Apple CEO Steve Jobs did “something out of the ordinary at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater: He showed off a product Apple isn’t selling yet. The iTV box–a temporary name, Jobs promised–will let consumers move their downloaded movies from their PCs to their TVs, via a wireless connection,” Rachel Rosmarin reports for Forbes.
Rosmarin reports, “When Apple begins selling the boxes, priced at $299, early next year, it will have finally made its long-awaited leap into consumers’ living rooms. But given that details on the product are still scarce, it’s hard to assess what kind of impact the company is going to have on a market that’s embryonic at best.”
“To date, that story reads: In 2003, Apple began selling the iPod and music via the iTunes music store and changed the music business. Last year, the company started selling a video iPod and television shows, and changed that industry, too,” Rosmarin reports. “But the movie business may stay unchanged for a while, at least given what Jobs has announced so far. Apple’s selection of movies is limited to some 75 titles owned by the Walt Disney Co., the same company where Jobs is a board member and the largest individual shareholder. The movies will sell for $9.99 and $14.99, slightly cheaper than DVD prices, and close in quality to physical DVDs, but not nearly as useful–the films will be tethered to consumer’s iPods or computers, and consumers won’t be able to burn copies of their purchases to DVDs.”
“And while consumers have long used iPods and the iTunes software to play music they’ve ripped from their own CDs, or “shared” via friends’ discs and music collections, it’s unclear whether the same scenario will work with movies and the iTV box,” Rosmarin reports. “Still, some 25% of adults who own PCs are willing to watch videos right on their computer, according to Forrester research. The biggest benefit to Apple could be the chunk of sales it takes from the $24 billion home video business. Apple has already sold more than 45 million $1.99 television episodes since debuting its video store in October 2005. More than 5 million of those downloads were of Disney-owned content.”
Full article here.
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Sounds exciting certainly. But I downloaded a movie from ITMS and the quality is nowhere near DVD as Jobs proclaimed. I don’t think I’d be that interested in iTV if my video was as poor as the iTMS movie.