Vongo: Starz and Microsoft $9.95 per Month Unlimited Movies

[snowmoon]

Same here. Apple isn't offering higher resolution movies because of the incredible bandwidth costs.

They will have to offer different pricing structures if they were to offer the quicktime-trailer-type concept of small, medium, large. The back-end of the iTunes store is a horrible mess as it is (trust me on that if you don't know), offering a tiered service will be a considerable pain to write from scratch (not to mention get the studios to agree to), so I'm sure it will be hammered together with a large mallet.

I doubt bandwith is the core issue here. bandwidth is cheap, licensing the content is not.

 

[the silver fox]

I doubt bandwith is the core issue here. bandwidth is cheap, licensing the content is not.

It doesn't cost them any extra to license different file sizes of movies/songs. Licenses are given by medium. In the case of Apple downloads only. In the case of Starz, broadcast (their 10+ TV channels) and download.

Apple, like Starz, use Akamai servers to serve their content. If you have ever dealt with Akamai, you will know that when you are talking about 10GB a movie instead of 600MB, bandwidth is not cheap.

 

[theBB]

Application does use a large amount of memory, but then it IS a beta.

It might be new, but nowhere on the site it claims to be a beta. I am tired of companies putting out some service or software out there without checking out their product properly. A few bugs here and there is OK, but major issues are not acceptable.

In any case, once any product gets the reputation of "buggy" or "unreliable" through the word of mouth, it will cost them a lot more to reach out to customers. It is better to introduce something a few weeks late rather than lose the early adopter or techno-geek crowd. Those are the best word of mouth sources afterall.

 

[Peace]

It might be new, but nowhere on the site it claims to be a beta. I am tired of companies putting out some service or software out there without checking out their product properly. A few bugs here and there is OK, but major issues are not acceptable.

In any case, once any product gets the reputation of "buggy" or "unreliable" through the word of mouth, it will cost them a lot more to reach out to customers. It is better to introduce something a few weeks late rather than lose the early adopter or techno-geek crowd. Those are the best word of mouth sources afterall.

They may not say it on the website but once you d/l the program and run it it says Beta at the top..

 

[the silver fox]

It might be new, but nowhere on the site it claims to be a beta. I am tired of companies putting out some service or software out there without checking out their product properly. A few bugs here and there is OK, but major issues are not acceptable.

In any case, once any product gets the reputation of "buggy" or "unreliable" through the word of mouth, it will cost them a lot more to reach out to customers. It is better to introduce something a few weeks late rather than lose the early adopter or techno-geek crowd. Those are the best word of mouth sources afterall.

True. The die-hard geeks are the ones who start a product off, like the first-gen iPodders, but it wasn't until it hit Windows and mass-market that it
really took off. There were so many complaints when the iPod launched about it not having has much storage / disk speeds as other offers. I don't see the mass-market crowd being so worried about that now...

Plus, I'm sure there will be a TV campaign starting soon. They have the TV ads on their website already.

 

[snowmoon]

It doesn't cost them any extra to license different file sizes of movies/songs. Licenses are given by medium. In the case of Apple downloads only. In the case of Starz, broadcast (their 10+ TV channels) and download.

Apple, like Starz, use Akamai servers to serve their content. If you have ever dealt with Akamai, you will know that when you are talking about 10GB a movie instead of 600MB, bandwidth is not cheap.

600 MB for SVHS quality, 1.1 Gb for DVD quality, 2.9 Gb for 720p and over 6gb for 1080i.

I'm sorry, but anything less than DVD quality is a waste of my time and money. I understand why 1080i is unfeasable at this time, but give me a break, they can't even offer DVD quality downloads?

 

[the silver fox]

600 MB for SVHS quality, 1.1 Gb for DVD quality, 2.9 Gb for 720p and over 6gb for 1080i.

I'm sorry, but anything less than DVD quality is a waste of my time and money. I understand why 1080i is unfeasable at this time, but give me a break, they can't even offer DVD quality downloads?

Easy, Tiger. I agree with you. But they are still offering higher resolution than the ITMS. They have to go for what most of the market can play back on PCs and, believe it or not, not everyone has the latest kit. Have you tried playing back a 720x486 .mp4 on a 1GHz Powerbook? Not exactly a smooth experience. Neither is a 1080p trailer on apple.com/trailers on anything other than a G5 tower.

I'm sure that Starz did plenty of focus-testing for vongo and I'm sure that the 'instant-gratification' was what most people responded well to. Not even the view anywhere factor.

 

[snowmoon]

Easy, Tiger. I agree with you. But they are still offering higher resolution than the ITMS. They have to go for what most of the market can play back on PCs and, believe it or not, not everyone has the latest kit. Have you tried playing back a 720x486 .mp4 on a 1GHz Powerbook? Not exactly a smooth experience. Neither is a 1080p trailer on apple.com/trailers on anything other than a G5 tower.

I'm sure that Starz did plenty of focus-testing for vongo and I'm sure that the 'instant-gratification' was what most people responded well to. Not even the view anywhere factor.

I still don't see what affection you hold for this service. It's got more bugs than a bait shop and the smell is not that much better.

As for the first part of the comment... please see back to my original post as to why Apple won't do this type of service ( yet ). My point is that Apple will only go forward with this one all elements are in place. iTMS TV downloads are a first step, frontrow is a second, the intel transition will hopefully provide enough horsepower to allow smooth decoding of all h.264 content, .mac is being "upgraded" to support larger downloads, and then they just need to provide the content once all other items fall into place. Apple will not pre-announce the service and it may be only for intel mac with the way things are going.

All I have been saying is that Apple WON'T provide the content until the other peices are in place otherwise it's an incomplete and ineffective user experience ( Vongo is just a perfect example ).

 

[the silver fox]

I still don't see what affection you hold for this service. It's got more bugs than a bait shop and the smell is not that much better.

As for the first part of the comment... please see back to my original post as to why Apple won't do this type of service ( yet ). My point is that Apple will only go forward with this one all elements are in place. iTMS TV downloads are a first step, frontrow is a second, the intel transition will hopefully provide enough horsepower to allow smooth decoding of all h.264 content, .mac is being "upgraded" to support larger downloads, and then they just need to provide the content once all other items fall into place. Apple will not pre-announce the service and it may be only for intel mac with the way things are going.

All I have been saying is that Apple WON'T provide the content until the other peices are in place otherwise it's an incomplete and ineffective user experience ( Vongo is just a perfect example ).

I don't hold any affection for this service, but on my PCs it works pretty flawlessly.

Not sure about that one... Apple offered music video downloads as a test bed for TV downloads a LONG time before the introduction of the 5th gen iPod. A very ineffective user experience. A definite show of releasing a half baked product to put a toe in the water.

 

[the silver fox]

the intel transition will hopefully provide enough horsepower to allow smooth decoding of all h.264 content

Absolutely, but there will be a tiny percentage of the market who will have that capability. It took the iPod to get to 4th Gen before Apple started making money off the ITMS. Downloading movies that you then can't play on your iPod? Not much point in that.

I have no doubt that Apple are working on a great service with fabulous hardware integration. For now, the Vongo service fulfills the needs of someone who does as much travelling as me, perfectly well.

 

[DavidCL23]

Thanks OP, I just signed up. Great value.

 

[mrwonkers]

Woop Dee Doo Vongo Mongo Von Drongo

800 movies wooooooopi crap.........windows media format.......hmmm no thanks.........

WTF don't they just use mp4, I encode a lotta movies in mp4 the quality is fat and specs are alot better than Vongos vomit.......I mean like 64 kbps audio, I'm sorry thats just not acceptable...even at 9.95 a month for all u can eat.....after all what good is all u can eat when the food tastes so bad that even your dog turns its nose up at it........