Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Wants to Sell 4K Movies for $20 in iTunes, While Film Studios Want $25 to $30
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The Blu-ray comment gave me food for thought. Lets exclude UHD Blu-ray for now but even a HD Blu-ray is probably superior to a Apple 4K in most aspects. While a HD Blu-ray may not be as sharp because of the lower resolution you will probably end up with superior shading, colors and much better sound over a digital file from Apple.
While I love the idea of having no physical media in some ways it needs to be at a price point that makes sense.
Nevermind that, depending on Apple's licensing deals with the studios, that content may not always be available after you purchase it. You take a risk when "buying" a digital copy that your library will still contain that purchase X months/years down the road when you want to watch it again.
The studios are going to look to Disney's experiment in creating their own digital store/streaming service. If there's even a whiff of success there, other studios will abandon NetFlix and Amazon Prime Video, too, for their own shop, which cuts out the middle man. Can NetFlix at $10 per month survive with just its own content?
So long as you have a physical copy of that digital content, meaning you download that movie and don't rely on it always being available to re-download from iTunes, then "permanent" applies. If you buy something today and expect to be able to download it 4 months from now, you are gambling that Apple's deal with that studio for that movie/show hasn't changed and caused it to be removed: Many Purchased Movies Missing from Library
We may get to find out what that looks like, if Disney's experiment to go solo works.
Only movies I buy are for my kids, they watch things again and again and again..and...Let it Go...Let it Go.....
True but look at how your film buying may of changed in just 20 years... VHS (or Betamax, or V2000 or LaserDisc), DVD, HDD DVD, Blu-Ray then download. I'm sure that five or ten years from now, we'll be using something totally different - not 8K or 16K but maybe hologram TV with a totally different codec. Who knows - Live for today - tomorrow is never guaranteed!
And this is why I will wait the extra couple of weeks to rent the movie. There are very, very few movies I will watch more than once. Even if I want to watch it again it typically takes three or four rentals before the purchase makes sense.
I also have an issue with the idea the studios are owed extra money simply for releasing the movie in the same resolution in which it was filmed. The movie was shot and edited in 4K or higher resolution and then downscaled to HD or DVD quality. There is no appreciable extra cost for the higher resolution, and one could even argue that any extra cost should be borne by the downscaled resolutions since they are the ones that are requiring the extra work.
The only companies that are negatively affected by the higher resolutions are ones like Netflix that have to provide sufficient bandwidth for the stream. A good estimate of the difference in bandwidth usage can be made by looking at Netflix subscription prices. It costs a whole $2 to go from Standard to Premium which includes Ultra HD for an entire month of movies. To me, that would be a decent starting point for a price difference for individual movie purchases. Basically the studio gets paid for their content at the same price regardless of the resolution the consumer views it at while the provider gets to recoup the cost of the higher bandwidth requirements.
I also have an issue with the idea the studios are owed extra money simply for releasing the movie in the same resolution in which it was filmed. The movie was shot and edited in 4K or higher resolution and then downscaled to HD or DVD quality. There is no appreciable extra cost for the higher resolution, and one could even argue that any extra cost should be borne by the downscaled resolutions since they are the ones that are requiring the extra work.
The only companies that are negatively affected by the higher resolutions are ones like Netflix that have to provide sufficient bandwidth for the stream. A good estimate of the difference in bandwidth usage can be made by looking at Netflix subscription prices. It costs a whole $2 to go from Standard to Premium which includes Ultra HD for an entire month of movies. To me, that would be a decent starting point for a price difference for individual movie purchases. Basically the studio gets paid for their content at the same price regardless of the resolution the consumer views it at while the provider gets to recoup the cost of the higher bandwidth requirements.
Even if it is a movie I only watch once or twice I just buy it. I do not go to the theaters, so I just buy the movies I want to see when they come to disc. Movies have such a fast turn around now, 2-3 months and they are on disc.
For example, Wonder Woman was released on June 2 (still have not seen it), and comes to disc in 2 weeks and digital currently. I can own it for the cost of me and my wife to see it in the theaters.
I do for very few movies. The only one that I watched several times is "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken". Fun movie that I take along on camping trips. I use iTunes to rent movies, save them to my mini Mac, and then watch them on camping trips when the weather is nasty within the 30 day rental period.
That's why I don't purchase digital copies. $19.99 is way over priced nowadays for digital HD releases. The only digital copies I own are from the free digital copy codes that have come with my blu rays. And unlike digital copies, blu rays are free from platform viewing restrictions, have uncompressed video and audio, and generally come with more extra content.
I don't think it will work out.
People seem to get more and more aware of how they are being ripped off and to speak out their dislike for having to pay multiple overpriced services. The future for media lays in a single media flatrate for all content. The questions is who will be the one to provide the closest experience to this ideal state.
I think $20 is too much already. Especially since its trapped in the Apple environment. I wish the industry would come up with a licensing mechanism so that you could convert a movie, song, etc.. to another format without starting over. We have some movies in Amazon and some in iTunes. So if we ever move away from Apple then we lose that content we have bought. For this reason, I prefer the physical DVD... and DVD quality is fine for me. I've never paid more for BluRay except in a few circumstance, and hate that they are a slower UI. I don't have any plans to pay for 4K any time soon.
While on this subject, Apple and others are slowly raising the rental prices to where they are getting ridiculous... $5.99 is too much for a rental... and some are even higher.
While on this subject, Apple and others are slowly raising the rental prices to where they are getting ridiculous... $5.99 is too much for a rental... and some are even higher.
Apple was also responsible for influencing songs be sold for .99 cents on iTunes, where the music industry was selling CD's for $21.
So this is a good move by Apple.
And then look at this from the comparison of production costs to retail price. With digital distribution they again have no inventory, manufacturing (negligible additional overhead in mastering once for iTunes), transportation, etc... and Apple is covering all storage and bandwidth costs. The price of production was already a sunk cost in producing the film (i.e. no more that original production to produce 1080p). They want the extra $5-10 because they think they can get it; so be it, that's the market, but there's no other underlying reason for the price hike.
Given that blurays are generally over $25 here in Canada, $20 for a 4K that is stored on the cloud I could live with. But it won't be there in Canada!
Its just digital media, do they realized that if they dropped it a little they would sell more? I don't advocate illegal activity, but that's where high prices drive people...
Its just digital media, do they realized that if they dropped it a little they would sell more? I don't advocate illegal activity, but that's where high prices drive people...
This may have been mentioned, but I never understood why Apple didn't allow people to credit the rental fee against the purchase price for, say, 24 hours. How do you really usually know if you want to purchase a movie until you watch it, and then paying twice (rental and purchase) seems insane (more insane...).
I always thought they would sell a lot more movies if they allowed this credit. No? Yes?
Not the same price, but often even cheaper on sites like Amazon. The movie studios have little to no concept of value-for-money when it comes to digital content, refuse to make their content available on services like Netflix, and that's why I still find myself obtaining content either via BluRay or from less legitimate sources.
I hate blu-ray. I would prefer to get it off iTunes and not have to deal with the extra hassles and my time to rip of blu-ray myself.
A reality of economics is that early adopters, generally rich people, pay a lot for the product. Due to their spending the producers of the product can further invest in producing the technology at lower prices and higher volume. The larger profit available also is an incentive for others to enter the market. That being said, I would imagine that higher quality digital products don't have nearly the cost to scale production or probably even to product in the first place. And I would think the distribution costs have to be much lower. Then again I have no first hand experience in these market.