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Great... upgrade it slowly, and roll it out internationally. Give it 5 years, and Apple TV will be even bigger than the Mac.

I live in the UK.

If I can download for the same price I can buy a DVD - No deal. I'll continue to buy on DVD! There are huge cost savings for the movie companies to sell through Apple TV, nice to see none of this will be handed back to the consumer, and just used to raise their profits!!

Still no word on rental - mind you, the movie companies will probably want to charge the same to rent as to buy!!!

Love our ATV. Still not enough content. I don't see it as ever being a smashing success- Hollywood seems content to keep it anemic enough that it doesn't take off.

May 29, 08 - 09:59 am Comment from: Ampar

And rumors are that U.S. TV shows will be available in France from the iTS.

Bob l'éponge Carré-pantalon?

Talk about manipulating your markets and customers. Film companies should be hung out to dry.

The cost of distribution through iTunes is a FRACTION of producing and retailing DVD's, so how can they possibly not REDUCE the price?????

Not to mention all the bonus material you DON'T get with a download purchase from iTunes.

The only dvd's I tend to buy are TV Shows that I have watched repeatedly and still enjoy, and I tend to only buy those with good commentaries - Spaced, Futurama etc. I gave up buying films since iI had a couple of hundred I never watched and it was a waste of money. Now I pay £14.99 a month for unlimited game and dvd rentals, 3 at a time. There is no way I'm gonna pay more money for lower quality video and no extras.

May 29, 08 - 10:10 am Comment from: Renderdog

Sounds like the movie companies are making the same mistake the record companies did, hoping to keep prices high they'll simply encourage piracy.

May 29, 08 - 10:44 am Comment from: Jay-Z

I really think that for Apple TV to be a huge success, they either need to integrate a DVR, or they need to release TV shows when they are broadcast on cable. The latter fits better with the iTunes model.

The ability to rent the Entire Blockbusters library from your couch is powerful. Buying a movie at the same price of the DVD will not be nearly as compelling.
Rentals up, Purchases down...Apple moves to online distribution of DVD's...no way...
But if itunes is the most powerful sales alley, it may eventually implode DVD sales at Walmart and Amazon.

I have to agree about not undercutting DVD prices; that's a joke...MDN's previous takes about discs notwithstanding, having the packaging, extra features and transferrable tangible disc is always going to be preferrable if the price point is the same. The standard def Apple TV movies do NOT compare with DVD-quality; nor do the Hi-Def Apple TV movies compare with Blu-Ray. Plus they take up valuable hard drive space (not to mention increasingly metered bandwidth to download). The only way this model is going to work is if you make the items cheaper than discs. Why do you think iTunes was successful?

As others have said, the studios save a bundle selling digital downloads over physical discs; it's highway robbery not to pass on that savings...

Just like it happened with music, getting movies at low cost with out living home, will help a lot to reduce piracy. Specially in Mexico (but it happens in almost all the world), piracy is a bigger market than original DVDs or CDs because there is no iTunes store and the online stores that they have are very expensive, slow and they do not have much of music catalog.

I used to buy a tonne of DVDs and found that, with few exceptions, it is cheaper to just rent the DVDs. It is rare I will watch the same movie 5 times over a few years. At a $4 rental that's $20 or just the entry level price for a new DVD. If we are talking HD, then Blu-Rays cost $30 which would be over 7 viewings.

Like I said, the few exceptions would be epic movies like Lord of the Rings or maybe Harry Potter, etc.. However, the biggest exception is the purchase of Kid's Movies! Kid's will watch a DVD 10 times in a year. Kid's shows are much cheaper to purchase than rent unless it is a show you will only rent once a year.

Bring it on Apple. Not only is the ATV worth the price of admission for listening to music on my home theatre and showing video & pics of the kids, but if I can also rent and save $1 over Rogers/Blockbuster AND do it from the convenience of my home, I'm sold. And I never have to worry about the DVD being rented and not available.

Now if only I could 'RENT' games online for my Wii. There is the killer App for Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft in the gaming market. If you can rent, download and play a ROM instead of renting from a store, sales would be astronomical. I don't get why MS hasn't build a gaming store yet. It just doesn't make sense!

May 29, 08 - 11:37 am Comment from: HMCIV

The question is when will FRENCH tv shows become available in the US?

Oh wait, am I the only one who cares?

May 29, 08 - 12:00 pm Comment from: AlanAudio

The studios simply don't get it. Selling a download for the same price as a boxed DVD is nothing short of a rip-off. They don't incur any of the manufacturing and distribution costs, they don't include additional content and the quality is marginally less.

It's an insult to consumers to make downloads available under such poor terms and I can't see any reason why customers would choose to buy downloads rather than physical DVDs when that is the deal.

But the aspect that the studios should really be worried about is that they are treating their customers with contempt and in return, the customers will show similar contempt for the studios. Piracy is inevitably going to be a more tempting proposition than before.

When will we see record labels or movie studios making sensible decisions regarding digital delivery ? Every move that they make demonstrates that they have no understanding of the realities that are already there. They seem to think that customers are solely there to be ripped off and treated with contempt. They act as though they imagine that they can stop this tide of digital content, but every stand that they make turns out to be futile. It would have been so much more sensible to offer a fair deal at the outset. It will have to end up that way, so why not do it before they are forced into another climb down ?

Agreed - as a UK resident, I think it's not worth buying films or TV shows over iTunes if for the same price I can get the DVD.

Whoever makes the pricing decisions in this needs to reduce the costs, or be made to watch countless hours of 'Eastenders'

@ HMCIV
I do care.

@ HMCIV
I do too.

I'm in Canada, and I'm just glad the option will be there now. I'll probably never make use of it, but at least the option is there. Baby steps...

May 29, 08 - 05:16 pm Comment from: Macjammer

As many of you state about the price point being the same as DVDs for films sold on iTunes in UK & Canada and the studios not wanting to undercut those DVD sales keep this in mind:

Movie downloading is a new market and one that has had to prove how content placed in such a market is controlled in terms of piracy.

The whole DRM thing turned into a fiasco with music and that put Hollywood off at first and since new markets are always worth exploring, only the USA has had this feature in iTunes. You guys were the sandbox.

With DVDs, which is a more established market it'd be foolhardy to simply push this aside in favor of services such as iTunes.

Given time and depending on the success to which movies on iTunes goes, then you'll see prices change.

Yes the US iTunes Movie Store has been very successful, which I thank you all for in that this showed Hollywood the right path into this market.

As for boxed sets or special additions, mail order will still be there until the download market matures globally.

"It is the first time that Hollywood films have been available to Britons"

Wow. Those poor Britons, missing out all these years, having NEVER had access to Hollywood films before the Apple TV