Hollywood studios to sell movies online

[ThomasMahler]

Finally. The can't wait too much longer or piracy will come to bite them.

[P_T]

Still a lot of kinks to iron out it seems, like the pricing which sort of beats the purpose of dloading movies. If it's priced similarly to a DVD, why would people want to waste their bandwidth dloading it and spend extra money to back it up in a blank DVD if they can buy the DVD version and able to play it on both PC and DVD player.

[slaughters]

I agree about the price. I heard that it will be slightly *more* expensive to download, $20 - $30.

So, they spend less on distribution, almost zero for transportation/storage/reproduction, THEN they make it more expensive than a DVD?

At that price, I'll just get the initial release for $14.95 at WalMart and watch it on my TV.

[jeremybirn]

"Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and MGM will offer some first-run and older titles on Movielink. New films will be priced similar to DVDs — between $20 and $30 — while older titles will sell for $10 to $20."

That's crazy! If I download it myself, I expect it to cost LESS than renting the DVD, not more! Especially if "The films can't be burned onto a disc for viewing on a DVD player" so I can only watch it on the computer and there is digital rights management, it's like a very limited kind of rental agreement at a price way higher than I'd pay for a regular full-use video rental.

-jeremy

[P_T]

They might come up with some justification for the price and just use it as an excuse to say "See? legal movie download doesn't mean anything, people still pirate our movies."

[richcz3]

Hollywood has always had a paranoid "mindset" that defies practical reasoning. It has always tried to stifle the very technologies that have saved the industries bottom line. The fact that they are offering anything online at this stage of the game is miraculous albeit likely doomed to failure at that price point.

Of course they see nothing about downloading amounting to "cheaper" or "less expensive". They only see $20-30 as being the value of the movie seen accross any medium. To them lowering the cost would risk lowering their profits by competing with DVD sales. They want to see it solely as a convenient option for the consumer. A new means in which to watch a movie no more no less. Really no surprise there.

[DuttyFoot]

i heard about this very topic on cnbc last week. they were talking about bluray and hd-dvd. the reporter then went on to say that downloading movies is in the works so maybe this whole discussion of which one is better, hd-dvd or bluray is a waste of time.
why pay 20 or 30 dollars to download a movie when they sell for less at the store. most of all you cant burn them on dvd to watch on your tv.

[DorkmanScott]

Only took them what, 5 years to get on the ball? That's actually pretty good -- which is kind of sad.

[tozz]

Download a low res movie or buy a high def one at the same price?

SOOOO hard decision... :rolleyes:

[strosek]

who cares what they do. this time an age its so easy to just go to http://www.netflix.com/

get a DL dvd burner and burn away. its so easy and fast. You hate hollywood so much then don't buy there stuff just rip and burn.

Tho there are 2 movies I did buy to show my support because they were just great movies.

meh don't worry about HW. wait till all they do is offer online movies at low res. then start bitching till then who cares?

Oh the other thing that sucks is you can not burn it to a DVD? for backup or anything so it has to say on your mac or PC I watch alot of movies thats going to suck for people.

[Flog]

20-30 bucks standard cost? Booo!!

Welcome to retarded logic. That defeats the purpose.

You see downloading music works because I can buy 1 song at a time for .79 cents - 99Cents. That is way worth it for a song you like an you no longer have to buy the whole album

but downloading movies at the same price? Are they retarded?

Well these are the same people who blame piracy for loss of profits...yeah I'm sure piracy is what is keeping people from no longer going to the theatre.

Maybe it is that 10 dollars a ticket instead to watch those movies that are remakes of old tv shows, and not even good remakes. Oh no, it's piracy. It's always someone elses fault for their stupiditiy.

[igorstshirts]

I am down with the $20 - $30 dollar downloads... If they are 1280 by 720 or higher res... King Kong at 720 by 3hundredsomething? Isn't that blasphemy? Get on the ball peoples, clocks been ticking.

[strosek]

yes but I think the problem is the fact that you can not save it to dvd.

I mean if you are watching movies all the time you have to have a 500GB hard drive and hell even then once you delete them you can never get them back unless they have a program in place to were you can re download them. Thats the bigest problem I think. spend the same money or less and own in on DVD. play it on any ones computer/house rent out or what ever. you are not limited to one PC.

I can see the following happening. someone will rent the movie crack it to were it can be played on any pc or even backed up to a DVD and you will see torrents of the movies. what ever they are going to use to protect themselfs will be broken. so they are at square one again.

[Jhonus]

man... I'd pay $5 tops. These guys are dreaming at $30. Maybe if they were pre-releases people would pay that much.

[MrPositive]

Most unbelievable pricing. Haven't they learned from online music. It works because a song is a buck, period. Not to throw in the fact that it cannot play on our new fandangled HD TV sets! Weak. Another problem for them will be with how savvy the online community is....We aren't a bunch of old grannies who will buy anything because we are senile and it's easy. They don't exist online with computers. Expect prices to drop like Starcraft game hype.

[bugzilla]

I was enthused about this at first, but the price and rights management stuff killed my excitement instantly. Then it hit me, duh! That's the point! Hollywood hates this style of distribution. Controlling distribution is how they control what movies get made and it's why low budget indie films don't get seen. Hollywood wants to make downloading movies legally look so unattractive that people get the idea that is has to be expensive and klunky so they give up on it.

[Badllarma]

I was enthused about this at first, but the price and rights management stuff killed my excitement instantly. Then it hit me, duh! That's the point! Hollywood hates this style of distribution. Controlling distribution is how they control what movies get made and it's why low budget indie films don't get seen. Hollywood wants to make downloading movies legally look so unattractive that people get the idea that is has to be expensive and klunky so they give up on it.

The thing is the low budget indie guy are already way ahead of them it's all about the band width as soon as you get very quick downloads times 4 meg + .That IS the way to distirbute your film. Direct to the people who want to see it.

The music industry is pretty much there already in the UK there is two very recent events that assure me this is the way it's going to go.

1) An little know indie band started a web site they give the usual info on the site BUT also as they were starting GAVE AWAY there music as free downloads, as time went on they were signed and still gave the stuff away the user base got bigger and bigger then they finally released there first album.
Did people not buy the album because they had some of the tracks downloaded already HELL NO the album straigh to number one.

2) History was made this week a single went to number one in the UK that wait for it......................never sold a single hard copy! That right, it went to the top of the charts a week before the CD single was released in the shops on downloads alone.

Hollywood will miss the boat because of Greed doing too little too late at too high a price.

The next generation of film makers can do it all themselves they have the tools distribution over the net will level the playing field I can se a time even when the film makers themselves could strike deals directly with the cinema owners where a harddrive with the film on be deliverd directly then shown at that screen for a given lenght of time the retailer takes x the film maker takes y the distributer gets 0 more money fed back to the film makers more films made.
Hollywood............will go the way of the Dinos

[leach]

I think we're all pretty much agreed some moron came up with the policies for this, but what i fail to understand is why do they make a point of not wanting to harm DVD sales? What does it matter which medium its released on, as long as they're getting a share of the pie. Couldnt they lower the price, and actually earn more due to much lower associated costs?

I just dont get it, its like saying "we dont want to make DVDs more popular than video, becuase it will harm the sales of videos"

[XEngineer]

Yeah, this makes no sense. No one is going to pay more for a movie when you get less quality and less flexibility with it. The only thing this does is put digital copies out on the Net so that pirates can rip it for free. This is colossally dumb.

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