“Since Apple unveiled its iTunes Music Store in spring 2003, bloggers have batted around the idea that the company chose the name cleverly — because ‘Music’ could be changed easily to ‘Media’ when it started selling online movies. Three years later, although movies have not yet appeared on the iTunes site, it has sold more than 15 million digitized TV shows and videos (for $1.99 a pop), with the blessing of ABC, Disney, Showtime, NBC, MTV, and other providers,” Daniel Turner writes for Technology Review.
“Not surprisingly, then, the success of these online TV shows and videos has accelerated speculation about movies. Last week, Variety, Forbes, and MSNBC all ran stories about rights and pricing negotiations between Apple and the major movie studios. The consensus: It’s just a matter of time before iTunes starts selling feature-length movies, if not this year, then in 2007,” Turner writes.
“For Internet video distributors, though, the Motion Picture Association of America has been a tougher nut to crack than television studios, because the film industry is more concerned about piracy,” Turner writes. “Aside from the wrangling over copyright and digital-rights management, though, technical problems also stand in the way of an iTunes Movie Store. Actually, it’s one key technical issue. While Apple already has a high-profile storefront, marketing mechanism, and suitable file format for delivering movies, figuring out how to deliver these massive, multi-gigabyte files remains a challenge.”
Turner writes, “…Even with H.264 compression, an entire movie would amount to well over one gigabyte and take an entire evening to download at the 1.5-megabits-per-second maximum cable or DSL modem speed available to most Internet users in the United States…”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy” 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:
Warner Bros. to distribute movies on Guba.com – June 27, 2006
BusinessWeek: Apple agreement with movie studios for iTunes Store unlikely any time soon – June 21, 2006
Apple prepares debut of full-length feature films via iTunes Store in time for 2006 holiday season – June 20, 2006
Report: Movie studios flatly reject Apples’ proposed $9.99 pricing for feature films via iTunes – June 19, 2006
Report: Apple in negotiations with movie studios; $9.99 feature films coming to iTunes soon? – June 19, 2006
Disney to sell movies over Internet via CinemaNow in Windows Media Video format – June 05, 2006
Warner Bros. to sell movies and TV shows via BitTorrent – May 09, 2006
Universal launches film download/DVD service in UK – March 23, 2006
If Front Row can stream movie trailers from Apple, why not whole movies? – January 06, 2006
BusinessWeek: Movie studios need to smarten up and let Apple sell their movies – or be left behind – October 18, 2005
Universal to put its movies online – October 06, 2005
Rubbish. A full length movie need take up no more than about 500-700mb tops for a non-HD download.
hmm. Episodes (~12) of “firefly” took about 10 minutes to download via Roadrunner cable, and although not “HD” by any means look pretty darn good on our 47″ DLP. Thats about 10 hours of video. . . If the resolution was 10X better, I imagine a 2 hour movie would take 20 minutes. So I don’t see the point- for most people that would be fantastic.
I don’t get folks b#tch@ng about the video quality being good only for iPods. . . Most of them, I suspect, haven’t tried it on a bigger screen. Of 6 members of our family all have actually been impressed by how good it actually looks on a big screen. I think we are representative of the average American shmucks. . . .
I’ve never bought any video online, so I always wondered about this myself. It seems that you are either going to get lower quality video, or you are going to take a day to get it. This is not a real problem with audio because most people don’t need or want high quality audio on their iPods. But as more people get HDTVs and expect crystal clear video quality, they are not going to want some 30 MB movie, especially for the price that has been thrown around. I’d much rather go buy the DVD, spend about the same amount, get the extras, and have the full quality right there.
Its an interesting trade-off, since scaling it down to the size of the iTunes’ television offerings might not be all that popular. Would you really want to pay $9.99 for a movie that does not have sufficient resolution to show up nicely on your television?
$9.99 is just too much for low-res downloads.
I guess I’m a bitch then because I think the resolution of the videos from iTunes leaves a lot to be desired, and that’s just playing them on my 23″ Cinema display. I can’t imagine they are that good on a 47″ tv.
“$9.99 is just too much for low-res downloads.”
That’s funny, there are already several products on the iTMS selling for MORE than $9.99. Maybe that should be $9.99 is too much for YOU for low-res downloads.
if you would buy non-HD format movie through, $9.99 is way too much expensive because quality will be the same as TV show. who will want to watch TV show quality of movie when you can get DVD from blockbuster for $5? will you? I don’t. movie is different. it should be around 2-3GB with HD quality which is worthy of $9.99.
Why not order the thing through iTunes and then have Apple deliver it through a .Mac-like sync folder? Delivery doesn’t have to be instantaneous. Click to buy in the morning and it will download while you are at work, school, etc. It will be ready on demand when you get home on any Mac that syncs to your account.
1.5 MB broadband in the US??? Up to 8 MB in the UK!!
I highly doubt they will be selling HD content. They haven’t sold HD versions of any television shows. Internet movie piracy uses 700MB files as a pretty standard medium so the files can be burned to CD and the quality is usually acceptable. Internet TV piracy uses 350MB/hour files and when the source is a digital HD signal the video quality is very good. I’m going to assume that the compression would come from digital high def sources that are even better than the ones pirates get out of their digital cable boxes plus they will be using H.264 not mpeg 2 or whatever is most common in internet piracy these days. Using better sources, better compression and raising the size to 500MB/hour to yield 1GB 2 hour movies I’m sure the video quality from the iTunes Media Store can be very good at deliverable sizes. And if you have to download the movie overnight I bet that would work for most people and might be cheaper/faster because there is less traffic at night.
Cable speeds are quite a bit faster than 1.5mbps for many users…
Why bother with low quality resolution movies? They would only be good for viewing on a portible device. That’s not to say some folks would like this ability, I’m sure they would, but it’s a very small niche. And we’re not even talking HD movies yet. HD is definately coming and when you see an HD movie on an HDTV you will not want anything else. How are you going to download that? In fact, how will you back up your movie library? It’s one thing to back up your 30GB music library, but movies will have you into the terabytes in no time, epecially if it’s HD. I don’t see it.
I just don’t think downloading movies for an iPod is that big of a deal. The real money is what goes on you HDTV. I don’t think downloading to own is the right model for that kind of content. I think renting is the way to go. You could put a few movies in a que, download them, and watch them whenever you want and then just update your que. Netflix without the CD mailer.
But how would that fare against viewing on demand from cable or satalite? I don’t know, but what if cable companies could offer pure viewing on demand? Can your HDTV become a glorified monitor drivin by an Apple computer? I hope so.
Duh…
Hello? Cache? The movie could start playing while you download. When you are done watching, the download would be complete, too. Also, a lot of cable in the U.S. gives you 4-6 Mb download speeds.
OK, the current iTunes videos may not look great on your Cinema Display or any computer monitor for that matter.
In case you all forgot, standard TV is only 525 lines from top to bottom. The big screen TV you are looking at, if displaying non-HD TV, it’s still 525 lines of resolution, they are just bigger lines. So what video might look OK on your Mac display will look pretty darn close to broadcast TV on your TV.
Hope you all followed along.
To Tommo_UK:
500 – 700 mb tops? That’s 62.5 – 82.5 MB tops? You just sound stupid when you say that. Even using MPEG 4 Part 10 (AVC) compression techniques (or even Microsoft’s competing technology) taking a two hour movie at standard definition and squeezing it into less than 100 MB will result in mud.
But let’s assume for the moment that you really meant 500 – 700 MB tops. The result is still rather poor quality. Something I’d rather not have. And I believe the average consumer would rather not have it too. Why do you think that most DVDs today are dual layer (8.5 GB) rather than the single layer (4.7 GB)? Because once you add in all the “extras” you go way beyond the single layer. Often the movies themselves go beyond the single layer capacity. None of them are in the “500 – 700 MB tops” range.
To macbones:
You may be fine with viewing iPod quality video on your large screen. If you’re happy with it, great. Some people are fine with running Windows 3.11 forever too. Some people can’t see any quality or visual differences between Mac OS X 10.4.x and Windows 2000 either. I’m not one.
I believe most people will easily be able to see the difference between SD and the low rez stuff Apple is offering now. Some people won’t buy from an online media store until they provide HD quality. This does not even count the small subset which will hold out for 1080p no matter what (and at a decent compression rate at that — no less than 24 Mbps compressed).
The author of the article is right. Bandwidth is *THE* issue. The average consumer wants his/her stuff *NOW*. S/he will wait a few minutes, but hours? Unlikely.
And for those who want to do the math… a two hour standard definition digital movie even at MPEG 4 Part 10 will be well over 1.5 GB no matter how you cut it (well over 3.5 GB if you want high quality SD). At the most common (in the U.S.) DSL rate of 1.5 Mbps that’s well over 8,000 seconds or well over two hours.
Will the average consumer wait two hours for a moderate to low quality download? I doubt it. Will the average consumer wait well over four hours for a high quality download that is only SD? I doubt it.
Folks. Why do we download in the first place. The most importance aspect of downloading is convenience!
Argue all you want about it’s not DVD quality. Buy the DVD. Get in yoru car and go.
Want to watch a movie now? Download.
Millions right now are ordering movies from their cable provider as “Movies On Demand” for $4.95 to watch as many times as you want within 24 hours.
Movie downloads will be a huge hit because of convenience. And that’s all. Just like the 128k music files. And then being played through $4 dollar ear phones by the vast majority. YOu want to listen to music cd quality or a movie DVD quality? The buy the CD or DVD.
Arguing about the quality for the so small amount of people with HD or plasma tv’s now is ludicrous.
Here’s the deal for ME:
1. Instant Gratification. I love the fact that I can purchase an entire album on iTunes and own a copy in about 6-7 minutes… that’s a lot faster than jumping in the car, heading over to the CD store, finding it, checking out, driving back.. you get the picture.
2. It has to be HD. I’ve stopped buying DVD’s because I view this like buying cassettes(or vinyl) copies of albums in the early 80s when CDs were on the horizon. Why buy a lessor format when a better one is just about here.
3. I love the NO PACKAGE concept. Every CD I own has been copied into iTunes and on a seperate HD. I live in New Orleans… and the one thing I made sure to bring with me last fall when I evacuated for Katrina was… you guessed it.. an external HD with my iTunes library. So I’m very comfortble with downloading movies(see #1, see #2)
Recently, 5 episodes of O’Grady were made available for free, and I snatched them up. Not only are they funny, but they also give you all some REAL information about file sizes.
Each episode is approximately 25 minutes (they’re all OVER 25 minutes, but we’re going to drop the seconds). Each episode is around 110 megs (ranging from 108 to 117 megs).
5 episodes equal 125 minutes, not a bad run time for a movie. The file size of all 5 episodes? 565 megs.
So, can we toss out the “1.5 gigs or it’ll look like mud” at this point?
Shadowself,
You and others, like the author of the article, are right.
Viewing quality is somewhat subjective, so some disagree because they are willing to settle for less. Others have great connections and don’t realize their experience is the exception and not the norm, so they don’t get it, either.
However, the situation is going to change when the telcos get their way on “net neutrality.” And they will will. When the legislation favorable to them passes, we will start to see the telcos offer multi-tiered rates soon thereafter, probably within 12 to 24 months.
What does “net neutrality” have to do with the subject at hand?
Simple. The ” anti-net neutrality” group (or “Annies” as I like to call them) have continuously harped about the infrastructure/pipelines needed for just this sort of thing (delivery of high bandwidth content such as video). The “Annies” say it has to be built and paid for, and that it should be paid for by those who want to use it to send and receive such content. Which I won’t argue with. Access for sending/receiving should be paid for.
But, what the “Annies” aren’t saying is, it takes a very, very long time to build such infrastructure/pipelines. If, as I surmise above, the telcos soon start offering multi-tiered services, then it means the infrastructure/pipelines are already in place. They have already been built and, consequently, paid for. Built the way infrastructure improvements are built and paid for… by the customers (senders and recievers) already using the telcos services. The telcos want them to pay again and more.
When the telcos do start offering these premium, higher speed, higher bandwidth services, the only thing that will change for most existing residential customers (besides a higher bill) will be the telco giving them a new device to interface the customer’s PC with the telco’s network, and some may also require a new cable from their home to the telco’s pipe at the street. Further proof the infrastructure/pipelines being already in place.
When the telcos have they want, and lots of customers signed up, an Apple Media Store with high quality movie downloads will then be a functional reality. Provided the movie studios go for it, but that’s another can of worms.
All these debates about download speed vs. image quality hinge on the fact that there hasn’t been any statement about files size. Until we know how large a typical movie is going to be then we have no way of speculating about the value of an iTunes movie.
I can’t see how any movie less than 1Gb can match the quality of a DVD. I’ve read that they want to charge the same price for a downloaded movie as a DVD, but there is no way that I’m going to pay the same amount for an inferior product.
Why would you want to buy videos. I only occassionally rent a movie. Owning them seems like a waste. How many times are you going to watch the same movie? I hope Apple does something like CinemaNow only better.
To Wrong Again:
First, you missed a point in my original statement: the video was at standard defition (an NTSC/PAL equivalent in digital form). The downloads you mention are at a lower resolution and thus fall under my other statement that some people are OK with poorer resolution. Some, like me, are not.
Also, my understanding (having never watched it) is that the show you mention (O’Grady) is an animated feature. [If you are referring to something else then the following may be irrelevant.] Animation has *signicantly* less infromation content in the imagery than the typical, live action movie. If you’re going to pull of an extreme like animation then as a counterpoint I can pull up movies that have a high amount of fast moving imagery and lots of very bright, contrasting colors (e.g., Hero and House of Flying Daggers) which will not compress even to the 24 Mbps rate I mentioned earlier — if you want a decent picture with no visible compression artifacts.
You could even have gone to a more extreme example and given a calculation based upon an animated talking head giving the “news”. Such an example could have been compressed to less than 100 MB per hour of video. However, such extreme examples are not relevant as one can always give a counter example in the other extreme.
I stand by my point. For the average (added that for clarification) two hour movie at standard definition anything less than 1.5 is going to be poor quality.
I have here a 540p video podcast. (MacBreak). It runs 7.57MB a minute in size. Let’s say Apple offers Numb3rs (42 min) at that resolution, the download would be around 318MB. I think that that (540p) is a good setting for download. If I had to download a 120 min movie it ends up as 909MB. But it’s good looking. It is big, but it’s not 1.5GB.
Is it possible to ‘download as you watch’? By the time you’ve finished watching the whole movie, the entire file has already downloaded ready to be played again.