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.
Segmentation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do you boycott Apple?
Re:False right (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
A customer expecting the seller to sell him what he wants in order to get his money? Why, the very idea!
Re:False right (Score:5, Interesting)
If they aren't selling it, they they are losing nothing when we pirate it. This in turn means that there is no damage to them, and thus no case against us.
If they are selling it, but there are artificial barriers caused by legal restrictions on over-riding region coding and the like, then this could be argued to be an illegal restriction on free trade under WTO rules, although we all know that no-one with the money to fight such a case ever would.
Re:Slashdot education (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:False right (Score:2, Interesting)
[repost - I forgot I wasn't logged in the first time....]
He isn't saying he has the RIGHT to get them illegally.
Just that he WILL get them illegally.
And for companies interested in doing business - "right" is not important - it is what your customers will tolerate, and pay for, that matters.
Remember, when you are talking about "rights" that copyright (and patent, trademark, etc...) is a right conferred because it is in the public good. It is a profoundly "conditional" right. And when that conferral ceases to be in the public good - as - arguably, it is has now - it should be withdrawn.
I am with him - I would cheerfully pay $40 - or more - for the convenience to just be able to download stuff I want to watch. A lot of the stuff I want to watch is old - and hence cheap. Like him, I don't have that much time to watch stuff.
So $40 to $50 'aint that unreasonable for what I would actually consume.
I DO want to pay - but for a decent service. But make no mistake, if it isn't provided, I will take what I want - with mild regret - but for free.
You know - someone should set up a charity. It would do decent things in Africa. (Or New Orleans. Whichever is the poorer.) People like me would pay $40/month to it - just to show that we are willing to PAY for what we bittorrent.
I reckon there are at least a couple of 1000 people like me - willing to make a point to the studios.
Now there isn't such a service. So let's cut it to $20
12 x 20 X 2000 is half a million dollars a year almost.
Is anyone up for this?
That could do some good somewhere.... And show the studios that there really IS a revenue stream.
Re:Miro (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Here's the answer.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to admit, if I could buy a movie on the way out of a theater, I probably would in some circumstances. And think of all the parents who would have to buy the movie right then because their kids are screaming, "We want it now, we want it now, we want it now!!!"
I think the movie industry is missing out on some nice profits there. But, maybe I'm an idiot when it comes to profiting. As a poor idiot, I'm probably not qualified to make such judgments.
Re:Segmentation (Score:5, Interesting)
We need to put an end to regional distribution deals for the internet. The internet should, in fact, be considered it's own region and that would allow them to get around existing distribution deals.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
I tend to boycott Apple MP3 players mainly because of their proprietary formats and hardware lock-in................
Funny thing is that apples audio formats have to be the easiest to convert to another format . I find putting everything in mp3 works well as itunes drops and plays mp3 files.
apple's hardware is also in my experience very easy to circumvent , its almost as if apple is "just going through the motions."
Re:Here's the answer.... (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
That is not true. People today are paying for pirate copies when they pay services like rapidshare and binary news group access. So people will pay for legal content, if they could.
Second, the movie industry makes a lot of money with its gated approach to releasing movies.
That may be so, but they are also loosing money on all those people who download pirate content. Perhaps they would have made more money if all these people would pay the studios instead of to rapid share and the like.
Re:Here's the answer.... (Score:3, Interesting)
> 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.
A significant chunk of the population already pays a hefty monthly fee for whatever crap their cable/satellite providers choose to send them. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that people might be willing to transfer that hefty bit of change to something they actually want to view enough that they'll go through the hassle of downloading it (which, easy as it is, is still more of a pain than flipping on the TV and channel surfing).
> Second, the movie industry makes a lot of money with its gated approach to releasing movies.
That's certainly (was) true. But the gates are getting closer together, to the point that it doesn't make much sense to have them.
c.
Re:AVI codecs are patented too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It Ain't Philosophy, It's The Business Model (Score:3, Interesting)
It does seem to me though, that iTunes has proved the "If you build it they will come" theory of digital distribution. The music industry kicked and screamed and cried and refused to build a good digital distribution center both because they were worried about piracy (which didn't really seem to get any worse), and because they were completely unconvinced it could ever make any amount of money. So Apple built iTunes, which is at best a "decent" attempt at a distribution center, and it's a license to print money. Once people realized that there was a (relatively) friendly store that had (a lot of) the content they wanted, they flocked there in droves. It's only gotten better as Apple has refined the UI and increased the catalog. Now anybody who's anybody in on iTunes. My dad can find his obscure Jazz musicians, my brother can find his favorite grunge bands, I can find weird Irish folk rock, and my wife can find the soundtrack to CSI. All in one place, and without too much effort.
It's pretty clear to me that the reason video production companies aren't making money hand over fist from the Internet is the lack of an iTunes store. It's not the music is magically easier to sell online, and it's not that Apple is magically successful where other companies are not. It's that there is no one place that I can go to reliably expect to find any movie or TV show I want with a reasonably easy searchable index. The bandwidth is mostly there, the storage is mostly there (I saw a not-quite-a-netbook at Costco for $750 yesterday with a 360GB HDD, and HDMI connector) all that is needed for the "iMovies" store to take off is someone to convince the video distributors to give them (something approaching) everything all the time at an acceptable level of quality, and for them make give a halfway decent UI. The People will come. Just like they did to the iTunes store.
Re:Yip (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, having just done this a couple weeks ago, I can tell you that at least in my case they send you a little booklet for each TV that you use and you're supposed to write down what you watch on that TV.
Interestingly, I don't have cable (television, I do get my internet access from Time Warner over a coax cable), I don't have satellite TV, and I don't watch OTA broadcasts. I DO however watch movies and television shows via my internet connection. The interesting part is that I told the nice lady who called and asked me about being a Nielsen family all of this and she actually sounded excited. She informed me that they really wanted some perspective on the viewing habits of people who do that, but for some reason (I suspect it has to do with Nielsen's mission statement) only if they pipe the video to a TV to watch it. I do exactly that in 3 rooms of my house, so they sent me the packets.
I wonder how Thundercats and He-Man are going to enjoy their ratings boosts... The late, great George Carlin is going to be highly rated this month too, as well as some online-only media outlets that probably have never seen a rating point.
The fact that they were highly interested in my survey suggests to me that some media companies see the writing on the wall, and want accurate information about my viewing habits in spite of the fact that they keep screaming that I'm killing them by watching online content exclusively. A small critique I have is that if they're going to start recording activities of people who use their TV like I do, they're going to have to make the box for you to write the channel name into bigger, so I can properly fit a URL into it.
Finally, I'd like to say that I don't know how large of a sample they take any given week, but I hope it's low enough that a media company or two takes notice that someone out there is seriously using sites like Hulu and netflix, and considers expanding the content available via such channels.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:1, Interesting)
Unless you put rockbox on it.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
Except I think they have a much greater percentage of music than movies. Pretty much everything release by a major label in the last 20 years or so is on iTunes, as is a lot of older stuff released by major labels. Pretty much anything released by minor and indy labels in the last 5 years or so is on iTunes, and a lot of them are making efforts to release their older catalogs. A good bit of stuff released completely independently (no label at all) is even available on iTunes assuming the band has a least one member savvy enough to realize it's a way to make a few extra bucks and motivated enough to learn how to use the system.
Why? Because it costs them almost nothing to put more songs on the store, so even if a given title only sells 500 copies to a few enthusiasts that's probably $400 in the pockets of the label, band, or whoever. I'd venture to guess that iTunes has more like 30% of the songs recorded and released in the last 50 years, and if you changed that to the last 5 years the number probably jumps to 50% or 60%. Make it recorded and released by a label (even a really small indy label) and I bet the number is more like 80% or higher. By contrast they probably have less than 10% of movies released by a major production house in the last 5 years. It took the labels a while to realize that iTunes was a runaway success that they needed to support, but once they did they've filled out the catalogs available nicely. The question is why video production houses haven't realized that iTunes is a license to print money the way that music production companies have.
Car Salesmen (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a certain point in my consumption of media where things just became absurd. And then I became a pirate.
It's similar each time I go to buy a car. I'm there at the lot because I want to buy something but first, I have to deal with the first enemy, the salesman. I usually know exactly what I want but almost but not quite invariably, he tries to sell me something else first. Then he tries to sell me a couple things I don't want before I can manage to leave. I looked up your inventory and the inventory of your competitors before I came, don't try to BS me. I have Edmunds and AutoTrader right here on my phone, why make me distrust you by lying to me? This is changing, but not fast enough for my tastes.
The movie/TV industry is the same way. They're either trying to sell me what I want in a way that I don't want them or don't sell what I want at all.
First, let's get this notion of having to sit down at a certain time to watch a TV show out of the way. It's an obsolete mode of thinking. We started with primitive VHS, but now we have DVRs and even those will eventually be replaced by streaming.
I find it remarkable that the torrent of a popular show is usually up within minutes of the show airing. Lately, even the HD versions are up lickety split.
Yet, despite the pirates offering a mostly superior product (commercial free, 720/1080p), I have yet to torrent a single episode that I can watch on Hulu instead. But then again, once Hulu's not allowed to stream an episode that I "missed," guess where I am? You got it, TPB. There's a months long gap between "legit" online availability and the DVDs being released where I physically can't access the content.
That's if it's even online in the first place. Show me where I can watch The Big Bang Theory online. I can't. Thus, I will download it.
And man, I would pay for this if I could. In fact, I did. Then I gave up. I rented video on iTunes for a while until I realized what a sham it was. It's not that I didn't want to pay, (though the prices are way too high for TV episodes), its that once I pay, I don't want to be told when, where, and how I can watch or otherwise be forced to pay for the same content again. This is why Blockbuster is gasping its last breath and NetFlix is standing over its dying body.
I could potentially be the best consumer the movie/TV industry has, but instead, I became the enemy for no other reason than the industry treated me as such.
This stuff about complex contract systems and embargoed air dates is a product of a system that's no longer appropriate for the technology of today, much less the near future. And you know what, this is THEIR problem, not ours (the consumers). They're paid the big bucks to solve the problem before it gets to us, instead of just passing the problem along to us. I really couldn't give a shit about the contract between Warner Bros and HBO. That's really not my problem and by making it my problem, you, the content provider are my problem. Thus, I will torrent.
I want to pay. But you have to give me what I want, not what you think I want.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
but the other two companies just build better-working players.
No. They don't.
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.
My Sansa died the first week I owned it, and had to be exchanged for a new one.
As for moving music to a new machine; that's a cop out. The only time that's ever an issue is if you have DRM'd tracks. And having trouble moving DRM tracks between computers is a DRM issue not an ipod issue. And having an ipod doesn't require that you have DRM'd tracks.
but you're blatantly wrong if you try to can claim as a fact that those other players are "crippling yourself".
I responded with the same rhetoric that was fired at the ipod by daath93 who said using was 'crippling yourself' to make a point.
Reasonable people can disagree.
Sure. I bought my 4 year old an inexpensive Sansa. Its the right device for him. (Not saying sansa's are ONLY good for 4 year old, but for him I valued 'low price' over 'advanced playlist management features' because there are good odds he'll drop it, and poor odds he'll be defining or caring about smart playlists in the near future.) And it has a (tinny) external speaker instead of requiring headphones... because I don't really want him wearing headphones yet. In other words, it had the features I wanted for him.
That said, while you might recommend a Zen or Sansa to most people, I would recommend an ipod. The itunes playlist management features, and library management features are excellent compared to the other devices, especially for non-technical people, in my opinion. Now that itms is drm free, I can recommend that too... although there are other sources for music that I think are even better.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
I also dislike itunes but there are a lot of suitable replacements. I have been syncing my ipod to winamp since I got my first one (4g color)...I don't even have itunes installed anymore. I've also used amarok on linux to interface with my ipod and it seemed to work fine.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
Winamp generates my playlists based on listening habits,
Based on your listening habits on your PC. itunes incorporates your listening habits ON YOUR IPOD.
automatically syncs new content to my zen every time its connected(via a usb mini cable you can obtain anywhere for a few dollars instead of a proprietary POS connector, I might add).
You can buy a 3rd party dock-usb cable for a few bucks all over the place.
As for whether the dock connector is justified... hard to say. It was introduced at a time when ipods supported both firewire and usb, when a pure usb solution wasn't an option, so it was justified a few years ago for sure. But even today, it has a higher insertion rating than mini-usb, so it'll last longer. It locks better and supports the ipods weight, which is handy for docks, clock radios, etc.
However, being non-standard -is- a minor hassle. Although, to be fair, the odds of a person having a mini-usb cable handy where-ever I go isn't much better. Full size usb, sure... but not mini usb or micro usb.
Another feature Zen's have over the competition is recording from FM radio.
Different strokes and all that. I listen to FM radio in my car when I forget my ipod. It helps motivate me not to ever forget my ipod. On the flip-side my sister bought a sony precisely because it had an fm tuner. I grok that people want different things.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
nd with both WMP11 and the monkey it really isn't hard to cook up playlists like "Songs I haven't heard in a month" or "songs I like on weekends".
Is that "songs I haven't heard in a month on my pc"? Does it sync back meta data from the device? After all, songs I haven't heard in a month on my PC, but listened to 10 minutes ago on my mp3 player should not be in a "Songs I haven't heard in a month" playlist.
This is why I've defended the proprietary ipod 'database' system. It tracks and syncs all the meta data on the -device- back to the PC, so when you say "how many times have I listened to this song", it incorporates the times you listened to it on the device instead of just the PC. To me that is useful because, for me, 90% of the time I'm listening from -the device-. So if the media management programs play count, skip count, last played date, etc, etc, isn't pulling the information from the device then its worthless to me.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't mind using iTunes except for that fact. Fix that clear limitation and all will be good, but its things like that, features that are so obvious to anyone who has ever had that problem that could be added.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Not quite. MS is known for avoiding interoperable standards at all costs. Apple is not 100% open, but they're a hell of a lot better than MS when it comes to formats.
Examples:
MS sells music in WMA format. Apple sells it in AAC.
MS's browsers... 'nough said. Apple makes Safari and sponsors the development of the open-source WebKit engine.
MS's web solutions usually feature a closed-source httpd and a proprietary server-side language. Apple ships Apache and PHP.
MS ships Monad. Apple ships bash, tcsh, and others.
See a pattern?
Now that's not to say that Apple is entirely open. They've still got their own bizarre connectors, the iPod still requires iTunes, and the iPhone team seems to have a pathological compulsion to reinvent the wheel as many times as possible (ignoring IDLE, SyncML, CalDAV, etc in the process.) Still, (at least in my experience) Apple tends to be a lot more open than MS when it comes to data formats.