iTunes Movies to be sold for $9.99?

[sushi]

320 x 240 is not worth $10 a movie.

Completely agree.

That is typical VHS tape standard which is way outdated.

Too much money: DVD's aren't much more.

In many places/stores, you can purchase 1 year old movies for much less.

Walmart comes to mind. Last time I was in the states I picked up a few new DVD movies that I wanted for $4.99, $5.99 and $6.99 plus tax.

Granted the latest releases are more expensive. But if you are willing to wait you can save a bundle.

 

[InTheBand]

Since a DVD is about $10 - one should expect nothing less.

no doubt. this is a joke. they need to offer something more. HD quality and i could understand but this?

I agree that $9.99 should at least get us 640x480 resolution, twice that of the current 320x240 for High School Musical, or even better, 720 x [whatever this number is... I forgot]. However, the "they need to offer something more" I don't think is that necessary, or gonna happen.

The "more" that the $9.99 gets you is convenience. The same convenience that popularized iTMS. The one-click download from your home that eliminates the need to go to a store [as well as the time, hassle, and money associated with this] and putz around, looking [and hoping] that they got what you want at a reasonable price. Keep the liner notes, chapter selection, and most of that other stuff Apple, but give me "DVD Cover Art" the same way you give me "Album Art" in the iTMS. If someone wants all of that other stuff, then you know what you're options are. I just want the movie and the associated cover art to make a dvd insert so that I can shelf the movie until I watch it again later. If I bought it, then I like it enough to watch more than once no matter how much later that may be.

"ChrisA" posted "I can just set the VCR and get 4X better quality for free", but that claim is completely false. VHS quality is less than 300 [240?] horizontal lines of resolution which is obviously less than the 320 horizontal x 240 this High School Musical is offered at, but still not enough IMO. And if you're paying for cable/satellite service, guess what? It's not free.

"ChrisA" [I'm not picking on you ChrisA, just quoting you ] had also posted "I have experimented with [h.264] encoding. I've found that a 1GB file looks real good. People can't tell it from the wide screen edition DVD."

Okay. So since this High School Movie is 487MB's at 320 x 240 resolution with a duration of 1 hour and 39 minutes, then doubling that resolution should get us pretty close to the 1GB file size that you said "People can't tell it from the wide screen edition DVD." That's cool with me.
However that also disproves your earlier comment that "[you] can just set the VCR and get 4X better quality...".

$9.99 for at least 640 x 480 [preferrably 720 x whatever] as so many others have posted on here along with DVD Cover Art, and you'll have millions of customers Apple.

Here's my ideal Apple iMovie Video Store:

"DVD Quality"
- $9.99 pay to own
- $4.99 pay per view [limited views, 2-3 and/or limited time, 7 days] + $4.99 pay to own option afterwards [this will make a lot of customers just decide to buy it to begin with for $9.99]
- $19.99 unlimited viewing subscription service + $6.99, 30% off pay to own option afterwards.

"HD Quality"
- $13.99 pay to own
- $6.99 pay per view [limited views, 2-3 and/or limited time, 7 days] + $6.99 pay to own option afterwards [this may make a lot of customers just decide to buy it to begin with for $13.99]
- $29.99 unlimited viewing subscription service + $9.99, 30% off pay to own option afterwards].

Between the DVD and HD quality unlimited viewing subscription services, you get twice the quality [if DVD resolution is set to 720] for only 50% more.

Come on Apple, don't screw this one up!

 

[ScottB]

Well, at least it's pay-to-own. I don't watch movies on my own, and with other people a laptop screen is no use, so it's pointless for me. Especially at $9. Course, if I had a 20" iMac or an large monitor, I may consider using this service.

 

[Bosunsfate]

P.T. Barnum

What was it that he used to say?

If idiots buy those stupid ring tones and other cell phone crap at those insane prices, why would they buy movies on iTunes of $9.99?

Now for me? I'll be waiting to see something that is worth buying....I'm sure something will come along.

Until then it will be fun to see the parents go nuts when their kids charge it up on ITMS...

 

[hyperpasta]

I agree that $9.99 should at least get us 640x480 resolution, twice that of the current 320x240 for High School Musical, or even better, 720 x [whatever this number is... I forgot]. However, the "they need to offer something more" I don't think is that necessary, or gonna happen.

The "more" that the $9.99 gets you is convenience. The same convenience that popularized iTMS. The one-click download from your home that eliminates the need to go to a store [as well as the time, hassle, and money associated with this] and putz around, looking [and hoping] that they got what you want at a reasonable price. Keep the liner notes, chapter selection, and most of that other stuff Apple, but give me "DVD Cover Art" the same way you give me "Album Art" in the iTMS. If someone wants all of that other stuff, then you know what you're options are. I just want the movie and the associated artwork to make a dvd insert so that I can shelf the movie until I watch it again later. If I bought it, then I like it enough to watch more than once no matter how much later that may be.

"ChrisA" posted "I can just set the VCR and get 4X better quality for free", but that claim is completely false. VHS quality is less than 300 [240?] horizontal lines of resolution which is obviously less than the 320 x 240 this High School Musical is offered at, but still not enough IMO. And if you're paying for cable/satellite service, guess what? It's not free.

"ChrisA" [I'm not picking on you ChrisA, just quoting you ] had also posted "I have experimented with [h.264] encoding. I've found that a 1GB file looks real good. People can't tell it from the wide screen edition DVD."

Okay. So since this High School Movie is 487MB's at 320 x 240 resolution with a duration of 1 hour and 39 minutes, then doubling that resolution should get us pretty close to the 1GB file size that you said "People can't tell it from the wide screen edition DVD." That's cool with me.
However that also disproves your earlier comment that "[you] can just set the VCR and get 4X better quality...".

$9.99 for at least 640 x 480 [preferrably 720 x whatever] as so many others have posted on here along with DVD Cover Art, and you'll have millions of customers Apple.

Here's my ideal Apple iMovie Video Service:

"DVD Quality"
- $9.99 pay to own
- $4.99 pay per view [limited views, 2-3 and/or limited time, 7 days] + $4.99 pay to own option afterwards [this will make a lot of customers just decide to buy it to begin with for $9.99]
- $19.99 unlimited viewing subscription service + $6.99, 30% off pay to own option afterwards.

"HD Quality"
- $13.99 pay to own
- $6.99 pay per view [limited views, 2-3 and/or limited time, 7 days] + $6.99 pay to own option afterwards [this may make a lot of customers just decide to buy it to begin with for $13.99]
- $29.99 unlimited viewing subscription service + $9.99, 30% off pay to own option afterwards].

Between the DVD and HD quality unlimited viewing subscription services, you get twice the quality [if DVD resolution is set to 720] for only 50% more.

Come on Apple, don't screw this one up!

That model seems a bit too complicated. How about just:

Rent a 480p movie for $3.99 (1 Week)
Buy a 480p movie for $9.99

 

[garybUK]

And when will they even think about releasing these in Europe?, we don't even get TV shows yet! disgraceful!!!

I'll stick to SKY Broadband thanks.

 

[InTheBand]

"DVD Quality"
- $9.99 pay to own
- $4.99 pay per view [limited views, 2-3 and/or limited time, 7 days] + $4.99 pay to own option afterwards [this will make a lot of customers just decide to buy it to begin with for $9.99]
- $19.99 unlimited viewing subscription service + $6.99, 30% off pay to own option afterwards.

"HD Quality"
- $13.99 pay to own
- $6.99 pay per view [limited views, 2-3 and/or limited time, 7 days] + $6.99 pay to own option afterwards [this may make a lot of customers just decide to buy it to begin with for $13.99]
- $29.99 unlimited viewing subscription service + $9.99, 30% off pay to own option afterwards].

That model seems a bit too complicated. How about just:

Rent a 480p movie for $3.99 (1 Week)
Buy a 480p movie for $9.99

That model seems a bit too simple. The old K.I.S.S. [Keep It Simple Stupid] business philosophy does not apply here, IMO.

480p is not a resolution that most people can agree on, and this market is no longer limited to rent vs. buy. The studios want subscriptions and if Apple is going to be hosting the file anyway and if bandwidth really isn't an issue for them as i've heard it isn't, then why not make the studios happy while giving the consumer flexibility at the same time?

It's actually very simple:

1. Choose the quality [DVD or HD]
2. Choose the purchase option:
- a. Buy it
- b. Try it [and buy it at a discount if you like it]
- c. Watch it [and buy it at a discount if you like it]

What's so hard about that?

It comes down to 2 choices, with 2b and 2c opening the door for Apple/the movie studio to make more money, while at the same time giving the consumer the option to own something they may not have thought they wanted to own at first. Otherwise they would have gone with 2a.

 

[iGary]

Can I be really stupid?

If I was going to buy a digital movie, I'd sure like to watch it at a "real" resolution.

Now I know the logistics of that make it impossible, but I guess Apple has to get into the market before it really exists in order to be ahead of everyone else when the technology does allower higher res.

I'm still wholly unimpressed by this. *shrug*

 

[kjr39]

Somehow I keep falling outside of Apple's target audience for these products.

10 bucks is overpriced when you can get a physical copy of a movie (that you can do whatever you want with) for the same price...

 

[Cooknn]

I'll just wait for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray to become mainstream and get my stuff from Netflix. They will offer Hi-Def at some point... No way am I paying $9.99 for an iPod sized movie

 

[iGary]

I'll just wait for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray to become mainstream and get my stuff from Netflix. They will offer Hi-Def at some point... No way am I paying $9.99 for an iPod sized movie

Ditto. Great minds think alike.

 

[Thataboy]

There are 2 ways people "purchase" movies:

Rent.
Buy.

People who RENT are looking for something cheap, convenient, decent quality -- for a movie they don't want to own, but wouldn't mind seeing.

People who BUY are willing to pay a higher price due to the DVD quality, movie features, and DVD extras.

The apparent Apple business model takes the worst of both worlds. If they are going after a "purchase to own" strategy, they MUST increase the quality of the files. If they don't want to increase the quality, they MUST drastically lower the price (to around $3.99).

Why on Earth would one choose this over a cable service's video on demand? That is cheaper, better quality, more immediate, doesn't take up hard drive space. Are people REALLY that hungry to watch tons of movies on an iPod? I mean, I can see the occassional movie, but other than that....

Apple nailed it on the music model, but, if this is how they plan on doing things, I think they are dead wrong on the movie model. Let's hope they come up with a sensible subscription-Netflix style service.

 

[technicolor]

That price is insane.

You can get dvds for that price.

Its better quality for me to rip a dvd and run it through iSquint.
With netflix I can watch all the movies I want for only double the price of 1 of their movies. I live next door to one so I get one day turn around.

 

[Porco]

Of course DVDs and even HD formats are a lower resolution than a theatrical film in a cinema/movie theatre...

But yeah, VCD resolution at DVD prices... that's not good enough. Frankly if they can sell whole movies now they should be thinking about bumping up the bit-rate of their music now, IMHO. It was only 'ok' at $1.99, nevermind $9.99. If they sold mini versions of movies for iPods at $1.99 or less I think a lot of people would probably buy duplicates to save the hassle (and avoid the legally grey (at best) areas) of encoding DVDs etc.

All this will just take time, I've no doubt eventually we'll all be buying films as downloads in lovely HD.

 

[InTheBand]

And when will they even think about releasing these in Europe?, we don't even get TV shows yet! disgraceful!!!

I'll stick to SKY Broadband thanks.

Not to be rude but, Apple will get there when it gets there. And I think you'll buy when they do.

In a way, you guys are lucky because we're the "guinea pigs" here in the US. Apple will use us to refine their movie service so that when it gets to you, you'll be happier initially because you'll have more content and probably won't have to deal with the "growing pains" of this service as it will have already matured.

Apple has to choose it's battles, and being a US based company, the US is always going to be it's first start up option and test audience. They need to take steps, which takes time, to accomodate everyone elses different laws and such.

There are 2 ways people "purchase" movies:

Rent.
Buy.

People who RENT are looking for something cheap, convenient, decent quality -- for a movie they don't want to own, but wouldn't mind seeing.

Remember, there were only 2 way to "purchase/acquire" music before iTMS:

Buy.
Steal.

People either bought a tangible product that was overpriced [$15-$20] because of "overhead" [packaging, distribution, etc.] and was also overpriced because there were only a couple of good songs on the entire album, but you had to buy the whole album to get those couple of songs. Or they stole it [file sharing]. Apple changed that.

There were only 2 ways people "purchased" movies [Rent/Buy... yes, people can steal those too but I'm not going into that], but I believe Apple will change that also like this:

1. Buy.
2. Rent. [pay-per-view or unlimited view subscription]
3. Buy. [if you like what you initially rented because you didn't know if you would like it enough to own it]

If people have never seen a movie, how would they know whether or not they want to own it? Give people the option to choose whether or not they want to own something both before and after they've seen it.

What's wrong with Apple/movie studios making more money because the customer changed their mind? SJ has always been specific in stating that the way people purchase music and movies are different.

Music subscriptions suck. Movie subscriptions with an option to buy, not so much.

 

[xli_ne]

i would think this is a joke at 10 bucks a movie on such a little screen, but then again i would have never that that people would buy 20-30 buck umd's for their psp either, and those are actually selling well i believe.

so who knows, i'm not buying any of these.

I'll spend the same amount or an extra 5 bucks or so and get a dvd.

 

[Proud Liberal]

Hopefully 2 Tuesdays from now we will. new credit card came today, not touching it until march 28th

I'm kinda thinking that the "30th anniversary event" - if there is going to be one at all - won't happen on the 28th...wouldn't we have seen an announcement from Apple by now - it's less than 2 weeks away...

 

[virus1]

notice that there is a category for disney channel at the top. when clicked upon, high school musical is the only one in there, but a category does tell us more is coming, as opposed to just "high school musical" next to home in the breadcrumbs.

 

[Twenty1]

same stories...

It's funny how the same arguments come up again and again :

"I'd buy _____ if it were ____ dollars/cents less."

"No one will pay $9.99 or 99 cents for an album or song of compressed music when I can go to Walmart and pay about the same for a CD" (obviously said before 1 billion songs songs were sold)

"They should make the bitrate, resolution, file size, ______ otherwise I won't buy it."

I guess my point (if I have a point ) is that we can all recycle the same complaints about pricing and products, but none of it really matters. If I'm Apple, and I've sold 1 billion songs with my current pricing model, there's really no reason to change just because the content changed. The same arguments of video quality, pricing, etc; were already debated with music. Those arguments lost when consumers opened their wallets.

Obviously there are differences between audio and video in regards to consumer habits, choices, etc;... so I'm sure it's easy to point wholes in what I've said

 

[Proud Liberal]

Somehow I keep falling outside of Apple's target audience for these products.

Target audience is absolutely the key point that everyone seems to be missing in this discussion.

If you look at the majority demographic of iPod users, it's clearly teens to early adults. If you look at the most popular selling ipods (nano & shuffle), it's clear that Apple is specifically targeting this audience. It's not a coincidence that the "sweet spot" for iPod capacity seems to be 4-20GB. These "kids" simply don't have the large music collections that us "non-kids" do have. Therefore it stands to reason that this demographic could give a rat's backside about resolutions or audio compression formats/codecs, but rather just want it because "it's cool" or "he's hot"( i.e. music videos, Disney movies). Steve Jobs isn't stupid - this generation of consumers have more cash to spend than any other previous generation, and they don't care that for $9.99 they get a sub-par quality movie/video download. In the case of downloading movies/music from iTunes (remember that music downloads are 128 AAC files - not exactly audiophile quality), Jobs is going after his target audience of young kids/early adults. Those of us outside of that demographic, as far as iPods are concerned, are pretty much SOL. After all, it's those kids' parents who are the AAPL stockowners, and if little Biff & Muffy are happy with crap-quality downloads, then clearly Steve is doing a good job & the stock price/revenues/profits continue to go up. Personally, I think this strategy may back-fire on Steve at some point, but I'm certainly not an expert in this area.

 

[mkubal]

Three Reason I would never buy a movie from ITMS as the situation stands right now.

1) Price
2) Quality of video
3) Inability to share video with friends

#3 is really what does it for me. I buy DVDs that I can let friends and family borrow. How in the world will I let my brother for example watch one of my movies without breaking some law with regards to DRM.

I will be amazed if this ever catches on.

 

[deadturtle]

meh..
I also like the netflix model but then I usually watch a movie once and leave it at that. I really don't want to own a movie like I own my music. But that's just me. I know a lot of other people who have hundreds of DVDs. THough they usually watch them only once as well. I think a subscription model works better for movies and for TV programs as well. My .02$

Well put. If apple offers higher resolution this would be a great way to pick up a few movies. I used to buy any movie I wanted to watch with the theory that I could watch them more than once. Then I weeded out my collection to the ones I've watched more than once, sold the rest and have paid my 2 @ a time netflix for a year (well still going, but its been a while). If I come across something I really like Ill go out and buy the real disk. It would be awsome if I could get the ones I want to watch more from iTunes and either burn or play back via the mini (though id have to move it off server duty). But Apple would have to offer at least DVD quality... which may not be possible with current constraints (bandwidth, storage).

 

[iPie]

My video store rents the latest DVDs out for 1.80€ and older films for 1.50€ (for a week!).
This does not sound like a winning proposition....

 

[jasonbogen]

not sure Id like this pricing models for movies.

I'm used to the netflix model. Granted its insane to expect apple to match that, but they're still gonna be competing with them in a way.

Not sure Id wanna pay $10 for a movie that I can't burn to dvd to watch on my tv (not hooked up to my mini).

Personally, not that wowed by this.

You can bet Netflix officials just cheered when they heard this. Apple has a chance to destroy Netflix, but choose this ridiculous model and even more ridiculous price point. 10 bux for a movie? This is not the same market as music. With the exception of childrens movies (Shrek, Toy Story, etc) and certain collectable type movies (Classics, Epics, etc), most people do not buy their movies. When they do it is movies like Lord of The Rings or Star Wars where they want the nice packaging and bonus features for their collection. Now if you want to bring down the price point to something more reasonable (say between $4 and $6) you might have something (admittedly when I saw $1.99 I thought that was way too low) Otherwise, the subscription and rental model is the one that works. HBO, Cinemax, The Movie Channel, Showtime are huge. Netflix and Blockbuster online are growing through the roof and Apple has the opportunity to blow those out of the water. With their entertainment hub model and a new large screen iPod Video (yes even bigger than the rumored 4" would really be nice... think car DVD player replacement for the kids) they would KILL! Movies are NOT music. By the way people, this WILL be done and if it is done by someone other than Apple, they will gain an upper hand in taking away iPod and iTunes music sales. After years of frustration discussing what Apple should be doing, Steve has had a long streach of near flawless strategy. The marketing plan in his second run has been the stuff business school textbooks will be written on. However I think he is in danger of undoing a lot ofwhat he has accomplished if he stubbornly sticks to his guns on this one. 98% of movies do not fit the market potential of a Pixar movie. I think he may be making the mistake of missing that point.

 

[mi5moav]

PSP vs IPOD

Well, if this 9.99 price is correct them i'm gonna turn in my PSP. The cheapest I have ever gotten a PSP move was 14.99 most of them are 19.99 to 29.99 so if Apple is trying to sell these to the portable movie crowd PSP/IPOD viewers then they are are selling them at 50 to 200% less then Sony's PSP movies. So, when Highschool Musical comes out for PSP it will be at 19.99 and up!!!!!!

Secondly, Quicktime would have to be completely revamped to have a subscription based model... have you ever watched any kind of subscription program on Quicktime where the music or movie just doesn't work or dissapears after a few hours or days???? Not, gonna happen anytime soon.

So, guaranteed these movies will be priced between 4.99 -7.99 for some older movies and 9.99 - 14.99 for most newer movies... plain and simple nothing else is gonna happen, no subscription service until Apple has a subscription model in Quicktime... which probably won't occur till 10.5 and 8.0