The Video iPod Cometh

Did you know that Apple has dropped the price of its iPods? I realize it isn’t earth shattering news so I will forgive you if you might have missed that particular press release. What with the Intel bomb shell being dropped most people have been looking the other way. And that really is the genius of the situation. Love him or hate him you must admit that Steve Jobs is a showman of the first order. And while he isn’t a magician exactly he has mastered the art of the “media slight of hand”.

And by that I mean he is quite skilled at having everyone looking one way while the action is happening in another corner. Then, with his customary flourish, he whips off the cloth revealing his latest surprise. That simple bit of misdirection is what separates the mediocre performers from the truly inspired ones. The gift at making everyone look at your left hand while your right one holds the coin. So, which hand should I be looking at now and what is in it?

Well, I must confess, from the first time I heard about the move to Intel I was shocked. But after a while I began to really analyze the situation and I realized just how odd it was of Mr. Jobs to announce the switch when he did. Now, I have heard all of the explanations and found them wanting. I didn’t know why at the time but I was convinced that something wasn’t right. Something didn’t add up. I was looking at the left hand, then back at the right hand, all the while attempting to guess which hand I was supposed to look at. Well, I think I might finally have a handle on things thanks to Mr. Cringely.

If you read his article you will find that he predicts Apple will release a Video iPod in the near future. Furthermore, he feels that a ITMS for movies is right on its heels. 3 months ago, back when I wrote mainly on 2guysamacandawebsite.com, I posted a piece that detailed what I thought it would take to make the Video iPod possible. Now, with the release of Quicktime 7 several of my points have been resolved. But it is still worth a read to give you a little bit of background on my thinking.

But let us please get to the heart of the matter. I for one think it is a foregone conclusion that Apple will release a movie service much like the ITMS. In fact, they might as well just change the name from iTunes Music Store to the iTunes Media Store. So, I am going to believe that the ViPod is on the way and along with it is the new and improved ITMS. That just leaves one main area to be discussed, what will the DRM be like on these downloadable movies and how much will they cost?

Let me hit cost first off. Since Netflicks and Blockbuster will let you rent all the movies you like I don’t see Apple heading in that direction. They don’t think it is worth it for music and so I see no reason for them to change their position for movies. So, renting is out, that leaves straight purchasing. Now, if you go to Walmart you can snag a DVD anywhere from $4 or so for the really old or crappy tittles, $12-14 for your average tittles and $18-26 for the really special/popular/new/collectors edition/whatever tittles. Well, those are the average prices for retail so what will Apple charge?

Or maybe a better question is what are you willing to pay? Me personally, I don’t think I would pay more than $10 for a DVD I could download. Because if you think about it there is a lot of hassle involved to watch your new movie, much more hassle than just listening to a song. For example, you download Rocky V. Great, it is now on your harddrive, were you planning on watching it on your computer? If the answer is no then you need to go out and buy a ViPod, transfer the movie and then plug that into your TV. Now, this was something you didn’t have to do if you wanted to just buy a song. But wait, you say, what if I went with plan B. Instead of buying a ViPod I purchase a much cheaper mini receiver. I then stream my movie off of my airport base station into my mini receiver (which is attached to my TV) and watch my movies that way. Well, that would work I suppose but you would still need to buy a transmitter and a receiver to make this setup work. Well, I suppose you could just run cables from your computer to your TV but wouldn’t that kind of defeat the point?

Anyway, here I am talking about implementation when I wanted to talk about price. So, let us get back to that topic shall we? Before I got distracted I was trying to point out that all of the extra hassle involved is going to affect the price. Since I need extra equipment to make this whole thing work there has to be some big incentive for me to use this service. And really, the only thing that could be a big enough factor to grab the attention of the fence splitters is price. Everything else (instant access to movies, extra content. etc.) is nice, but price is going to be the deal breaker. I mean, come on, how many of you buy songs off of ITMS for the cover art that comes with them?

So, I remain firm in believing that $10 is the magic number for your average titles and maybe bumping it up to $15 or $20 for the really special deals. But then again I could be wrong, Apple might just want to stick with its one price fits all and just charge a flat $15 for every movie. So, you would overpay (drastically) to see “Star Wars Episode 1” but would under pay to see “Apollo 13”.

Ok, so if we go with the flat rate of $15 we still have to decide on the DRM rules. For instance, should you be allowed to burn your movies to disk at all? Should you be forced to stream them to your TV or ViPod and just leave it at that? I don’t think that is fair but one can imagine that the movie industry will want to bleed you dry for every damn cent they think they can squeeze out of you. But maybe Apple will say you get 3 burns for your movie, you can share it on 6 computers and stream it to as many TVs as you like. Would that be fair? I don’t know really because if you just buy the movie from Walmart you can copy it and do with it as you like. Of course how many of us actually copy DVDs?

And furthermore, since we don’t treat songs like we treat movies should they have similar DRM rules? And how expensive do you think a ViPod should be? How big? Is 80 GBs enough? 100 GB? All of these are interesting questions and I look forward to an array of unique insights. So, what did I miss, where am I right and where am I wrong? Let me know by commenting below.