Valleywag
Steve Jobs has finally wooed all the major studios, including Fox, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Universal, to sell movie downloads on the day DVDs are released. On Friday, you'll be able to wait a while as American Gangster downloads over your crappy American broadband connection for $14.99. And it will be delivered in lower quality than standard DVDs, without any of those annoying extra features. But it will have Apple's DRM installed with every copy! What finally brought Hollywood to the table?
As Defamer points out:
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes cited a 60%-70% profit margin during a VOD trial for Warner Bros. films on cable — more than twice the return on Time Warner DVD rentals.If those margins hold for Internet distribution, and customers start adopting digital movie downloads in big numbers, it'll be hookers and blow time in Hollywood again soon enough. (Photo by James Thompson)
Comments
Finally...hookers and blow...and movies about hookers and blow!
Problem with all that blow is that we'll soon see Escape From New York 3, Triple X 3, and Alien vs Predator 3.
Halcion days are here again!
How're we gonna whip wikipedia into shape if we're all waiting for American Gangster to download? Clay Shirky's hypothesis is threatened!
Did they really need a test pilot to tell that the margin for digital distribution is higher for with physical DVDs?
$15 for a crappy, overly compressed digital copy? No thanks. If you are getting the DVD the day of, you can probably save a few bucks, have a physical copy and better picture.
Are Apple consumers really this stupid? Wait, don't bother to answer that.
Actually, the Apple TV HD movies are quite good quality. Don't believe me? Check out:
[www.ilounge.com]
The h.264 720p videos are really quite good. We have come a long way since the old days...
Hasn't Steve-o admitted that the profits from the iTunes Store are nominal and that its primary function is to drive sales of its higher-margin hardware?
And assuming that a cable-based VOD trial is the same as a real-life, production Internet media store is questionable at best.
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