Filed under: iTS, Video, iTunes
iTunes movie purchases now available same day as DVD
Given the choice between buying a physical DVD and grabbing a downloadable iTunes version of the same movie, you might choose what's behind door #2 for convenience, iPod playability and speed; that is, if you're willing to wait it out while the DVD-only window ticks away. Up until now it's been about 30-45 days post-DVD release, with a few exceptions, before the iTunes version showed up. With a report from the NY Times yesterday that Warner Brothers was moving to "day-and-date" digital release, simultaneous with the disc ship, we expected to hear something from Apple promptly, and we have.According to this morning's press release, it's bigger than just Warner Bros. Multiple studios' films -- 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and more -- will now be delivered to iTunes customers at the same time that DVD buyers can snag them in stores. "American Gangster" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" are two of the first movies available on the new ship schedule.
Does day-and-date change your attitude on buying movies from iTunes? Inquiring minds want to know.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jonathan Longnecker said 9:43AM on 5-01-2008
So from what I can tell this doesn't apply to rentals, right? It only says purchase in the press release. That would be the deal breaker for me.
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Aron T said 1:37PM on 5-01-2008
I only really care about this if it includes rentals... If it does then I might consider buying an AppleTV. However, it is still a crying shame that you cannot rent HD movies w/o an AppleTV. I think HD rentals would be a helluva lot higher if you could rent them via FrontRow or iTunes. But truth be told, even w/o that functionality, I love my Mac mini as a media center way more than would an AppleTV.
Frank Furter said 9:47AM on 5-01-2008
I'm a little behind on what iTunes offers. Can someone tell me the technical differences between an iTunes downloaded movie and a retail DVD (Say, widescreen, 5.1, etc).
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Nik Fletcher said 9:52AM on 5-01-2008
So, er, how about some European movie love, Apple :)
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heckie said 10:01AM on 5-01-2008
I agree, then I wouldn't have to 'steal' them!!
mentalsticks said 10:14AM on 5-01-2008
I third that.
Are they in HD now, btw?
Jon said 10:44AM on 5-01-2008
Couldn't agree more.
Thomas said 2:46PM on 5-01-2008
The only titles I buy on disc now are ones where I actively want the extras and quality picture - the whole package - everything else I rent using a UK rental service. As such this would be of little interest.
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Galley said 10:15AM on 5-01-2008
I'd rather pay $5-10 more and have the Blu-ray Disc.
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TC said 11:21AM on 5-01-2008
I would never buy from itunes and have something that will only play on Apple gear. I do like to rent on the AppleTV though, although wish there were may rentals. Also some things I want to rent, come back the next day to rent it, and they have vanished.
The studios need to just put the content there and take my money!
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Joe said 10:32AM on 5-01-2008
It still isn't a compelling alternative to Netflix (and possibly Handbrake, although that implies illegal behavior...)
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Jonathan Davis said 10:40AM on 5-01-2008
I'm not going to buy a movie from iTunes that I can get on DVD at the same price and can take and play anywhere. I also don't like not having the bonus material and commentaries.
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Byran Newell said 10:41AM on 5-01-2008
$15? I'm all for it if it's $10, Hi-Def, with Dolby Digital. I'm doubly for it if it were a $4.99 rental. But sadly, it's not, so I'm not.
Fifteen dollars? Apple must be losing their negotiating touch.
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brian said 10:51AM on 5-01-2008
if people dont have enough time to go to a store and buy a dvd, how do they have enough time to watch a movie?
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Blaktornado said 11:20AM on 5-01-2008
Would rather buy the DVD. More flexible.
I can play the DVD in my living room and if I wanted to put it on an iPod I may get that has video, I could just rip it with Handbrake.
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Andrew Abate said 12:17PM on 5-01-2008
Although I think it's cool that Apple is offering digital downloads of movies day and date - it will have to offer something more for me to purchase it - I want HD and extras. Make it compete against Blu-Ray, but right now it can't even compete with DVD, especially with what they are charging. After all, I got Cloverfield for $9.99 - with extras! Why would I pay $14.99 for it on iTunes?
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Ryan said 12:59AM on 5-02-2008
If they had HD movies for sale, I'd would be all over it...
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ZeroCorpse said 2:52PM on 5-01-2008
If we had the same capability to burn movies to disc as we do with music purchases, I think iTunes movies would sell like crazy. People are just wary of having something exist only on their computer (or TV) and want a physical copy just for piece of mind.
Studios need to ease up. We can still have some DRM, but letting us burn a single copy in a standard format would not kill the studios. If they want to make it "safe" they could put some copy protection on the burned copy or limit the quality to 480p.
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PS said 2:54PM on 5-01-2008
This is a good strategy on the part of apple as it chips away at one of the last remaining advantages DVDs had over the online distribution model - availability.
The benefits of physical media is vastly overstated. I have literally hundreds of DVDs in drawers that I purchased, watched once and filed away. The cases and inserts have long ago been discarded because they take up too much space. I have invested thousands of dollars in these movies, but I never watch them - it's too time consuming to flip through all of the discs.
This announcement moves Apple closer to an entirely new revenue stream - think AppleTV meets Kaleidescape. Apple as the initial distribution channel and archival mechanism for previously purchased movies.
Imagine being able to purchase a movie, download a copy to an AppleTV for watching, then relegate the movie to archive based on some criteria. Instead of shelves and file cabinet as an archive, they are digitally 'archived' by apple, show up in AppleTV, are searchable, immediately accessible, and can be put back into local storage if I want to watch offline.
Everyone benefits in this model (except Best Buy, Netflix and the like). The movie studios have cut out the production cost for DVDs, a cut of which apple takes, still leaving a net savings. Apple cements its position as the premiere distribution channel for movies AND gets a free revenue stream for maintaining customers' movie libraries (free because they are already storing the movies - they just have to maintain a list of what I am able to get access to. There are no additional storage costs. This would apply to music as well).
As a customer, I can pay the same price to buy a movie as I do now, get access to it instantly without having to go anywhere, and readily access any movie I've ever bought whenever I want without having to worry about hard drive failure, upgrading computers, constantly purchasing additional space for my library, etc. I'd rather pay $5-$10/month for the service than $200 on hard drives every time I ran out of space.
In a recent AppleTV upgrade, the syncing method changed - rather than only being able to access content that was tagged for syncing, AppleTV now provides access to all of the content in the iTunes library if it is available and only local content if it is not. How easy would it be to change to a remote sync concept?
Sony and microsoft should be paying close attention to this, because it is the perfect distribution model for PS3 and XBox 360. A PS3 with a 250GB hard drive would be able to store ~10 games locally with the rest available on-demand when I want to play them.
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Rockstar said 2:59PM on 5-01-2008
btw, Microsoft's digital content is this way. You can DL it whenever the mood strikes you... still has DRM but at least it's not gigs of data to back up. Obviously I am an Apple fan, but I agree with you - they need to handle archival, it's not like they have to store each movie50k times, just keep a database.