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's iTunes Movie Store Hurdles - 2007?
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
xfiftyfour
macrumors 68030
~Shard~ said:
yeah, i don't know about everyone else, but we (as well as most of our friends, and others we've run into at rental places) will get dvds for 3.50: rent, rip, burn.
piracy is limited?
Why fixed pricing does not work for movie downloads.
Jean Claude van Dam and Steven Seagal in Under Siege 6 = $9.99
Superman Returns = $9.99
One movie would be a bargain at $9.99, while the other movie should pay the iTunes user to watch it.
Jean Claude van Dam and Steven Seagal in Under Siege 6 = $9.99
Superman Returns = $9.99
One movie would be a bargain at $9.99, while the other movie should pay the iTunes user to watch it.
boncellis
macrumors 6502
LagunaSol said:
I agree that there's something missing, and in my opinion it's the hardware component.
Apple is about the whole experience--in this case, the whole experience of watching a full-length movie--so the content is a necessary, but not sufficient, element of the experience. That begs the question, what is the missing component to make consumers excited about feature films available for download?
Your guess is as good as mine. I just don't see masses of consumers getting excited to watch 2 hour films on an iPod. I'll recant if I hear otherwise though.
Analog Kid
macrumors G3
Now there's a model I hadn't thought of... Buy the download for the cost of two tickets while it's still in the theater. Single people get screwed again as usual, but not that bad of a model. Maybe $15 would be the right spot?treblah said:
You don't get the big screen experience, but you don't have to deal with the morons at the theater. It's almost a fair trade, but I'd like them to throw something in for having put up with the morons all these years already...
echeck
macrumors 68000
There's definitely a missing hardware component. Apple will likely introduce both the hardware and the Video Store at the same time, or at least release the hardware just prior to the Video Store announcement.
$19.99 for a digital copy of a movie? That is absolutely ridiculous. Thanks, but I'll go down to WalMart and pick up a new release for anywhere between $11.99 to $16.99. A digital copy I would not pay any more than $9.99 for. No actual disc to worry about, no packaging, so why charge more for it than a physical copy? It's like wipin' before ya poop, it just don't make sense!
Quality will obviously be another big issue, if I'm gonna pay $9.99 for a movie it better not be iPod quality.
$19.99 for a digital copy of a movie? That is absolutely ridiculous. Thanks, but I'll go down to WalMart and pick up a new release for anywhere between $11.99 to $16.99. A digital copy I would not pay any more than $9.99 for. No actual disc to worry about, no packaging, so why charge more for it than a physical copy? It's like wipin' before ya poop, it just don't make sense!
Quality will obviously be another big issue, if I'm gonna pay $9.99 for a movie it better not be iPod quality.
Analog Kid
macrumors G3
milozauckerman said:
DVD sales strong???
Have you ever been to either Asia, South America, or even Eastern Europe(some western as well) You can buy ANY dvd for less than $3...
mgargan1 said:
I agree with one part of what you say. $20 is too much (i think $10 is too much) as you are paying to store the thing on your hard disk, maybe burining a back-up, cost of downloading etc. Using Amazon or even some store you can get most DVD's for below that price anyway.
I disagree with your implication that high film/music/etc prices is what drives theft. This is not food or shelter we are talking about, it's a luxury that nobody needs. Stealing a Maserati is the same as stealing a 10-year old Ford. The punishment for high pricing is lack of sales, not theft.
The lenghts people will go to to steal something they don't even need or appreciate are amazing and ridiculous.
ezekielrage_99
macrumors 68040
I'll say the same about this as I said about Sony's UMD format for the PSP...
Who in their right mind would pay more for a lower quality version of a movie when you can get a high quality DVD for less, and rip it yourself?
That said, $20 for digital downloads may look like a bargain once the movie industry crams Blueray and HD-DVD down our throats and begins selling movies at $40 to $50 each...
Who in their right mind would pay more for a lower quality version of a movie when you can get a high quality DVD for less, and rip it yourself?
That said, $20 for digital downloads may look like a bargain once the movie industry crams Blueray and HD-DVD down our throats and begins selling movies at $40 to $50 each...
knock said:
And I would disagree that downloading music or movies off the internet constitutes "theft" in the strictest sense of the word. Ultimately we're talking about folks downloading binary data... ones and zeros... how is THAT theft? It's not like you're stealing a physical CD or are stealing money out of the companies bank account.
At worst, it's a loss of a potential sale, but that's not theft... if it was, badmouthing a band or writing a bad review would be a crime.
One could also argue that art (which is what GOOD movies and music are), is as important to the soul as food or shelter is to the body.
But even in the age of limewire and bit torrent, it's still possible to attract paying customers... Apple has proven this with iTunes. Rather than coming up with new DRM schemes or attempting to punish those who download content, companies need to adapt to the post-internet era and think of new ways to attract customers to their product (such as digital downloads, more reasonable pricing structures, extras with CD or DVD purchase, etc). If they can't adapt, then frankly they should go out of business.
notjustjay
macrumors 603
I say, let the studios have their stupid $19.99 pricing.
And when the iTunes music store announces "100 downloads in the first week of release!" Steve can turn around and say "I told you so!"
Even better, let's find one enterprising studio willing to actually have reasonable prices on its movies, and let all the other studios watch it run circles around their sales.
And when the iTunes music store announces "100 downloads in the first week of release!" Steve can turn around and say "I told you so!"
Even better, let's find one enterprising studio willing to actually have reasonable prices on its movies, and let all the other studios watch it run circles around their sales.
dernhelm
macrumors 68000
Electro Funk said:
You do realize that your 20" iMac probably has a higher resolution than your 46"DLP, right? Still in all, the main problem with iTunes is that the shows are not encoded in widescreen aspect ratio. I don't care about HD resolution, if you can give me the proper aspect ratio for a widescreen TV things will scale well.
~Shard~
macrumors P6
notjustjay said:
Although it would be a nice slap in the face to the studios, Jobs wouldn't do this, as it would have a negative impact on Apple's business as well. Jobs is no dummy and wouldn't proceed with a model such as that when it is obvious it would fail. The failure of a new, important service with huge potential is not worth it just for pure spite. 😎
Bonte
macrumors 65816
Thats not where the money is, Amazon's success is offering books that don't sell extremely good but are hard to find and offering thousands of titles. We can buy the blockbusters everywhere but Apple needs the cult, cinefile, French, manga, shortfilms, Horror, classics ... thousands.
Hopefully there will be a CD-baby like service for the home made movies. Made in iTunes?
celebrian23
macrumors 65816
AT71 said:
Here we have a dollar theatre for movies that are no longer much in demand for just aq dollar. So here, movies actually do cost differently 🙂
Which has how much relevance to the average consumer? None. DVD sales remain extremely strong, with the owning over renting mindset reigning supreme. DVD sales are keeping the movie industry afloat in a time when theatre income is stagnant. There is no piracy-related downloading panic in the movie industry as there was with music - it doesn't stand a chance of crippling the corporations.
The music industry had, essentially, two options - partner with Jobs under his rules, or continue to lose sales to illegal firesharing. He had the upperhand. With the movie industry, there is no upper hand, iTunes would exist not as a saving grace but as an additional cash cow - and the studios have to ensure that the new cash cow doesn't starve their old one (DVDs).
Being in the UK I think things must be different, I have to say I'm extremely suprised by the fact that many of your feel that most people rent movies. I know very few people that rent, only really if they want to check out a movie that looks good, but movies that have already been seen are bought by the boat load here. Everyone I know has a huge DVD collection, 15-20 films minium. Now that's at around £15, ocassionally more, occassionally less, a lot of the films are newer ones. Infact two seperate video stores near me are shutting down due to lack of rental sales.
I think Steve should look into doing this in places other than the US. Sky (UK Cable company) have recently started Sky By Broadband, in which if you are a Sky subscriber you can download a huge amount of movies in decent quality for free (Windows only and full of DRM far worse than iTunes of course). Interviews have said that the movie studios were more than happy for this to happen...For free. So surely a £6 or £7 price point per movie in the UK would do well. Accompanied with some sort of media hub or new iPod. And it would never hurt the 5g sales because many people I know are holding off on buying it simply because they cant find easy places to get the movies (they're not as keen as us, they dont want to spend hours converting and tagging).
Maybe if Steve goes for Europe and the movie studios see the results the US will follow. US doesn't have to get everything first.
I think Steve should look into doing this in places other than the US. Sky (UK Cable company) have recently started Sky By Broadband, in which if you are a Sky subscriber you can download a huge amount of movies in decent quality for free (Windows only and full of DRM far worse than iTunes of course). Interviews have said that the movie studios were more than happy for this to happen...For free. So surely a £6 or £7 price point per movie in the UK would do well. Accompanied with some sort of media hub or new iPod. And it would never hurt the 5g sales because many people I know are holding off on buying it simply because they cant find easy places to get the movies (they're not as keen as us, they dont want to spend hours converting and tagging).
Maybe if Steve goes for Europe and the movie studios see the results the US will follow. US doesn't have to get everything first.
ezekielrage_99
macrumors 68040
thejadedmonkey
macrumors G3
Yeah, but that same crowd that goes around paying for $3 ringtones which ammount to a dime/second worth of music would happily pay $20 a movie to show off on their iPods.ezekielrage_99 said: