreams”, “If you build it, they will come”. Have you noticed that all Sony DVD releases now state in their commercials “Available soon on DVD and PSP”? It’s not necessarily that the demand for PSP movies is there, but that by stating it’s availability, Sony is going to drive demand up. As soon as Apple says “We’ve got video!” people are going to flock to be the first on the block to get it. Especially with the iPod seemingly loosing it’s ceiling, there’s not too much more they can milk out of it without changing it’s form factor.
I think we are gonna be watching full screen videos anywhere off our iPods with Retinal Scan Displays by Microvision.
http://www.mvis.com/
If they come out with this it will be the big jump in technology I need to justify the purchase of another iPod.
by novelty, i mean something that is interesting just because it is new, however its not actually useful.
i think the ipod is tremendously useful, the concept of listening to music on-the-go is pretty solid by now.
sure a large libary could mean thousands of cds and cases, however ill carry around the 5 dvds that would reperesent the ipod’s capacity any day. especailly if a dock is involved, with cables.
if people want to stream h.264, get a powerbook; they come with screens, and you can hook them to your friends monitor, your monitor, your friends tv, your tv, oh joy
just so you can have the link…
http://broadcom.com/products/Cable/HDTV-SDTV-Video,-Graphics-&-Receiver-Chips/BCM7411
this will be the chip for the iPod Video and the Airport Express Video
btw, the broadcom chip it only consumes 2.5 watts of power. That means that a iPod video would be totally doable – but the battery life would be only for a few hours – maybe 4-5 at the most playing video. That should be plenty, however, for a cross country flight – the gold standard for battery life below which, the device isn’t doing what it should.
Crouching: “Why would Apple promote the newest most advanced and scalable HD video format if they weren’t going too incorporate it into a miniature device design to display full-screen HD content?”
Because I just have a feeling the iPod is not the device Apple means to do this (although it certainly could be made to be). My own personal theory is that they are working on what has been rumored to be a tablet PC and/or the iTunes-controlling remote, that will stream H.264 content from your Mac to your TV and receiver, potentially wirelessly, and help otherwise control your living room’s AV equipment. Although I would hope Apple would name it something simpler, call it AirFlicks Express Remote Extreme, for now.
Finally, I can see the “Smack My Bitch Up” video from Prodigy. Cool
A movie store would not just be about putting video on an video iPod. It’s about downloading a TV show and/or a movie and watching it where you want to. Some people would love to watch it on an iPod – some wouldn’t, but would love to watch it on their laptop. A video store via iTunes could cater to the user. Some people buy songs without owning an iPod – this would work the same with videos. Depending on the price (like $100 more), it might be nice for my next iPod to play videos, but you wouldn’t need it to watch videos from the store.
Here is what I would like out of the video store. I would like to be able to subscribe to a TV show for $XX per season. It would download it and I could watch it when I want. There are only a few shows on cable that I want to watch, but I have to buy a ‘package’ with a whole bunch of other shows that I don’t want. So, I pay $46 for a couple shows – not worth it, but if I could pay for only the few shows that I wanted, it would be perfect. It would be just like the PodCasts they have now, except with TV shows (and they wouldn’t be free). This would be a huge competitor to TiVo and other DVR’s.
Follower, I made the very same point later in my comment. Apple has to be working on a video delivery device as appealing and affordable as the iPod, more than likely with a different form. Whether it be an iPod where one entire side is a screen (either touch screen or the controls on the sides or back) or the fabled tablet, we must wait and see (or check back at ThinkSecret for more illegally obtained information).
H264 is what is going to make it all happen. The current videos are not H264.
“The videos, which could go on sale as early as September, would likely cost $1.99 each according to the newspaper, with the possibility of a discount if consumers buy a music video and a song at the same time”
Okay, I’m a tad confused.
Why would I buy the song and the video? I’d imagine that I’d buy one or the other unless the video was a horribly corrupted version of the song.
Actually, I have a few songs in my collection which were culled from downloaded videos.
Crouching: Yes, I see that you did. I apologize. I should have said “I agree more with your tablet/remote idea than your “a miniature device design to display full-screen HD content” idea. (Control, yes; display, no.) The stillborn Windows-based portable video players — I cannot even recall their official name anymore — have proven that movies on any handheld device just isn’t appealing to most of the population, and Apple knows that.