“After conquering the digital music biz and taking the lead with TV shows online, Apple is looking to feature films,” Ben Fritz reports for Variety.
“The computer company is in active negotiations with most major studios to add movies to its iTunes Music Store, most likely by the end of the year, numerous sources confirm,” Fritz reports. “The main sticking point is price.”
Fritz reports. “Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who has been personally involved in the talks, initially proposed selling all films at a flat price of $9.99 — an offer the studios flatly rejected. ‘We can’t be put in a position where we lose the ability to price our most popular content higher than less popular stuff,’ said a studio exec close to the negotiations.”
“Studio sources expect an iTunes moviestore to debut by the end of the year at the latest,” Fritz reports. “Many predict feature films will bow on iTunes at the same time the video iPod with a bigger screen more appropriate for films is launched. But Apple is remaining tight-lipped, not even telling potential studio partners about its hardware plans.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “bjh” for the heads up.]
Advertisements:
• Introducing the super-fast, blogging, podcasting, do-everything-out-of-the-box MacBook. Starting at just $1099.
• Get the new iMac with Intel Core Duo for as low as $31 A MONTH with Free shipping!
• Get the MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo for as low as $47 A MONTH with Free Shipping!
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
Related articles:
Report: Apple in negotiations with movie studios; $9.99 feature films coming to iTunes soon? – June 19, 2006
MDN comments are xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, and racist. How charming.
You can get 3 DVD’s at a time with unlimited access from Netflix for $18.00 a month; therefore, a DVD junkie can watch 12 DVDs in 30 days which equals $1.50 per disc. For a measly $10 you can watch 4 DVDs per month or $2.50 per disc.
The fact that Apple wants to charge at least four times a much as Netflix for the convenience of downloading the same DVD versus getting it delivered to your mailbox is ridiculous. The fact the film studios want to charge even more if incredible. Anyone who is willing to pay the prices that Apple and the studios are wanting has more cash than brains.
With all the talk about blue-ray and hd-dvd, how about the humble hard drive?
Surely the whole point of downloading at whatever the price or quality is so that movies can be downloaded period! Sort out the legal mess to enable at least some sort of movie file download then the quality stuff will come.
This was the same during the early years of VHS, just after it won the consumer battle where movies on VHS weren’t versions of the last major Hollywood blockbuster, but a lot more amaturish and not forgetting the porno movie!
Isn’t it true that Quicktime 7 can display Hi-Def movies via the net using the H.264 protocol?
Personally I’d use blue-ray and/or hd-dvd just to store my paid for hi-def movies as a backup medium and only use a hard drive to actually watch a movie hooked up from a Mac Mini to an LCD screen. Yes add expansions to the Mini to get the highest storage you can afford.
A note on LCD’s these maybe smaller, 40″ is the minimum so I’ve been informed for HDTV, but they will not burn so easily as Plasma’s do and so will last longer.
$9.99 does seem too low to me and don’t forget the studios have been listening and watching the music industry, let alone be involved with both industries. These people rarely, very rarely make the same mistake twice.
McDonald’s Red Box rents DVDs for a dollar per night. If you keep it, they keep charging until you’ve paid for it. It’s great except that you have to go to McDonald’s to find out if the machine’s working or not. It’s not in all parts of the country either.
You would think Apple could negotiate a similar deal where you download a movie once and pay each time you view it. At a dollar that’s excellent. Even at $2, it would be fantastic–unless you want to watch part of it one night and the rest later.
b says: “Gai is in the majority there, Odyssey67. There are far more dvds rented than purchased. Movies are a whole different ball game than music.”
That may be, but it has yet to be proven that the ball-games are very different. And until they are, I think it’s instructive that the iTMS model has trounced streaming audio, which is the nearest equivilent we have to compare with’renting’ a digitized, downloadable video.
You mention renting DVDs being a bigger market than owning them – well all I know is that the Blockbuster near me has an empty lot in front of it even on the weekends, while BestBuy’s DVD isles are bristling with buyers everytime I walk in there. In fact, BB is the only big box video rental place left near me – all the rest have closed down. I myself have rented maybe one DVD in the past year, but I’ve bought about half a dozen, and most people I know are doing about the same.
Besides, even if you’re right b, think of it this way: Renting is pretty big in residential real estate too, however only a small minority of people don’t prefer to own their own home. People rent apts & what not in high numbers due to the high price of actually buying their own place. And this is exactly what you see in the video market- Blockbuster et al got huge during the years when buying a video could run you $40-50 on average. As those prices have dropped, so too has the rental business, and I think Netflix – good as it is – is simply cannibalizing whats left of that market with superior convenience and no return fees. Return fees themselves got out of hand when the straightup rental side of the business started falling for the retailers, so that should tell you something too.
There might be more money to be made by the studios if the public is herded into a renting paradigm again, and ‘herding’ is the only way this can happen since the straight-up technology continually makes owning video & audio content cheaper and cheaper for the consumer. But as I and a bunch of others have been telling you guys for years, this – TPM’d & EFI’d Macs – has never been about making things cheaper/better for consumers; it’s been about rounding up the herd an forcing them back into a more profitable paradigm from the past.
Moo.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”cool cheese” style=”border:0;” />
“Besides, even if you’re right b …”
should be “Besides, even if you & the others here are right about how good Netflix is b …”
Proofreading really sucks.
According to the Variety article, a big reason things have taken so long sseems to be because Steve Jobs was being, for lack of better terms, a prick. I think the phrase, “He came in with a lot of bravado” was specifically used. That can’t be good for initial business talks.
His ego is starting to bother me.
“And HD, it is a total joke. THis is just another marketing scheme to sell more players and TV’s”
—> I agree. It’s called URGED OBSOLESCENCE. What also irks me is that my own government is mandating that I have to buy a new TV (digital), before a certain date or I will not get a signal/service. Of course they are not making this a direct mandate to the consumer, but an indirect mandate by forcing the networks and cable providers to change. I suppose they need to spur the economy? I dunno, but it sucks – just more bureaucrats getting into my personal business.