robert cringely makes a compelling argument that the recent apple/intel announcement, and clickstar, the company intel started last week with morgan freeman, are all about the upcoming iTunes Movie Store.
Good pricing is not enough reward for Steve Jobs kicking IBM in the corporate groin at the behest of Intel. Let’s guess, then, that not only will ClickStar morph into ITMS, but that Intel’s “digital home entertainment devices” will be ITMS-compliant. No Microsoft, no Real, just H.264, FairPlay…get ready for the Video iPod, which will presumably be available from more than just Apple. HP is already on board and these clues suggest Intel is likely there, too.
if apple gets to market first, and brands movies the way it has music with the ipod, it’s going to be a SWIFT kick to the gonads of A LOT of companies. and steve jobs announced that 2005 is the year of HD. that means, to me, that we’re going to be downloading and watching movies from an apple movie store before christmas. i think cringely is right. with that in mind, here’s a bit of a rant.
i watched a couple of (dvd) movies last night on my new 24″ monitor. it was AWESOME. the image quality was beautiful, there wasn’t a single scratch on the print, it was clear and bright, and there wasn’t a big stain on the screen where some punk threw a pepsi at the last piece of shit blockbuster to screen in that glorified home theater with sticky floors and seats. the sound through my sony studio monitor headphones was clearer, much better than any commercial shoebox, errr theater i’ve been in, and better than most of the screening rooms i have been in. saying that people will always go to the theater because of the quality experience is like saying that people will never abandon their scratched up LPs because of the “superior” audio quality. yeah right. and keep holding onto your belief that people won’t watch movies on portable devices as well.
along with me, 75% of americans prefer to watch their movies at home. SOMEONE will cater to that audience, and broadband distribution is the way they will reach them in the future. the DVD was introduced in this country eight years ago. now, movies make more money at the checkout stand than they do at the ticket booth. in the next five years, movies will make the lion’s share of their revenue online. the studios and producers that don’t recognize that their world has completely changed are going to lose. and it’s going to happen fast.
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