Apple iTunes movies in pipeline: it's showtime!

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 06 September 2006 06:56

Your IT - Home IT

According to Apple, it's showtime for movies on iTunes. At least, that's what the media expects to hear at a media conference they've been invited to in San Francisco on September 12, the same day that the Apple Expo opens in Paris.

Apple has taken its time getting into the movie market and probably rightly so given the differences between the video and music media and industries.

While providers and sites including AOL, Guba and MovieLink, have had movie download services for months, Apple has held back while holding discussions with movie studios about pricing, digital rights management and deciding what media on which to make downloads available.

Since June, Apple has been nutting out with studios what pricing models to use, whether to go with movie rentals and trying to convince the industry that US$9.99 one price fits all for movie purchases is the way to go.

Steve Jobs' connection with Disney, through his stockholding and board position at Disney, also gives Apple a strong advantage in being able to tie-up its first deal with a key industry player.

In addition, Apple is rumoured to have been working on a new widescreen iPod video player, which may possibly be announced on September 12.

Major sticking points with movie downloads, however, remain the reluctance of movie studios to allow purchased movie downloads to be burned to DVD and the length of time it takes to download movies.

Current broadband infrastructure, especially in the US, will mean that multi-gigabyte sized MPEG movie files can take hours to download. In addition, many users who have paid US$10 or more for a movie download may resent not being able to burn it to a DVD for viewing on their TVs rather than just their computers or iPods.