Starting immediately, customers of the service will be able to buy the films for $19.99. HD rentals will be priced at $4.99. Beginning Thursday, preorders were available for "Twilight" (set for a March 21 release) and "Quantum of Solace" (March 24).
Among the titles available immediately are "Transporter 3" and "Punisher: War Zone."
Those prices are very competitive. And now we have films being transmitted to a proven, portable digital information device. Which can be plugged into a laptop or a desktop computer. And I would guess televisions are not far off (if not already here).
Which means I can now carry my movies with me wherever I go. And they take up a few square inches on my shelf as opposed to the whole bookcase. And as soon as studios realize they can release straight to iTunes, NetFlix or some new site dedicated to new digital releases, the theaters will take a hit as well.
I still think DVDs will weather the storm better (for now) due to the sheer volume of movies on DVD, many of them smaller, foreign or obscure titles that companies will deem not economically viable to convert to a digital download.
But this is a big step into the future. Have no doubt about that.
1 comments:
The other issue currently facing iTunes in regards to this is the fact that they will be formatted so they can fit on the pod and look good. Unless they've figured out some new way to compress the movie so that it won't eat up all of the memory on the pod that I haven't read about, they're not going to be able to sell something that can go on the iPod, and still look good on a 42" flat screen television without eating up an untenable amount of the pod's memory.
I think that in and of itself - quality of picture on a big screen - will keep DVD's on the shelves for the timebeing.
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