iTunes Store gets serious about HD
The iTunes Store is open to all for high-definition business, starting with the highly anticipated videos “Quantum of Solace” and “Twilight.”
iTunes actually started selling high-def titles more than a year ago, but the proposition was too squirrelly for most of us to worry about — HD movies and TV shows were only available for rental, and then only if you used the Apple TV box to get them to a monitor.
You now can rent or download an HD movie and play it on your Mac or PC. That’s high-def* with an asterisk because the resolution is 720p, unlike Blu-rays at the full 1020p.
The latest hit HD movies will sell on iTunes for $19.99 (a bit of a price break over Blu-rays). The HD downloads also come with a standard def version for playing on iPods and iPhones. You’ll need the latest iTunes update, 8.1, Apple said in a press release on the high-definition movies.
HD rentals are $4.99. They’ll go live within a month after the Blu-rays street, Apple said.
“Customers have made HD content on iTunes a hit, with over 50 percent of TV programming being purchased in HD when available,” flacked Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services.
The new Bond movie and the teen vampire romance are now on iTunes as pre-orders, with the actual files downloading next week. Step right up, quantities are unlimited.
The iTunes store has some HD movies up there now, but they’re mostly marginal entries such as “Bangkok Dangerous” and “Disaster Movie.” Anyone up for paying $20 for “Religuious”?
Good Jobs: Big 6 studios go for iTunes rentals
Meet me at the Apple retail store in two weeks. I’ll be picking up the new-generation Apple TV box, which appears to be where it should have been a year ago.
Steve Jobs didn’t bust out with “one last thing” to electrify the geek masses this morning, but for online video synergists it was a very good day. Here’s what came out of the MacWorld keynote speech, along with links to some coverage and the press releases:
iTunes Store movie rentals: Jobs convinced Hollywood he still has the mojo when it comes to content and computers. The following studios are on board: 20th Century Fox, the Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Lionsgate and New Line Cinema.
Fox was a given but the final lineup was somewhat of a mystery. The iTunes movie rentals are up there now, with a target of 1,000 titles (100 in high definition) by the end of February. Prices are $2.99 for library titles; $3.99 for new releases; add a buck for high definition.
New Apple TV software: Rent the movie directly from the Apple TV box’s menu on your widescreen TV. Get the movie in HD. Listen in 5.1 audio. Forget Blockbuster, whose stock took an 18% dive after today’s speech. “No more driving to the video store or waiting for DVDs to arrive in the mail,” Jobs says with sinister glee.
The Apple TV, a dog product at $299 for launch, celebrates its numerous upgrades with a new $229 price point. Early adopters get the new software for $20. This is good stuff. You get to pay Jobs later, via those $4 rentals. Just like the music downloads and iPods.
Engadget shot some video of the new Apple TV menu. The tech site also dug through the Apple TV/iTunes specs and found some fine print we don’t like.
Digital Copy for iTunes: Jobs trotted out his pal Jim Gianopolis of Fox, the studio chieftain who was on board with imovie rentals from the start. Gianopolis got to hold up a copy of the “Family Guy” DVD “Blue Harvest,” which came out today. Buy the DVD, stick it in the computer, enter a code and — voila! — it’s in the iTunes library, along with all those Michael Bolton music videos.
The Jobs speech video is a must-see, even if you doze a bit. The super-thin laptop seems like magic. Stick around until the end, when Pixar pal Randy Newman confuses the convention hall with a Bev Hills bar crammed with striking writers and launches into a bizarre rap about the end of the American empire. And we didn’t even get to hear “Political Science.”
iTunes rental card: Disney, Fox, Par, WB
Studios on board for Apple’s new iTunes movie rentals are Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., the L.A. Times reported Sunday, citing “people familiar with the plans.”
The movie industry’s hometown paper usually gets this sort of thing right. That list of studios is similar to speculation here and there. Fox was the known partner in the new-deal iTunes Store.
Pricing will be $2.99 for older films to $5 for high-definition downloads, the Times said, again echoing earlier reports. The rentals hang around on your computer for a month, but once viewing has begin the file has 24 hours to live. Yeah, like “Mission Impossible.”
Steve Jobs hits the stage at Macworld at 9 Tuesday. I’ll be blogging it live and … Um, hold on. That’s 9 a.m. Tuesday. Blog amongst yourselves, sorry.
Online video: Networks play musical chairs
A lot of spinning and dancing in the past week as the Big 4 TV networks try to find promotion-friendly digital outlets for their content.
Some of the activity no doubt is linked to the beginning of the fall season, and some comes in response to the NBC Universal feud with Apple. Change is good — at least for online downloaders and streaming video viewers.
- ABC (Disney) teams up with AOL for free online viewing of the alphabet network’s top shows. New and current primetime series will go online a day after they air. Up to four episodes of a shows will be up for viewing at a time. Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, told the Wall Street Journal that the move would protect the network’s shows from piracy and appeal to both advertisers and affiliates. The scheme allows for insertion of a local ad or two along with the network’s national pitches. This calms down affiliates, who are good and worked up over alternative digital distribution channels.
- NBC creates NBC Direct, which makes the network’s hit programs available for downloading the same day they’re broadcast. Computer users can have the programs sent to them. The online network TV service looks like it’s up and running.
- Fox routes season debuts of its shows to iTunes for free downloading. Making the premieres available as a one-off is a bid to woo iTunes customers to Fox for future episodes — or to get them to pay for them online. Freebie shows on the iTunes store as of this morning include pilots for “K-Ville” and “Back to You.” No expiration on these episodes and users are free to route them onto their iPods.
Network TV chiefs insist that what looks very much like a Keystone cops routine, perhaps inspired by NBC’s petulant pullout from iTunes, is in fact a sea change in the way networks look at distribution.
Fox’s William Bradford, a content strategy suit, told AP: “I wouldn’t call it fumbling around. We are trying a lot of different things and there is a lot of learning that the TV industry is going through.”
