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Apple Adds Movies to iTunes Store

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

September 12, 2006, 1:42 PM

As expected, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced "one more thing" on Tuesday: movie downloads through iTunes. Customers will initially have access to 75 films, with more being added each week. For now, however, only movies from Disney will be offered.

Disney-owned studios, including Disney itself, Pixar, Touchstone and Miramax are among those offering the first movies on iTunes. New releases will cost $12.99 USD when pre-ordered and during the first week, later rising to $14.99 USD.

Older library titles will cost $9.99 USD. Once downloaded, users will own the films indefinitely, and they will not expire like on other subscription-based services. However, the movies cannot be burned to DVD for watching on a TV.

Jobs said the movies are "near DVD quality" with a resolution of 640x480. With a cable Internet connection, downloading will take about 30 minutes, and customers can watch the films as they are downloading. Dolby Surround audio is included in each movie.

For now, the offering will be United States only, but Apple hopes to offer movies internationally sometime next year once it can work out the licensing issues. Users can watch trailers of the movies via iTunes before purchasing.

Add a Comment (12 Comments)

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By Ahmadbondk

posted Sep 14, 2006 - 7:33 PM

Oh my god, i m stick with my old iPod

Score: 0

By PC Rat

posted Sep 13, 2006 - 6:50 AM

...

Having lost the Computer Wars to Microsoft,
Apple becomes a media retailer.

...

The Computer Rodent

...

Score: 0

By twosheds

posted Sep 13, 2006 - 2:12 AM

As someone else recently pointed out, all these crippled, lo-rez, inflexible and overpriced services are being okayed by the MPAA and their cronies just so they can say, 'Hey, we offered legal downloaded movies but those naughty pirates are still pirating films', and therefore justify their lawsuits and restrictive DRM in new HD formats.

Score: 0

By Grazer

posted Sep 13, 2006 - 12:31 PM

They do not need this to justify their lawsuits, they are not required to release their product in a format convenient to you. I think they would do better to find some way to justify their price gouging.

Score: 0

By foxfyre

posted Sep 13, 2006 - 8:55 AM

Man this gets old...
I guess someone has to balance the irrationalization that the creators of intellectual property have no rights to control the dissemination of their property against those who have arbitraily given themselves the right to steal others' material without paying for it.

Score: 0

By foxfyre

posted Sep 12, 2006 - 5:35 PM

""near DVD quality" with a resolution of 640x480. With a cable Internet connection, downloading will take about 30 minutes ... & cannot be burned to DVD for watching on a TV."

Just one more reason not to mess with an iPod/MP3 player and to stick with the hard media DVDs &/or CDs.

Score: 0

By Joco

posted Sep 12, 2006 - 3:18 PM

Creative Labs Zen Vision:M, iRiver Clix, Meizu M6 and upcoming models from LG all beat by far iPod in all features, price, video, FM radio, more flexible audio encoding formats, screen size and sharpness, etc. They offer a video conversion software. You can convert all your DVD right now and no need to wait for iTune. If you want to know more about iPod alternatives, read more on http://www.dapreview.net/news.php and http://www.anythingbutipod.com/

Score: 0

By Desides

posted Sep 12, 2006 - 10:26 PM

Fat lot of good all those features did for sales, huh?

Score: 0

By school1012

posted Sep 12, 2006 - 8:35 PM

Thanks for the info. My Portable Media Center walks all over this iPod

Score: 0

By mjtrike97

edited Sep 12, 2006 - 2:53 PM

Give me a break. This service sucks! I can pretty much buy a DVD at that price. Why would I waste disk space for video that is NOT even DVD quality and that I can only watch on my computer. I will stick too DVDs that I can watch on my computer and my DVD player.

Score: 0

By mshulman

posted Sep 12, 2006 - 1:57 PM

At that price point, its cheaper to buy the DVD and rip it - then at least you can watch it on both your ipod and elsewhere.

Maybe at $4.99 or something like that I'd consider it.

Score: 0

By zee7

posted Sep 12, 2006 - 2:14 PM

Not only that, but the quality is worse than dvd. Just like lossy MP3s, dumb people will buy into it for "convenience".

It's insane that now the customer is expected to do more of the work [downloading, paying for the bandwidth, gathering together the various ephemera like lyrics, cover art, etc, fighting through various DRM apps to make a legal copy, buying blank dvds or harddrives to store everything on) and then has to pay more for the privilege.

No thanks.

Lame.

Score: 0

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