iTunes Music Store Sells Videos 603
bonch writes "With the recent release of iTunes 4.8 and its ability to manage and play videos, several users are discovering that iTunes is now selling videos through the online store. One example is the 'Feel Good Inc.' single used in the recent rollerskating iPod ad. The videos are provided in DRM-less .mp4 format encoded in 3ivx D4 4.5 and are available with purchase of the album."
Need a preview (Score:5, Interesting)
The Year of HD, coming soon! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure this is just a toe in the water for Apple to start offering movies and other on-demand video with ITMS. Anyone who's been watching how movie trailers are hosted by Apple, how iTunes interfaces with HQ trailers, how Jobs has been talking of late, and how ITMS has been dabbling in video can't help but see the writing on the wall. Apple wants to be your one-stop media shop, not just the place where you buy songs or little music players. They're looking to marginalize entire swaths of the old regime in one fell swoop, and for my part, I'm rather looking forward to the shake-up.
Yes, a lot of the preceding has been hinted at by Cringely [pbs.org], there's nothing wrong with agreeing with someone else's take on things. :)
How long until feature films... (Score:2, Interesting)
I know I would order, as long as it's not too ridiculously expensive or restrictive.
FLAC or Apple Lossless first! (Score:5, Interesting)
SP
New iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
Gorillaz kick major arse (Score:2, Interesting)
I haven't read any comments on how the Gorillaz are the greatest animated band ever. (I do nod in Daft Punk's direction however)
iTMS has had the ability to play music video's for a while so its really not a huge stretch to download them.
Also the video's (atleast from past albums) were freely available from the Gorillaz's website...
Re:The Year of HD, coming soon! (Score:4, Interesting)
Been out since August of last year (if not earlier).
https://secure1.nexternal.com/shared/StoreFront/d
And when you've bought it, head over to http://www.misticriver.net/ [misticriver.net] to figure out how to use it.
iRiver = iPod Killer.
Re:How long until feature films... (Score:3, Interesting)
And for on the go, something tells me that iPod Photo [apple.com] is about to get a firmware upgrade...
Re:Where's As Seen On TV when we need him???? (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody's wrong about the video iPod thing. A video iPod would be a dumb idea for lots of reasons, some technical, some psychological. If you want to know where we're going with video playback, look not to the iPod but to its considerably less famous little brother, AirPort Express.
(Addendum: I see now that at least a couple of commenters have figured this out already. Good for them. You all suck for stealing my surprise. One of them even nailed the big challenge, still to date unsolved, right on the head. I wonder if you guys will know it when you see it?)
Yes, of course we're going to be selling new types of content via the iTunes distribution model. It may or may not happen through the "iTunes" name. On the one hand, selling movies and TV shows through a store called "iTunes" makes no sense. On the other, iTunes has HUGE brand recognition right now. It's a marketing decision.
What exactly we offer depends on whose content you're talking about. Some content will be provided to us in 720-by-486 anamorphic, which we'll encode in H.264 at between 1 and 2 megabits. (Did you notice that QuickTime 7 has additional support for anamorphic video? I knew you would.) Other content will come in at HD, and for the time being we'll scale that down to half-HD at 2 Mbps. Doing full 1080/24p at 8 Mbps just isn't practical right now given that even the fastest cable modems in the US top out at 4 Mbps; in order to get real-time streaming of full-HD content, you'd need one of those new-fangled fiber optic Internet services that the telcos are starting to roll out. That's too forward-thinking for phase one. But we can do 2 Mbps now to the same customers we're shipping iTunes songs to.
Pricing, terms and dates will be totally up in the air until five minutes before we announce, and maybe even after that. Remember the Australian store? We had to put that roll-out on indefinite hiatus when The Label That Shall Not Be Named pulled out. All of this depends on the content-providers. Yes, somebody out there is going to say "Pixar." To that person I whisper the name "Disney" and the phrase "subsidiary rights." It's not as simple as you think.
Basically what stands between us and roll-out today is 10% technological and 90% business. It strikes me as kinda funny that some people look only at the technology part of our operations for clues as to future directions. Yes, we shipped iTunes 4.8 with video playback. Whoopty-do. iTunes is built on QuickTime. Adding video support was so incredibly trivial, you wouldn't believe it. It's a tiny thing. What's a much bigger thing is the gradual shift, over the past two years, in the way we as a company do business. We are very serious about IP. We've made a name for ourselves as being the one company in the industry that, better than anybody else, understands the need to zealously protect intellectual property. So when we go to (say) Disney and ask them to let us distribute their unimaginably valuable IP over the Internet, we're going to have a little bit more credibility than whatever copycat tries to come along behind us (cough*Napster*cough, cough*Walmart*cough).
These are the things you guys need to be paying attention to. Not the product releases. The lawsuits. That's where you'll find the clues.
Is Mac Mini a stealth PVR/movie on demand device? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've wondered since shortly after the mini was released if it wasn't a PVR in disguise. Virtually every plasma and LCD television sold today features a DVI connector... just like the Mac Mini. Combine that with Apple's excellent streaming technology and the established ITMS distribution channel, and Jobs might be on to something (again).
With a big external firewire drive the mini could make Apple the first serious contender to mass-market full-length HDTV content over IP.
Re:Is Mac Mini a stealth PVR/movie on demand devic (Score:3, Interesting)
To turn a mac mini into a decent PVR, you would need an external encoder, external storage, an IR receiver + remote, and good software to manage it all. At that point, you're talking about a hell of a lot more then the $499 sticker price, and taking up space with external hardware, so why exactly would you want to use a mac-mini for that?
Re:Where's As Seen On TV when we need him???? (Score:2, Interesting)
quicktime's support for anamorphic video has, and continues, to suck.
go ahead and try it. record something in anamorphic 16:9 on some hot shit dv camera (i use a canon XL1, you can use something even hotter, like a dvx-100, or even sony's new hd thing. doesn't matter.) import into imovie, or even better, final cut. both of them will probably recognize that you're dealing with anamorphic 16:9 and react accordingly. for added measure, you can even set the damn flag in FCP and affirmatively tell the program (which runs on quicktime!) that the video is anamorphic 16:9.
now here's the tricky part: export your video. any format you want: back to
yeah, you sure work for apple. you know exactly how much better the anamorphic support is in 10.4 and quicktime 7, and that's why you just said that.
besides, why the fuck would you offer online movie downloads as anamorphic video? anamorphic is designed to save space and allow dvd players to compensate for televisions with different aspect ratios [gregl.net] which is not a problem with computers, since they work just a little differently than tvs. i know you're trying to make some airport video express argument, but....no. you don't have any credibility left. your comment about "1080/24p" which makes approximately zero sense pretty much wrecked any you had left. 24p describes how cameras like the dvx-100 record video--24 frames per second, progressive scan. not necessarily HD (the dvx-100 shoots straight DV).
1080(i) is part of the HD standard, and it's one of the two ways of capturing and interacting with video as part of that standard--1080 interlaced scanlines. now, i understand your confusion, since sony's HD cameras record 60 interlaced frames/sec at 1080i, and jvc's HD cameras record 30 progressive frames at 720p, the other HD spec. i mean, 1080i and 720p. two biggest numbers in all of HD. easy for the apple master here to get confused with a proprietary shooting mode on a DV camera, i'm sure. especially in the 'year of HD'. riiiight.
again: fun ride, but now you've been pushing it for a while, and now you just pushed it too far. fake, son. fake. we love you, and good night.
HD . . . or maybe not (Score:3, Interesting)
How come I don't see the videos? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm guessing Apple only validates new purchases, eh? Hmm. Anyone else had this experience?
Re:Who is this guy? ASOT unmasked! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not 3ivx (Score:2, Interesting)
What would make it happen? (Score:2, Interesting)
At the time I agreed with him, but then a few million people, discovered Bittorrent and now use their computesr like TiVOs.
I still agree that I don't consume films like I consume music, but I would love to be able to watch a 30 minute show in my lunch hour, or on the train to work, or whilst I'm waiting for my girlfriend to get out of the changing room.
I see very few reasons why Apple's DRM system couldn't be transposed for TV:
- Watch the program as often as I liked
- Put on as many of my own iVids as I liked.
- Burn it to as many DVDs as I liked
- Only watch it from 5, centrally registered, computers
- Delete it, you've lost it and you have to buy it again
I also think the current price is fair, 79p (99c) an episode, £12 for a season, is perfectly fair for ad free television that I will likely watch once and then delete a month or so later withou watching it again (just like video tape).Movies are an experience for me. I like to watch them in cinemas, or at home on a big screen tv with huge surround sound I really can't see me sacrificing the emersion aspect of film for the sake of being able to watch it on the move, and if I do, I'll watch it on my laptop not my iVid (the screens bigger and its got a huge harddisk). I would love to be able to download a new feature on the day of release, but to be honest, 2-4GB (H.264) is still a lot of harddisk space (I have hundreds of DVDs) and thats before we go HDTV. TV I want now. I'll watch it on my laptop until a iVid is released.
Playing music videos in iTunes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:New iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably. All the other mp3 manufacturers did it a year or so ago, so Apple are about due to catch up. And runaway with the market no doubt like they did with the iPod.
Re:Okay, so (Score:3, Interesting)
Kept me busy the last time I was stuck on a bus for a couple of hours. Killed the time with a few episodes of Family Guy.
So, are you saying there will never be a market for portable televisions with small screens? Hate to break it to you, but that already happened. Methinks you are the type who doesn't get out or travel all that much. There's a huge market for entertaining people when they have time to kill.
Re:Is Mac Mini a stealth PVR/movie on demand devic (Score:3, Interesting)
That may be true, but it won't be the current mini. As another poster pointed out, the mini's hard drive and processor are not up to the task of HD.
Consider the recent hardware launches. Apple waited until the release of 10.4 to put half-decent video cards in the iMac, eMac, and base Power Mac. When Apple introduces on-demand video, it will introduce a new machine to match.
Re:Does the MacMini figure into this? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is bullshit, and all sorts of other Apple employees are quite pissed at ASOT for repeating it.
There are reasons Apple doesn't want employees ad-libbing like ASOT does, and this sort of best-intentions misinformation is a perfect example.
As an Apple emplyee myself, I have little doubt that ASOT works for Apple. I also know how working here gives one a ton more insight into what the company is up to. But that doesn't make people an authority in every area of the business, and seeing that ASOT appears to have no self-restraint, it'll be no surprise when he finds himself in a noose of his own creation.
Re:Does the MacMini figure into this? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Where's As Seen On TV when we need him???? (Score:2, Interesting)
Bullshit. I'm both. Any decent scientist or programmer is creative. Any decent artist knows about science and technology.
It's the non-creative geeks who are the bane of the computer industry. And it's the non-technically-literate "creatives" who are the bane of the art world.
Good technology and art requires both. If you don't have both, then you are only a Beta-Geek, not an Alpha one.