Analyst: Apple ‘s iTunes+iPod+iTV model ‘the gold standard for the digital home of the future’

20 years ago

“After months of speculation, Apple Computer finally rolled out their iTunes Movie store as well as new iPods and, perhaps even more importantly, their own version of Microsoft’s Media Center PC architecture currently code named iTV,” Tim Bajarin writes for Technology Pundits.

Bajarin writes, “Of course, the movie store has gotten all of the attention and even though Apple rolled it out with just Disney, within a short time the other studios will have to follow suit just to be competitive. How long will the other studios hold out and just let Disney get all of the new movie downloads for themselves? I bet not for long. The original iTunes TV store started only with one company, Disney, but within 12 months 40 other networks have signed on and any network not on iTunes is left in the digital dust.
Jobs’ deal with Disney will set the tone for digital download movie pricing as well.”

“New releases will come out on iTunes the same day they roll out on DVD. But it is the pricing that is important. For example, Car’s, a Disney Pixar movie, will come out on Nov 7th and will be offered for $12.99 for the first week and then $14.99 after that. And library films like Good Will Hunting will be just $9.99,” Bajarin writes.

“Another thing that sets Apple apart is their integration of the movie store into iTunes and the amazing user interface they have that amplifies the music and movie store in this new version of iTunes, version 7. Take a look at Amazon’s movie store and then look closely at Apple’s. You will immediately understand that Apple knows how to do software and Amazon does not! Apple not only has the edge on current movie download sites, but its approach to providing a complete digital eco-system in which the OS, devices and store are tightly integrated makes them hard to beat,” Bajarin writes.

Bajarin writes, “The other big news was their technology demo of iTV. This box that sits next to the TV will allow all content from a Mac to be displayed on a TV in DVD quality resolution. Although it will not come to market until Q1 2007, Apples preview of this product is highly disruptive to the market and makes Microsoft’s own Media Center PC seem old-fashioned in comparison. Apple will not explain the technology behind it, but clearly the have applied a new UI along with some serious compression and high speed wireless technology in order to deliver video, images and music to a TV screen at this level of quality.”

“In the end, the way people manage and access especially the downloaded TV and movie content via this iTV /iTunes model will become the standard in which all other similar media adaptor schemes, devices and services will be compared to in the future,” Bajarin writes. “Bottom line is that Apple has delivered the better PC-to-TV media experience and with their integrated approach to even extending that personal content to iPods, the Car, etc, Apple becomes the gold standard for what the digital home of the future could look like in the coming years.”

Full article here.