Movie Availability on iTunes May Be Temporary

[MacRumors]

CNet explains the reason behind a Macworld report last week that several movies had disappeared from the iTunes Store.

Frequent Macworld contributor Kirk McElhearn noticed something interesting when he went to grab a movie from the iTunes Store. Of the 15 films he had bookmarked for later viewing, an astounding nine were no longer available for purchase. Or rental. Nor, for that matter, did they seem to exist anywhere on the iTunes Store at all.

CNet explains that this is due to licensing agreements between the movie studios and Apple.

Typically, movies have set distribution windows that are followed in order: theaters, DVDs, pay-per-view (and iTunes) and finally, broadcast TV. As movies cross over into broadcast TV distribution, they are being removed from Apple (and Netflix) distribution.

Normally, release windows don't affect retailers or video-rental services after they've begun selling or renting films. Warner Bros. doesn't go into Best Buy and pull DVDs off the shelf when Comcast airs Casablanca. The corner Mom and Pop video store doesn't surrender copies of Gladiator to Universal Studios when the film appears on ABC. But Internet stores are being treated differently. What this means for iTunes and Netflix customers is that movies will pop in and out of the services.

Those who have already purchased these films will, of course, be able to continue to watch them.

Article Link: Movie Availability on iTunes May Be Temporary

[tjcampbell]

The movies are overpriced, especially as we can only download so much without getting charged extra by our ISP.

[talkingfuture]

It shows that the TV companies are scared of iTunes. I suppose they need to protect their revenues but it would be nice if some of them embraced downloads and tried to speed things up. Wishful thinking for now.

[JonHimself]

So are they saying that essentially there is a 'blackout' period when a movie will be shown on broadcast TV? For example if Gladiator was airing on ABC on Friday, it would be unavailable from Wednesday to Sunday of that week and then will re-appear in the store?
I read the article but I guess was only half paying attention.

[Tallest Skil]

Originally Posted by tjcampbell

The movies are overpriced, especially as we can only download so much without getting charged extra by our ISP.

Maybe in the UK. There's no limit on our ISP.

[137489]

Hence why I either only purchase DVD's or watch whatever is available (that day) for free on HULU.COM. I would be ticked to finally find time to watch a good movie and oops - it is no longer available.

[Cameront9]

I don't understand the reasoning for this at ALL. So instead of leaving the file up, where it could potentially make more money, they remove it because "it's going to be on TV?"

WTF? Content providers really don't have a clue what the consumer wants anymore...

[ATG]

That makes no sense.

DVDs are still on sale after the movie is broadcast on TV. Why not on iTunes too?

If they want to reduce piracy, they've got a funny way of doing it.

[charlituna]

Originally Posted by Cameront9

I don't understand the reasoning for this at ALL. So instead of leaving the file up, where it could potentially make more money, they remove it because "it's going to be on TV?"

because the TV networks buy the rights so they can make money. but if you can download it and watch it without commercials, they don't make their money.

[drichards]

Originally Posted by shervieux

Hence why I either only purchase DVD's or watch whatever is available (that day) for free on HULU.COM. I would be ticked to finally find time to watch a good movie and oops - it is no longer available.

Fancast.tv is great. It takes hulu, CBS, and various other resources and puts them all in front of you in one hi def experience.

[Kelmon]

This is absolutely THE dumbest thing I have heard in a while but it does explain what I have seen over the past months. I was going to buy an AppleTV next year but I'm not going to bother now. The combination of a variable selection of films and the stupid delay in making a film available to rent (it seems to be a month for the UK) means that it isn't competitive against other solutions.

What I don't understand the most is this: why does iTunes suffer from these restrictions but the likes of Blockbuster does not? What's the difference?

[dukebound85]

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil

Maybe in the UK. There's no limit on our ISP.

most isp's in the US have limits

read your contract, you might be surprised

edit: once such case by search
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329170,00.asp

another case albeit trial
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ps-arrive.html

in short, any isp provider who thinks a user is abusing the bandwidth cap will be contacted and possibly shut off

[themoonisdown09]

Originally Posted by dukebound85

most isp's in the US have limits

read your contract, you might be surprised

edit: once such case by search
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329170,00.asp

Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1.

I can't imagine using 250 GB in one month. These must be people who do all the peer-to-peer stuff.

[cmwade77]

Originally Posted by themoonisdown09

I can't imagine using 250 GB in one month. These must be people who do all the peer-to-peer stuff.

Actually, by the time you add up:
Taking Photos (I can take 100 GB of Photos in a month alone) and uploading all of them to your backup.
Doing online backups (I have two 500 GB External Drives and a 80 GB Internal drive on one computer and a 120 GB Internal drive on my laptop)
Using Skype
Emails (Web Based)
Downloading files (legally, such as programs from download.com)
Downloading music (again legally from itunes)
Downloading movies (again legally from itunes)
Playing online games
Remotely logging into your computer and using it.

It adds up fast, I have Comcast and I have yet to be shut off or contacted, but I know I must come close and I definitely would come closer if I didn't make extensive use of free wifi networks with my laptop.

[brad.c]

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil

Maybe in the UK. There's no limit on our ISP.

Rogers and Bell, respectively Canada's largest cable and dsl providers, BOTH limit usage to within set rates. You go over, you pay more. I use a private DLS provider that offers unlimited use, although ultimately that will change if tier 1 providers penalise resellers accordingly.

[daddywags214]

Perhaps TV/Cable providers are pressuring (paying) movie studios to pull their content from online providers so that more people will watch them on TV. Perhaps TV/Cable providers are in turn being pressured by their advertisers. Darn greedy capitalists!

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Originally Posted by daddywags214

Perhaps TV/Cable providers are pressuring (paying) movie studios to pull their content from online providers so that more people will watch them on TV. Perhaps TV/Cable providers are in turn being pressured by their advertisers. Darn greedy capitalists!

It sounds more to me like they want me to stop renting their movies and start pirating them. What if I don't want to watch a movie on tv (replete with commercials, etc.)? Too bad? Head to the video store? WTF is the point of having an AppleTV if I can't rent movies with it? (well OK I also stream my music around the house, but still)

Companies just don't seem to EVER remember that the customer is supposed to be king. Like Burger King, you want it YOUR way, not their way. OTOH, this is kind of funny payback in a way considering Apple is all about doing it THEIR way too and screw the customers that want matte screens or expandable Macs, etc. But sadly in both cases, the consumer gets screwed. It's getting to the point where I'm starting not to blame people for using BitTorrent and what not. The companies would rather screw their customers over and drive them away than sell or rent them product and make money. It makes no "sane" logical sense what-so-ever. That doesn't drive you to watch cable. It drives you to get content for your AppleTV any place you can find it and you start feeling like the greedy companies are just getting their just dessert rather than feeling like a criminal because they make it so darn HARD to do the right thing (pulling products, ridiculous DRM schemes for music, etc.). Frankly, if I wanted to watch cable, I wouldn't have bought the darn ATV in the first place! It's being sold first and foremost as an HD rental device!

But at least this article offers and explanation. When I tried to get an answer from Apple why I couldn't rent Superbad even though it's on the "Must See HD" list, they simply ignored me instead of telling me ANYTHING. That's just obscenely bad customer service. And people wonder why I kept rooting for Psystar. Apple customer support just plain sucks. The movie companies, etc. just plain suck too. Heck, I thought rentals were what they actually WANTED (PPV) but apparently not if it means licensing sales to cable outlets who DON'T want you renting, but watching their TV channel. Well the movie companies shouldn't be selling them exclusive distribution to begin with! Short of Disney, very few movie companies STOP SELLING DVDs just because they licensed the Family Channel to show Old Yeller.... (shakes head)

Originally Posted by LethalWolfe

Why do people keep talking about piracy when it has nothing to do w/what's going on?

They keep talking about it because it seems more and more often like it's the consumer's ONLY 'recourse' to companies pushing them around (just like building a Hackintosh is the only recourse to Apple not offering a mid-range tower; you you either build your own or switch all your software to Windows which costs a fortune if you've been on the Mac platform for a long time). It shouldn't be this difficult to legally get content. Studios have no right to complain about piracy if they don't offer their material for sale or rental. They shouldn't be allowed to force me to buy cable tv or HBO in order to watch a movie. That's too much control over distribution and it will backfire on them.

Recent history has shown that the whole MP3 debacle of piracy was not because people WANT to be criminals but because the industry doesn't LISTEN to its customers. Once iTunes opened up and they offered per track offerings for a reasonable 99 cents, many of the people who once downloaded from Limewire or the old Napster suddenly started buying music again. They simply wanted an OPTION to buy the music they liked rather than pay ever increasing CD prices (manufacturing costs have gone down, yet CD prices keep going up up up) to get an entire album full of crap in order to get one good song. We've all bought those kinds of albums before. It sucks. And singles died out with the 45. Just try to find a single of a song even in the mid '90s. Maybe 1/100 had a CD single available.

[guzhogi]

Originally Posted by tjcampbell

The movies are overpriced, especially as we can only download so much without getting charged extra by our ISP.

I agree. I'm w/ Comcast, not sure what my limit is, though.

One thing I don't like about the movies is you're paying as much for the iTunes version as the actual DVD, but only get the movie itself in English (or whatever language your store is) and nothing else. On DVDs, you get subtitles, often in multiple languages, multiple audio languages, audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes stuff & other special features. If we're going to pay the same price for for both, we might as well get all the features. Of course, all those extras would probably add loads to the download time, but some people (like me) like the special features. Maybe let you get just the movie for less & then everything for the same price as the DVD. I'm not sure how the actual DVD/packaging costs compared to the online/bandwidth costs.

Originally Posted by ATG

That makes no sense.

DVDs are still on sale after the movie is broadcast on TV. Why not on iTunes too?

If they want to reduce piracy, they've got a funny way of doing it.

From AppleInsider.com:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

But for whatever reason, Internet movie stores aren't being treated the same as their brick-and-mortar counterparts. They're instead seen by Hollywood as competitors to television networks and are therefor being treated as entertainment companies. The reason? Money.

[lowbatteries]

This doesn't make sense, really. iTunes both rents and sells movies - so a movie should be buy-able in the "DVDs" window, and rentable in the "pay-per-view" window.

And I would think the "DVDs" window would stay open indefinitely, as those who are going to buy an iTunes movie or DVD are a completely different market than renters or TV watchers. Not only do companies not go in and pull current DVDs off the shelves of stores, they KEEP SHIPPING DVDs to stores (and probably keep shipping to rental outfits too).

This is basically them just holding the new "digital revolution/nightmare" on a tight leash so it doesn't get out of their control.

It's amazing that the media industry ever got so homogeneous and inflexible.

[Drumjim85]

just shows that the big companies STILL don't know how to utilize the internet and this new market ....

[dontwalkhand]

I have a solution:

Get rid of TV as we know of it now. Instead, treat the "TV" you have now as nothing other than a mere giant computer monitor. Download the episodes you want to watch using iTunes, Netflix, etc, or pop in a DVD.

I am guessing that the broadcast TV people are also afraid of OnDemand from cable companies.

[Michael CM1]

Originally Posted by Drumjim85

just shows that the big companies STILL don't know how to utilize the internet and this new market ....

What do you expect when they put people near retirement age in charge of this stuff? I have to educate my 62-year-old dad on most technology, and he will kinda get it on a basic level after awhile. My 60-year-old mom is hopeless. I can't even get her to use a Mac even though she keep complaining about how complicated this and that is on Windows.

People who want to pirate will pirate. Now I don't consider ripping a DVD that I already own pirating. Despite that whole DMCA, I bought the thing and I just want it in a different format. It's the exact same concept behind ripping CDs to MP3, and the music industry has benefitted from that because you now have people like me who actually listen to stuff. I hated carrying around even 24 CDs, so the use of iPods makes me spend more money on their stuff!

Let iTunes and other approved software (the studios can license this somehow) rip DVD movies to a computer and sync with media players. Have it rip in some DRM format, but allow us the same rights we have with iTunes. They're already kinda doing this with the digital copies. Sure, people will still pirate movies, but YOU CANNOT STOP THIS. Piracy will be around as long as there is stuff to be pirated.

[twoodcc]

wow. i wasn't really expecting this. i don't like this one bit. but what can you do?

[morespce54]

That's weird...

I mean, they remove the movie from theaters, then the movie is on DVDs (but that is not why they remove it from the theaters 'tho), then they keep selling/renting DVDs and make it available on line, then they remove it from on line renting/selling because they make it available to broadcasters but still sell/rent it on DVDs... It seems to me there is no real logic behind this.

Anyway, the same thing happened with songs on iTunes. Some of my bookmarked ones are no longer available in my iTMS...
Either something changed or someone screwed up by putting them there in the first place...

[zombitronic]

I've got one word to say to the studios: Yaaarrrr.