Study Says No Future for Video iTunes 189
eldavojohn writes "Reuters is running a story on a study that claims "Online video sites that sell shows and movies such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes will likely peak this year as more programming is made available on free outlets supported by advertising." Many channels have wised up to offering their content hosted from their own sites for free — with commercials — to cut out iTunes as the middle man. End result? Predictions that services like iTunes-Video have no future."
No future for DVDs (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, this doesn't make any sense. And can television stations really say that they make more money per viewer with commercials than they do with iTunes downloads? As far as I see, the episodes on NBC.com are carrots intended to get viewers hooked on the shows. The quality is intentionally limited so as to convince new viewers to tune in on television or iTunes.
Shows with commercials are not "free" (Score:3, Insightful)
This could go either way (Score:5, Insightful)
However, IF you can watch the same thing for free, with similar quality, only the irritant of commercials remain. However, this is a big irritant and I think most people would skip them if possible. As long as people are able to skip the commercials somehow, then the free option will prevail, however, the providers will never stand for this.
Buying content will allow people to play said content on portable devices. Commercials fed services will have to be streaming to keep the user from skipping commercials. So, different users will want different kinds of content.
It worked for radio & music too (Score:3, Insightful)
ughh yeah, mmm-kay (Score:5, Insightful)
What the author should have said is that iTunes perhaps has yet to find the video market content that targets it's user base. Just because content providers are finding that they get more benefit by not having a middle man for distribution does not mean there is no room in the market place for what iTMS has to offer... or any other content distributor, can you say YouTube or others like it?
While CBS, NBC, BBC et al can find profit in distributing their own content, it is aggregaters that will create 'channels' that users will be willing to subscribe to. Just like broadcasting companies of years gone by, it will be aggregation channels that people end up watching.
Already there are too many web sites with video content and too much content for the average user to keep up with. In the end, due mostly to operator overload, users will end up just watching their 'favorite' channels of video content on the Internet. Just like there are different Internet radio stations because of taste and ease of use, video channels will emerge as the 'new tv' networks. People are often just like sheep wanting someone else to tell them what to watch. This societal effect will make its mark on Internet video content too.
The good news in this story? Content creators are seeing that they don't need a distribution company for the Internet. Perhaps musicians will see this too and wriggle out of their contracts to start putting more music content out there without the RIAA tax.
Re:It worked for radio & music too (Score:2, Insightful)
Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Paying extra for uninterrupted viewing (Score:4, Insightful)
In my little world, this guy is off target.
People pay to get their time & choice back.
One stop shopping (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure they've taken every aspect into account. While 'free' sounds good, I'm pretty sure people don't want to hunt all around different sites, all with different viewing/codec requirements, all with different site logins and other logisitcal hoops, just to find something they might want to watch.
On the contrary, I believe sites that will survive which can collect the most shows/movies from all the content providers in one place, all with short previews, all encoded reliabily the same. While the 'Net allows for wild west style secluded towns for each studio, it doesn't have staying power. People tend to prefer a centralized distributor they can count on.
iTune's biggest issue IMHO is that they need more studios to supply content in order to make them a one-stop shop. The studios need to get past this walled garden idea.
How many times do we have to see this? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Internet has not replaced TV. TV did not replace radio or the movies. Movies and radio did not replace stage shows. Smartphones have not replaced PDAs. Etc etc etc. Can't ONE FUCKING JOURNALIST accept the fact that some things will just stay around?!? Sheesh.
Now, on to the actual premise of TFA: I love that ABC and others are making their content available online. HOWEVER, I do NOT like that I've got to fire up a browser and watch shows streaming. I *want* to be able to download shows and watch them with no de[[[buffering]]]lays, and watch them over and over, and skip around with no delay, and be able to watch it some day in the future when ABC quits hosting the file, etc etc etc. I don't like buying video from iTunes--the fact that it can NEVER be watched without a) a computer, b) an AppleTV, or c) an iPod pretty much kills it for me--but I like watching shows in a browser on my so-so Internet connection even less.
Long story short: this will NOT be the end of iTunes. Hint to fucktard "journalist"/"researcher" #42571: TiVos and videotapes ALSO render iTunes obsolete--but it's still around. Get a fucking clue. Douchebag.
who sponsored this study? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I really don't watch too much other than movies and a couple of TV shows that are available on iTunes. I definitely never watched anything when it was actually being broadcast -- usually several days later.
2. The total monthly cost of these things is more than my motorcycle payment.
3. I could get a Netflix subscription, buy the entire seasons of the shows on iTunes, give up nothing, and save a few hundred bucks a year.
So I cancelled the satellite, unplugged the TiVo, and haven't really missed them since (except when my girlfriend is over and wants to watch something; all that's hooked up to the TV now is a DVD player and the XBOX 360.)
I call shenanigans on this study.
ABC's got it right (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't think so (Score:3, Insightful)
Although, only the BBC channels are advert-free. And you have to pay for the BBC channels, even if you only want the non-BBC channels. (They could have fixed this by broadcasting BBC programmes scrambled and requiring a viewing card; the transition to digital television would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce this. I am currently awaiting a response from my MP as to why this was not done.)
The End of Appointment TV (Score:4, Insightful)
Appointment TV is dead; the networks and broadcasters need to wake up to the fact that everyone showing up in front of their televisions at a set time to watch Idol is becoming as arcane and antiquated as the family life portrayed in 1950's family sitcoms. They need to realize that in order to capture every eyeball, they'll have to distribute it on cable, on the download sites and services for products like AppleTV, on their own web sites, on cellular networks and every other place where they can find eyeballs. To ignore this will simply result in less dollars for them because they are not making their shows available to the largest number of people.
totally off (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope. For a few reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
- Convenience. I don't want to hunt around to find the content I'm looking for, deal with different codecs and quality issues, and try to get it working on my Mac (my attempts thus far to view things like the NCAA basketball tournament games, or portions of The Masters, have been wildly unsuccessful.)
- Viewing Experience. Nobody wants to watch these on their computer. Apple already has the AppleTV, or even Mac Mini as good settop box options.
- Familiarity. The existing iTMS user base is huge, we already have accounts there and are exposed to the video choices, making it easy to take the leap into video.
- Integration. There is value in having the option to view the content on my laptop, iPod, as well as my TV -- without jumping through hoops and transcoding. This will be even more important as the next generation of iPods, with iPhone interface and widescreens, become available. having the video on a portable device becomes even more useful / usable.
I'm not saying iTMS is the pinnacle of multimedia.. but it's the best thing going right now. I am hoping that free/legal options become more common in the future. But, I'm thinking something along the lines of MythTV, except easy to set up and use. Record HDTV programs for free with an antenna, convert them to a good format for use on a variety of devices, and integrate with a nice settop box for TV playback. MythTV can do this today, if you're willing to spend the time/effort and acquire the knowledge necessary. This is definitely an area ripe for a startup.. but it needs to be one that is willing to live without exploiting all the lock-ins that everyone else attempts with this sort of thing.
Re:No future for DVDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Thomas, Caillou, Disney movies, over & over & over again.
Can't get the songs out of my head....
Re:This could go either way (Score:3, Insightful)
Therefore any internet television will not only have to work out how to charge for the streaming media, but also how to manage costs. Recall that iTunes does not make a lot of money. Also recall the Apple does not want to do subscriptions, not, I believe, because people do not want it, but because of bandwidth costs. The predictable method of delivering content over the internet is to have the customer pay for each download, so the cost of bandwidth can be figured into each purchase. And no matter what DRM exists, once the content is on the customers machine, it is potentially a sale, even if it a subscription service.
iTunes vs. cable (Score:3, Insightful)
A while ago, I compared the cost of my local cable provider to the cost of iTunes. I figured that the most comparable level of service to iTunes was the one that includes a DVR and a few of the premium channels, which I think cost about $60 per month. Then I looked up on the iTunes Store the shows my family actually watches, and calculated how much each show would cost per month (obviously, I needed to do some conversions, since most shows are sold by the season rather than by the month). I omitted all shows that are in reruns, since I decided that if I were to drop my cable service, I would be more likely get such shows on DVD (either buy them or rent them e.g. via Netflix).
Some of the shows we watch aren't offered on iTunes (including MythBusters!!!), but when I calculated how much we'd spend if all the shows we watch were offered, I found that the worst-case scenario was still less than half the cost of the comparable cable service. Furthermore, iTunes offers a variety of advantages (no commercials, and we can watch purchased shows whenever we want) that no cable service provides and can't easily be translated to a dollar value.
My opinion, therefore, is that video through iTunes and similar services, while not as well-developed as video through cable or satellite, has the potential to be a significant competitor to traditional cable or satellite services.
Direct mail orders? (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies could cut the middle-man and allow customers to buy from them directly, as long as they were aware of the company, and had their mail address, and were willing to fill up a mail order form and a check and send it to them.
Right...
There is a value proposition in a centralized marketplace for this content - exposure their user base, facilitate impulse buys, all sorts of nice things which include most of the reasons malls still exist.
Providing the content on their own website has a lot of advantages too - not the least that perhaps people might have a reason to go to nbc.com.
But the big difference is that they have more leverage to use against the middle-man on negotiations. "Look, it's not like you are our only choice. If we don't like the deal, we'll just take our content home and play by ourselves.".
This is less in line with "online video stores have no future", and more in line with "CEOs of online video stores may have to stop comparing the children of content-producer executives to ugly-bulldogs-after-a-car-accident".
Re:Direct mail orders? (Score:3, Insightful)
If we're to go by their thinking, then consumers will have no problem having to figure out which studio or agency owns the rights to their show, find their video site online, and watch. Hmm, who owns the "Spider-man" cartoons again? Oh wait, what about the A-Team?
The middle-man has been successful all of these years because it makes things easier. Consumers don't have to dig through yellow pages, address books, search engines, etc to figure out where to find a product. Like with iTunes, it's all there in 1 place and easy to find. If you want a better deal (or something Free) then look harder, but I doubt iTunes would go away. At most, they've have to change lower their prices.
Forrester Research tilting at windmills... AGAIN! (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of their problem is they can't seem to see five minutes into the future at the larger strategy Apple is deploying with devices such as AppleTV. What the MIT computer science-educated, but consumer technology-ignorant analysts at Forrester seem to want is for Apple to:
a) Follow the same abysmal (read: atrociously unsexy) corporate branding strategy as everyone else... i.e. iPods should be APPLE IPODS (imagine a big flashing neon sign).
b) Focus more energy on getting consumers to accept the 1970's definition of computing (which, incidentally, is paramount to Forrester's bread and butter).
What Apple does that seems to have Forrester analysts' panties in a bunch is they focus on understanding how consumers interact with technology, and then define solutions that fit that usage. Consequently, Apple does not fit Forrester's mold. They deploy a device like AppleTV and all Forrester can see is Apple trying to compete with cable/dish. They cannot see the larger multimedia strategy at play here, of which AppleTV is only a "feeler" product. Even if AppleTV fails, its lessons are going to be harvested by Apple product people to shape the next generation. Since Steve Jobs' return, Apple seldom experiences a tragic loss in the market because they take whatever they learned and shape future products with the improvements that were needed. If AppleTV succeeds, we'll see an extrapolation of more of its features. If it doesn't, we'll see devices based off AppleTV that possess what it is that AppleTV lacks.
This difference in focal length of Apple's vision, and Forrester's vision, is also what sets Apple apart from all its competitors. They're just as myopic as Forrester... which works out perfectly since there's money to be made by restating the patently obvious. It's certainly a lot easier than having vision.
Re:"No Future" (Score:3, Insightful)
Your suggestion, that the whole TV advertising economy can be based on an assumption that people are actually watching commercials, when they really aren't, is simply absurd.
Re:How many times do we have to see this? (Score:3, Insightful)
The researcher says "Free is going to win." Well, TV is *already* free. (RTFA--he's talking about free, over-the-air stations like Fox and ABC.) By this logic, a non-free option would have never made it out of the gate. How does he explain that?
And, I just noticed, the idiot researcher ends his piece with a contradiction: "McQuivey advises media companies to... pay more attention to those [options] that let users share content within a home network." Which is exactly what iTunes DOES. Which is exactly what ABC.com DOESN'T DO.*
My biggest point, though, was not that his conclusion is dumber than the average piece of crap we see from researchers & journalists (which it was), but that things like this are inherently stupid--there does not have to be one winner and one loser. Anyone who says "A will die because B will thrive" is retarded. Sure, it happens, but as often as not, both exist. The ability to watch movies at home has not killed theatrical movies. Video rentals did not kill video sales. iTunes did not kill CDs. The list goes on and on. It seems like every week we see some dumb story like this and it's just plain STUPID.
New, good technology might largely kill an old, similar one--CDs vs. tapes, DVDs vs. VCRs, etc.--but when it comes to ideas--sales vs. rentals, ad-free-but-expensive, ad-supported-but-free--there's almost always room for both. Different people like different stuff and have different priorities. Period. Any prediction that starts with "Everyone who does A or B will both wind up doing C" usually winds up being proved wrong.
* well, technically, you could watch a show from ABC.com on any computer on your network. But that's not really "sharing", is it? And iTunes shows can be shared not only among computers but among DEVICES that people will actually WATCH, like Apple TVs and iPods. When he says "share", he makes it sound like a FILE that you HAVE and can move around as you wish--which iTunes IS, and content-streamed-inside-a-Flash-player ISN'T. After a decade of ATI All-In-Wonder cards and 5 years of MythTV, how many people have computers hooked up to their TVs? (Hell, I'll even be generous and include XBMC, Windows Media Center PCs, etc.) Outside of Slashdot, not very many. Whatever the number is, I'll bet that the number of AppleTVs hooked up to TVs will be higher after just 12 months on the market.
Re:totally off (Score:5, Insightful)
With Apple, I open iTunes, search, buy what I want, and play it.
Of course, I really do wish that Apple would port the application and service to Linux. I've actually got a Mac, a Linux box, and a Windows machine (and several others scattered about) at home, and I'd like to be able to access my media from whichever I'm using at the time.
too greedy (Score:2, Insightful)
A whole season of a show from itunes is on par with DVD box sets. Except theres no packaging, much less sales overhead, no physical media, low video quality and obtrusive DRM.
Movies are priced similarly - on par with a DVD.
Wheres the advantage? If I like it enough to pay for it I'll spring for the dvd. Its a better deal.