iTunes rolls out high-def movie downloads
As expected, iTunes customers (Windows|Mac) can now buy and rent films in high definition, Apple said Thursday.
Customers can buy hit titles for $19.99 and rentals will cost $4.99. Rentals will be available a month after a film is released on DVD. Prior to this offer, high-def films were only available for rental.
The high-def quality movies are compatible with Macs and PCs. But iPhones and iPods can still only play films in standard definition, the company said. Each high-def film comes with a standard-def copy to play on Apple's handhelds.
"Customers have made HD content on iTunes a hit, with over 50 percent of TV programming being purchased in HD when available," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of Internet Services in a statement.
As my colleague Declan McCullagh notes, the $20 price for HD costs less than Blu-ray discs but the large HD files are likely to eat up a lot of hard-drive space.
Apple's downloads use more compression than Blu-ray so that means a falloff in quality.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
Actually the comparison to Blu-ray is silly insofar as that these "HD" downloads are really compressed 720p content whereas Blu-ray is uncompressed 1080p. Compression is only part of the reason why these films will look inferior to their Blu-ray equivalents. The resolution is lower as well.
Considering that I can buy a Blu-ray disc that is uncompressed 1080p, has all the extras, and 7.1 sound for at most ~$5 more and sometimes less than $20 I am not really too impressed by the price. To make matters worse the "HD" iTunes version may end up often being twice as expensive as the SD iTunes version when you still don't get extras, subtitles, or high fidelity sound.
Save for a few really diehard Apple fans or people who are gullible to advertising I don't see this ever being terribly popular at the current price points. Apple isn't the first to the scene to claim "HD" movie downloads and the price points just seem underwhelming. Even a lot of posts on Appleinsider, a clearly pro-Apple site, have been panning the price points as being too high for the marginal benefits over the current SD versions. If members of the Apple faithful who often rationalize expensive Apple products find the prices to high you can be sure that the general public isn't going to be too keen on this.
On thing is clear, contrary to the arguments of some CNET editors I don't see Blu-ray being threatened by iTunes "HD" content or similar "HD" content online anytime soon. The bandwidth to offer 1080p downloads in a practical time period just isn't there for most people and the "HD" content that is currently available online isn't much better than a DVD.
There are too many people spouting off whose only credentials are that they read a lot of web sites and magazines. Lots of lingo but nonsensical.
Actually the comparison to Blu-ray is silly insofar as that these "HD" downloads are really compressed 720p content whereas Blu-ray is uncompressed 1080p. Compression is only part of the reason why these films will look inferior to their Blu-ray equivalents. The resolution is lower as well.
Considering that I can buy a Blu-ray disc that is uncompressed 1080p, has all the extras, and 7.1 sound for at most ~$5 more and sometimes less than $20 I am not really too impressed by the price. To make matters worse the "HD" iTunes version may end up often being twice as expensive as the SD iTunes version when you still don't get extras, subtitles, or high fidelity sound.
Save for a few really diehard Apple fans or people who are gullible to advertising I don't see this ever being terribly popular at the current price points. Apple isn't the first to the scene to claim "HD" movie downloads and the price points just seem underwhelming. Even a lot of posts on Appleinsider, a clearly pro-Apple site, have been panning the price points as being too high for the marginal benefits over the current SD versions. If members of the Apple faithful who often rationalize expensive Apple products find the prices to high you can be sure that the general public isn't going to be too keen on this.
On thing is clear, contrary to the arguments of some CNET editors I don't see Blu-ray being threatened by iTunes "HD" content or similar "HD" content online anytime soon. The bandwidth to offer 1080p downloads in a practical time period just isn't there for most people and the "HD" content that is currently available online isn't much better than a DVD.
Finally, and with no great surprise, this service is US only at the moment.
Hey, Apple! $14.99 would be the TOTAL sweet-spot for pricing on this stuff. I'm just saying...
"The iTunes Store now has more than 10 million songs, more than 40,000 TV episodes, and more than 5,000 movies available for rent and purchase. Apple has already sold more than 250 million TV episodes and sold or rented more than 33 million movies"
So I guess there are people who use iTunes. And, considering how many iPods and iPhones have been sold, I would hazard there are plenty of people using iTunes as their service of choice.
- by azzuro2006 March 26, 2009 1:35 AM PDT
- The media companies are being st*pid. On-line media is too expensive. If you sell a DVD for $10 in a store, the media company probably makes $3-4 max after netting of manufacturing costs, liscening costs to DVD group, retail margin, and wholesale margin. That is what they should sell movies for on-line and rent them for a few dollars max. I don't see why all of them get together and set up a site so they don't have to pay Apple and charge a lower price. They would make the same margin but don't have to deal with inventory risk and is less capital intensive - i.e good economic sense. The number of purchases would sky rocket and fewer people will see the reason to pirate movies on the net. Aside from the fact that its "stealing", people who choose not to get it for free base that decision on convenience (P2Ps can be punishing), and lower risk of getting viruses, and you at least know what you are getting if you buy (or rent) it. File sharing accounts for more than 50% of on-line traffic - the opportunity is huge for them if they were willing to price the media at the proper price.
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(16 Comments)They are making the same mistake with movies as they did with music. I would have thought that they would have learned their lesson.