The insanity in the movie business continues. Today a group of movie studios announced that they would sell you a downloadable version of some movies, with heavy DRM applied, for twenty to thirty bucks a pop. What are these guys smoking!?
The movies will be available through Movielink and CinemaNow, both owned or controlled by groups of movie studios, who are offering their idea of generous usage terms:
• no transferring to portable devices
• no burning to standard DVDs
• no Mac support
• no extra features
• lower quality*
• no nothing except watching it on your Windows computer
*The movies are encoded in Windows Media format, and are about one gigabyte in size. For those who don’t know, movies on DVD are typically about 4-6 GBs. So not only are the movies more expensive and less flexible, they are lower quality too.
How yummy.
I don’t know why I am even surprised by this stuff anymore. It simply continues the efforts of the movie studios and record companies to deliver less and charge more.
Here’s a bit more info at The Motley Fool
UPDATE – Bitrates, resolution, and prices
I did a little investigating and came up with this data about the compression used on these downloadable movies. Using ‘Corpse Bride’ for comparision, since I happen to own the DVD, I found that the version sold by Movielink is 740 MB. If I extract just the main feature from the DVD (which is all you get with the download) its size is 4.15 GB. This works out to bitrates of 1.28 mbps for Movielink and 7.19 mbps for the DVD. Even granting that Windows Media encoding is more efficient than the MPEG-2 used on DVDs, the download will definitely be lower quality.
Unfortunately I can’t find any mention of the resolution used for the Movielink files, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are standard 720 x 480. (I’m not about to give them twenty five bucks to find out.)
Of course, some people won’t care that the movie is of lower quality, but many will care that the DVD sells for $16.96 at Amazon, while the download from Movielink is $24.99.
Outrageous! If that’s gonna happen, it’s a sure way to increase a piracy. No sane people would buy an inferior product for such bucks.
I heard this on the radio last night and lost my mind. I don’t understand what the hell the film industry is doing, but this isn’t encouraging me to purchase movies from anywhere and rather loan them from my library and rip them.
Smaller file size does not mean lower quality per se. DVDs are encoded with a very old codec called mpeg-2 which means that it does not do as good job in compressing as some newer codecs (like h.264). I don’t know how good and which version of WMV they are using but a fairly large size reduction is possible while retaining the quality. Reducing the size 4:1 or 6:1 does although indicate some reduction of quality too.
But other than that I agree completely, even with the alleged MAJOR losses because of the piracy the industry seems to still afford some very good dope
I, like everyone else, suspect something regarding downloadable movies is coming from Apple. Apple is keeping mum on it until they get everyone onboard and hold an Event.
Once Apple holds the Event, everyone will follow their design just like they did with the iTunes Store.
The problem is just waiting for them to annoucne something, anything, sheeesh. April 1st came and went and all we get is a OS X Update last night…
Jussi – While I agree that Windows Media format can be better than MPEG-2, it’s not THAT much better. This is clearly reduced quality. (see additional info I’ve added to article.)
The mainstream movie industry is both overestimating their own appeal and underestimating the intelligence of their viewership in a time where alternatives are plentiful. Thus, they are experiencing a decline in profits and mindshare. Does this trend sound familiar? The same thing is happening with the major record labels and the mainstream press. Another problem particular to Hollywood is that a substantial source of their revenue comes from the overseas market; they haven’t catered to the interest of the “home crowd” for decades. If the overseas market goes soft (as it has) and the home crowd stays away (like they have in droves), then what remains? Desperation. It’s funny to watch these execs miss the target so badly.
Yeah, what Jussi said… you’d be surprised at how good moderm compression can be these days. For example, wikipedia says h.264 can usually give comparable video quality at half or less the bit rate compared to previous standards. Just a stab in the dark at what they did… but perhaps take out some of the 5.1 surround sound audio, and you’ll get about ~1gig filesize for that dvd if you encoded it with a h.264 codec.
but yeah this doesnt seem like a smart move. i dont see any benefits to a $30 download, especially if I can’t watch it on my tv. plus i gotta wait like an hour or so for it to download.
Joetan – I have considerable experience in the area of video compression. These movies are in Windows Media format, which is not as good as H.264. Further, ‘half or less’ does not make a 1GB file, it makes a 2 GB file. I don’t mean to pick on you guys, but I feel it’s important to be clear about this stuff. They are trying to pass off inferior goods as top quality, which they are not.
It’s not drugs, just an extra dose of fear and greed.
Whist the idea of such heavy DRM makes me sick to my stomach, I believe that these movie studios won’t get away with it – they can’t. Consumers are smarter than that. The people who win in business are the people who take care of their customers – not treat them like criminals.
Whilst I love the iTunes Music Store, the tv shows/ video content leaves me feeling kinda blah. It will be interesting to see how Apple deals with movie downloads, because I’m hoping they’ll bump up the resolution to at least something comparable with TV.
Beyond best or worst quality I think the question is not what the hell this guys have smoked, the real question is which people in one´s right mind will pay this robbery for a movie. It´s better buy a dvd, for not talk of piracy, and make legal copies for your Ipod video or PSP, that pay so much money and only can see it one time! It´s a madness all this. Sincerely, I believe Movielink and Cinema Now are going to have to close their sites very soon.
Evidently they have managed to master the art of smoking crack pipes upside down from monkey bars.
I can just picture that!
A super-crazy thought just flew into my head. Does it enter the realm of possibility that the movie companies are doing this is a pre-emptive strike not only agains Apple, but to cast a negative opinion on the very notion of downloading a movie rather than purchasing a DVD? I mean the negatives on the current services are huge-gantic and I don’t see one positive thing for consumers. The movie companies can turn around in a few months and proclaim low consumer demand for their over-priced and under-featured online offerings and continue to point to DVDs as the vehicle of choice? To me, this looks like a semi-orchestrated smear campaign against all forms of legitimate movie downloads.
Well I guess what I was trying to get at is that it is possible to get “DVD-like” picture quality from a small-ish file. That is, most people probably won’t be able to tell the difference between that downloaded WMV and a DVD rip…
Of course, all this talk about quality would be moot if someone would ponie up the $30 to do an actual comparison review… which would be not me
Joetan – I agree with both points. I don’t want to encourage these crooks by buying even a single movie from them. Mike