A little blue and green birdie has been tweeting into our ears about today's Dreamworks Animation employees talk. Jeffrey Katzenberg apparently said that "tomorrow Apple will announce film distribution in iTunes. Physical media delivery is inherently flawed."
Hmm. Sounds interesting but we have no way to confirm -- until tomorrow afternoon.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Zak said 4:50PM on 1-14-2008
And that's cool, but the $10,000 question is: Will the rentals/downloads be available in high def?
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Richard Lomas said 5:00PM on 1-14-2008
No Hi-Def = No Thank You
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Gerald Buckley said 5:08PM on 1-14-2008
Someone is going to have to validate the direct-to-market channel in a "market sized" way. iTunes is the best game in town (outside of the P2P networks).
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Ollie Parsley said 5:09PM on 1-14-2008
I hope they are in HD even if it is 720 and not 1080. Especially if they are "refreshing" Apple TV. I hope movie rentals come to the UK soon. Just stuck with South Park (all be it an amazing program) at the moment.
Ollie
techjuicer.com
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superberg said 5:15PM on 1-14-2008
Physical media is not "flawed." Blu-Ray and HD-DVD use h.264 for their compression. Therefore, comporable quality downloads would be around 25 GB.
Two movies would exceed most user's bandwidth caps, to say nothing of the saint-like patience it would take to download said files.
I really wish people would do some research before they spout-off against disc-based media. Ten to twenty years from now, who knows? But for now, it still has an important function.
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Jack said 5:25PM on 1-14-2008
I don't think you know what you're talking about. A blue ray movie is like 11 gb (still big, but not even close to 25).
h8rain said 5:26PM on 1-14-2008
I am not sure about people hitting caps (company's still have caps.....), but it would DEFINITELY take awhile to download (600K/sec is only like 2 gigs/hr). They might offer purchases in HD, but I highly doubt rentals in HD, just for the pure bandwidth issues.
Ryan said 5:31PM on 1-14-2008
Hmm. Just because blu-ray and hd dvd media have capacities in the 20+ GB range does not necessarily mean that a digitally distributed film would be that bulky. For digital distribution I would assume a compressed 720p format, resulting in ~2Gb per hour of content. This is similar to what Microsoft uses for HD content distribution over Xbox Live.
Ryan said 5:36PM on 1-14-2008
There are some blu-ray movies that have to use double layer discs to fit the content (Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds at Radio City is 2 discs, 1 50gb disc just for the concert, 1 25gb disc just for the extras) so your statement certainly doesn't cover all blu-rays
Matt said 5:53PM on 1-14-2008
"Comparable" downloads are already out, and they manage just fine with 9GB 1080p encodes, and 4GB 720p
Ryan said 5:17PM on 1-14-2008
I would hope that they finally will move to HD content. I feel like Apple has been testing the waters for some time now with HD trailers available via the quicktime site (and via frontrow?). Microsoft provides (albeit limited) HD movie rentals on Xbox live, it is time for Apple to enter the arena.
Furthermore, I would like to see FrontRow tied in to the movie rental process.
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YodaMac said 5:20PM on 1-14-2008
My AppleTV and I been waiting a year for HD quality (720 is fine for now) downloads from iTunes, so let's hope that is finally coming true. I was hoping 2007 would be the last year I would ever have to buy another DVD (of any format).. fingers crossed for '08.
I am not too interested in rentals either, as I see a film at the movies or just don't bother with it. If I like it, I want to own it to have in my AppleTV library and watch whenever I'm in the mood.
I'm not sure what model of "rentals" could change that... perhaps if AppleTV had access to versions of EVERY MOVIE AND TV SHOW EVER MADE (in HD and Mobile resolution downloads) then I might enjoy letting Apple "store" the media for me and pay a subscription fee to access ALL OF IT anytime I wanted. Then cancel Cable TV and that would probably suffice.
We'll know in less than 24 hours where '08 is headed on the virtual media front!
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Alex said 5:23PM on 1-14-2008
superbug, perhaps you should get a degree or something. h.264 doesn't tell you anything about the compression level retard. but i guess people who know they are right are always right. idiot. research compression. bluray movies don't use maximum compression settings. its possible to compress a 1080p movie below 25gb. so maybe you yourself should quit spout off retard. idiot. get some education for yourself and perhaps get some help for your pompus attitude. spout off. pffff right....
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Alan said 5:27PM on 1-14-2008
"...perhaps get some help for your pompus attitude..."
I sincerely hope you were being sarcastic there.
ianlive said 5:30PM on 1-14-2008
Dude, leave out the 'idiot' and 'retard' comments. Can you respond to a post without negativity?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and bashing someone else doesn't strengthen your argument.
Lance said 5:25PM on 1-14-2008
--"Physical media is not "flawed." "
The correct statement was "Physical media delivery" is flawed.
--"I really wish people would do some research before they spout-off against disc-based media."
Speaking of spouting off...
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jsk said 5:33PM on 1-14-2008
"flawed" means "can be ripped using software like Handbrake, thus bypassing our DRM/multi-pay for fair-use schemes."
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brunocrew said 5:51PM on 1-14-2008
Speaking of iTunes, and completely off topic. But it really burns me when I read about Amazon scoring that deal and that deal with the music studios..Am I nuts or is Apple actually being penalized because its trying to give consumers the best possible chance of legal downloads by keeping costs reasonable, and in the ZONE. iTunes has had the greatest effect on my switch to legal downloads, and I feel they are getting shafted for it.
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AK Mac said 6:04PM on 1-14-2008
HD & Flat Rate, No time limit on rentals at 3 or 5 at out a time Like Netflix. If not, I will pass.
Why pay 3.99 per rental when there are flat rate options with the competitors? It would be VERY Dumb if Apple skipped on the flat rate plan, consider it DOA if they do.
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Ryan said 6:10PM on 1-14-2008
A lot of folks thought iTunes (for music) would be DOA for forgoing a subscription based model. The per download model has worked well for music, movies and television content on iTunes. I do not expect Apple to change course and offer a subscription based service for rentals.