Why There's No iTunes For Movies 474
theodp writes "Slate's Farhad Manjoo would gladly pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows — if someone would just take his money. In reality, he pays nothing because no company sells such a plan, and instead resorts to getting his programming from the friendly BitTorrent network.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
It's under 'Movies' in the iTunes Store.
Well but the problem is... it's iTunes. I don't buy Hard- or Software from Apple. Why should I buy my movies from them. Completely neglecting the fact I can't even install their shitty software -of course.
False right (Score:4, Insightful)
So basically Manjoo is saying that copyright holders are obligated to make their works available to him in the format and timing he demands, or else he has the right to get them illegally?
I think we call can agree that current copyright is unreasonable and undemocratic (since it was bought for by the music/movie industry). But Manjoo's reasoning doesn't make a ton of sense either.
Money, again (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting article. It seems that the studios etc. are wary of losing the guaranteed revenue that comes from the premium and pay-per-view TV channels. But what happens when these channels wise up to the fact that an increasing number of people are getting these films for free online? Will they become more reluctant to pay the studios for the right to show a movie that everyone's already seen via bittorrent?
Does anyone have any figures on how pay-per-view services are doing? I wouldn't be surprised to see that the number of people paying for the Hollywood blockbusters is on a downward trend as broadband speeds increase.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Insightful)
There is one problem with it, and it is not the fault of Apple. Since the distribution rights are owned by a silly amount of silly people in a silly amount of different countries, those countries won't get movies distributed in iTunes.
Apparently they see some magic gain in *not* making their product available in *preferred* distribution channels. Basically they are assholes twice over. First to their customers (us), and then to their shareholders (why aren't we making money? Oh, because the distributers are assholes who don't want to *sell* our products).
Set the distribution rights free, drop DRM, and make the products available in the preferred way (internet, and no, that do *NOT* mean through some crap IE webbrowser crap solution with sub par quality), yadda, yadda, yadda. Most of you guys on slashdot gets this.
Re:False right (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps he doesn't have the right, but the MPAA shouldn't act so surprised when people do it.
Yip (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a fan of the show, I want to watch it legitimately and if I could I would pay to do so.
It just goes to show how far behind with the times the entire industry is that people *want* to pay them and can't, so they break the law instead.
Re:False right (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically Manjoo is saying that copyright holders are obligated to make their works available to him in the format and timing he demands, or else he has the right to get them illegally?
No, he calls himself a scofflaw. He's saying that there's a market for works in the format and timing that the customer chooses. Currently it's a black market, and the studios are going to lose a ton of money because they don't offer a legal alternative.
Here's the answer.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is twofold. First, the vast majority of people will not pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows. So there really is not market for it. You cannot compete with free by putting a "hefty" fee on it. God, that's fricken ludicrous. Why is this completely asinine idea even posted here?!
Second, the movie industry makes a lot of money with its gated approach to releasing movies. First, to theaters. Then to premium TV channels and pay-per-view. Then to DVD/Blue-ray. Than the normal TV. If the studios started releasing new movies as soon as they were released in they theaters, or even soon after, the money from the premium TV/pay-per-view/DVD/Blu-ray releases would drastically decrease. It's all about making the Benjamins, not about making it convenient for the viewer.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
It Ain't Philosophy, It's The Business Model (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently they see some magic gain in *not* making their product available in *preferred* distribution channels.
It's not magic, it's real money. Follow the entertainment trades like "Variety" and you will see that the studios are selling nice lump-sum deals for some movies into broadcast and cable distribution windows even before they hit the theaters. The domestic and foreign TV distribution channels are not going to pay this big money if the movie is widely distributed in one form or another prior to their contracted window of distribution. The studio *must* restrict online distribution -- or at least make a big show that it is trying to. It's part of their contractual obligations.
When a studio gets confident that the money it can make via "easy early global online" distribution will be enough to off-set the reduced fees it can charge its "old school" distribution partners, believe me, they'll pull the trigger on it. But the old school guys pay big bucks, and, currently, the new skool online direct-to-consumer model is, literally, pennies.
Re:Here's the answer.... (Score:3, Insightful)
First, the vast majority of people will not pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows. So there really is not market for it. You cannot compete with free by putting a "hefty" fee on it. God, that's fricken ludicrous. Why is this completely asinine idea even posted here?!
Presumably, if the writer would be willing to pay a hefty fee, he would also be willing to pay a reasonable fee.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
I must have missed that 'iTunes for Linux' release announcement...
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:2, Insightful)
for Linux, how about on OpenBSD for SPARC?
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Insightful)
Mods on crack, asking him why he doesn't like something is not flamebait.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
internet, and no, that do *NOT* mean through some crap IE webbrowser crap solution with sub par quality
It also doesn't mean iTunes. Sorry, iTunes may be great software, but it is not the web, and not everyone has or wants iTunes.
DRM is only part of the problem, and getting rid of it is a great step forward. Now let's see this the rest of the way -- just the Internet, or at most email -- better yet, publish that website as a REST API to allow anyone to develop an iTunes-like client.
HTML and FLAC over HTTP for the win.
Re:Here's the answer.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I pay around $20/month (approximately, at the current exchange rate) to be able to rent almost as many DVDs as I can watch, and have them shipped to me. This is the only way I watch any TV shows now, by renting them after they are aired. I would be more than happy to pay the same amount to be given access to a library of DRM-free downloads to watch, saving the shipping costs of transporting the DVDs to and from me. I would not pay for DRM'd media, because that would almost certainly prevent me from watching it on some of the devices I may wish to use for playback.
The movie industry needs to realise that the rental and sales models are doomed. Few people watch the same movie over and over again (small children excepted), and so the benefit in owning a copy of a film is small. Rental simply can not work for soft copies, because rental requires a scarcity that is not applicable. What they can offer, which has great value, is timely access to new material and large archives of older films. If you can download any film or TV show you want for a fixed monthly fee, in high quality with a good download speed, the incentive to pirate them disappears. Some people will download everything they can and archive it to massive hard disks, but most people won't. Why would they? If they want to watch something again they can just download it again and not have to worry about paying for the local storage and backups.
Re:one stop media service (Score:1, Insightful)
spelling: s/fare/fair/
Marketing 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
My ISP offers a movie service, BUT you have to install a proprietary player to play the movie on.
I'm a customer, I want the option of having the product as a .avi but the service is not giving me the service I want and am willing to pay for.
So I use The Pirate Bay, money has nothing to do with my decision Movies cost nothing anyway even on DVDs it's all about the service. The Pirate Bay simply provides a better service than the studios can so they get all my downloads.
Considering how big the market for movies is that must be a fair bit of money they are missing out on, all because they want people to use a certain piece of software.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:1, Insightful)
You cannot TEND to boycott something.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it is precisely Apple's fault. If they didn't make their formats proprietary, then the choice of operating system would not make a difference.
Re:Slashdot education (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple does NOT use "proprietary formats" for its iPod, that's just FUD spread around by people who never even tried one.
The iPods are compatible with MP3, AAC, DRM'ed AAC, Apple Lossless (yes that one is proprietary but since it's lossless nothing would prevent you from converting back to something else later on, such as FLAC), MPEG-4, H.264. I may even have forgotten a few formats (such as Audible, but if that one is proprietary I don't think it's from Apple).
Good luck with that, with today's portable media players being 1~160GB+ capacity it would be practically insane to manage files by hand. Let go of this useless obsession and learn to use metadata on your files. You'll probably even like smart playlists once you start using them.
As for your friend, he probably won't be able to buy a car in a decade or so (...just kidding).
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:False right (Score:2, Insightful)
And pirates shouldn't act so surprised when the MPAA or RIAA responds with a vengeance, yet it happens anyway like it was completely unexpected.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is the protocol used to communicate between ITunes and the server. If it was open it would be possible for third party users to implement their own linux interface. I don't se why Apple would have a problem with that. You would still buy the music from them, and it would not cost them anything.
Movies have ALWAYS been about restriction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Read something like Terry Ramsaye's "A Million and One Nights," about the early history of the movies--up to the early twenties--(Ramsaye doesn't believe the talkies have much of a future)--and, to a technical guy like me, it's incredibly boring.
It's all about complicated business maneuvers based on artificial restrictions. (The phrase "B movie" dates back to the days when distributors wouldn't rent a good movie to a theatre unless they agreed to rent a lousy movie too). The various Laemmles and Selznicks and Zukors are doing nothing but finding clever ways to restrict product flow, cutting complex deals to outdo each other.
The movies themselves are sort of a byproduct of the real industry, which is business deals. The movies are sort of a necessary evil, like the chips that are needed at a casino. Who cares who designed the chips, or whether the artwork on the chips is great or mediocre?
Patents, too. Patents and patent pools and trusts and cartels, the whole nine yards.
Why is the movie industry associated with Hollywood rather than New Jersey? No, it's not because of reliable daylight. Anyone old enough to be familiar with the little loop of film in a camera or projector that buffers between the intermittent motion at the film gate and the smooth motion of the reels, so the claw doesn't need to pull against the inertia of the reels and tear the film? You need that if you want to put the film on reels and run continuously for more than a couple of minutes.
Well, that's the famous patented Latham Loop, and the people that held the patent refused to sell cameras, only rent them at exorbitant costs. So a bunch of people decided to make movies with pirated, illegal cameras... and they did it in California to make it harder for the process servers to find them.
Printing has always been about making books cheap and available... starting with the Bible. Movies have always been about restricting product. It's in their DNA.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:1, Insightful)
How about buying something else than an iPod then?
You don't see me complaining on slashdot that Nintendo won't make Metroid Prime for the Playstation 3.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
> You do understand that you can use iPods (as well as many other players) without having to use their proprietary formats, right?
This isn't about someone complaining about music. This is someone complaining about Movies.
iPods are very picky about what they will play when compared to other devices.
This leads to the consumer needing a special purpose app just to deal
with it rather than taking a generic converter and using it's defaults.
If iPods were as picky about Music as they are about Movies, most people
would conclude that they were proprietary.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
Both Amarok and Rhythmbox support standard metadata in files. Even the metadata that iTunes uses in all its supported formats are standards (mostly, all programs tend to throw in one or two extra fields that only they use).
Ordering by filenames are nice if you only want to store the song names and artist, but many people prefer to have more information than that.
Also, if you're manually tagging songs, then you're doing it wrong. We have this amazing thing called "the internet" now, and it has massive amounts of useful and searchable information on it. Many programs connect to this "internet" and retrieve information from it automatically.
Re:False right (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA and MPAA shouldn't have the right to subject anyone to
vengance if they are otherwise a non-entity to them and would never
be offered a work anyways. There is simply no "damage" there to be
"cured" buy the relevant civil action.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Insightful)
http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/iphone-amarok/ [adaniels.nl] would appear to indicate otherwise.
Unless the information there has become obsolete, you need to manipulate the device (at least the 'touch' generation of iPods) in a way Apple has taken steps to prevent you from doing. Generally I'd feel uncomfortable buying a device which has been designed to restrict how I can use it (even if the cost of the device is subsidised because of those restrictions).
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Insightful)
This place is always against proprietary, unless its apple proprietary and then BEND OVER BABY!
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Insightful)
m4a is proprietary to Apple? Since when?
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck that, Apple is just another Microsoft, and the reason people don't see it is this weird blindness people get when the "in-thing" is around. Don't look at it for what it is, essentially an MP3 player with bloated management software (for which Sony is repeatedly trashed for, but then, they are Sony and not Apple).
People pick their Presidents and their cars the same way now.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Insightful)
http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/iphone-amarok/ [adaniels.nl] would appear to indicate otherwise.
That applies to the iPhone not the iPod. Well, technically it applies to the iPod touch, but that's not a normal iPod it's really just a crippled iPhone. Here is Amarok's supported iPods list [kde.org]. You'll notice they're all listed as working, except the iPhone and iPod touch, which work partially.
Unless the information there has become obsolete, you need to manipulate the device (at least the 'touch' generation of iPods) in a way Apple has taken steps to prevent you from doing. Generally I'd feel uncomfortable buying a device which has been designed to restrict how I can use it (even if the cost of the device is subsidised because of those restrictions).
Wait you want to buy a locked phone, restricted to one network by the demands of the network provider. You further want to buy a device that plays video and works with mainstream offerings of that video, but you don't want the provider to implement the DRM required by those selling the mainstream offerings?
The facts of doing business in the US are simple. If you're going to do business with the MPAA and cellphone providers you're going to have your device locked down and that will cause problems for people who want to use it in ways most people don't (installing music without using the software designed to interact with the device). What's interesting is this used to be the case with music and the RIAA as well, but that is no longer true, largely because of Apple's ability to leverage their market influence to that end. (Mind you this was also in their own financial best interest, I have no illusions they did this out of altruism).
My answer for you is simple. If you want a device without restrictions, buy a simple MP3 player like all the models of iPods except the Touch. If you want something that is more capable of other functions, lobby the government to rein in the corporations that require restrictions on devices. Apple sure doesn't want them, since they're making money selling hardware and every restriction means some people wont buy said hardware or will buy it then cost extra money with support calls trying to get it to work because of the unnecessary complexity caused by the restrictions.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are saying, rather than buying an MP3 player that does all this properly without installing bloatware (such as my Zen or my Sansa)
1) Your Zen or Sansa lacks a lot of features iPods have. Last play time/date, skip count, play count, and so on, that all two-way sync back to itunes. And I use this meta data heavily to generate smart playlists that automatically rotate tracks to the ipod etc.
Some of that stuff needs a separate database.
Sure it would be better if that database were open instead of proprietary. But quite bluntly, until someone defines an open standard, and Creative and Sansa step up and implement it, the iPod will remain my mp3 player of choice.
2) I don't -want- to manage my music library by dragging dropping files around. I do -want- to manage it by creating smart self-updating playlists based on meta data including play history, song ratings, and so on, and to have that automatically sync to the device. So installing a piece of software to handle the sync is something I'd be doing even if I didn't have to.
we should cripple ourselves to satisfy the apple fanboys on /.?
Using a Zen or Sansa is crippling yourself.
This place is always against proprietary, unless its apple proprietary and then BEND OVER BABY!
There are a lot of things I don't like about apple. I don't currently own a Mac because they refuse to release a tower with anywhere near the specs or price I want. There even a lot of things I don't like about itunes. But I've had other mp3 players... Sansa, Yepp -- the iPod is, for me at least, the best device hands down.
Re:AVI codecs are patented too (Score:1, Insightful)
And this is also a major problem. Once you pay for the DVD, you should be able to watch it. Period. DeCSS would have never been necessary if the industry didn't insist on being Nazis about this. What exactly have they gained by their hardline stance?
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
I would recommend Zen or Sansa to anybody over an iPod. I don't hate iPods, they're decent players, but the other two companies just build better-working players. I've never had to do TECH SUPPORT for a friend to get their Sansa working, or move their music to a new machine, etc; I have had to to that with an iPod.
You can have your favorites, and if you like the iPod better, that's fine; but you're blatantly wrong if you try to can claim as a fact that those other players are "crippling yourself". Reasonable people can disagree.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
>>Fuck that, Apple is just another Microsoft, and the reason people don't see it is this weird blindness people get when the "in-thing" is around
Gosh, I really am tired of this argument. I think it's annoying because when you say that someone bought something just because it's the 'in thing', you are telling that person that they are so stupid that they don't know what they want, don't know why they want what they want, and in fact want stupid things.
My iPod is not a slap bracelet or zubaz or a mullet. It's a tool that I use to get something done (it plays music for me). I don't use it in public. Only one of my friends owns an iPod besides me. In addition, it comes with tools for managing and aquiring music, videos, podcasts, games, and other stuff.
Maybe, just maybe, you could get off your high horse and admit that some people aren't fucking idiots and consciously chose iPod over something else for good reasons. You want a car, I want a truck, and I don't need to hear your theories about why owning a truck makes me a trendy redneck asshat. Some people buy trucks because they're remodeling their house and can't fit lumber and sheetrock in their geo prizm.
Sorry to pick on your post but I am pretty sick of pretentious trolls considering anything popular to be crap.
-b
Re:It Ain't Philosophy, It's The Business Model (Score:3, Insightful)
"but do remember that literal pennies add up to literal billions when you aggregate receiving literal pennies from millions of consumers. "
Er... literal pennies from literal millions actually adds up to literal tens of thousands of dollars, not billions.
Perhaps you were meaning the figurative kind of 'literal'?
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
Then don't format the iPod using a Mac -- format using a PC. In fact, iPods come formatted by default using FAT. FAT formatted iPods can be used for both. iPod's (except for the Touch/iPhone) are just seen by the OS as a mass storage device. Windows doesn't support HFS natively. If you have a third party HFS driver then you can use a Mac formatted iPod with Windows.
And we all know that the majority of people get their music from iTunes and not from their own CD's or from p2p networks.....
So exactly how do I subscribe to podcast, automatically sync only unplayed podcasts back and forth between the player, start listening to a track on my computer and finish on my player without losing the spot, set up smart playlist, set up multiple playlist with some of the same songs without the songs being duplicated on the player, etc.. using drag and drop?