Musings on the iTunes Movie Store

Looking at recent developments I believe I can guess at where Apple will go with the iTunes Movie Store. I’m not an insider however and this is all purely speculation, but it would make sense from many viewpoints.

This week we heard that Apple upgraded the bandwidth on .Mac accounts to 1Tb. 1Tb, thats huge! So the question to ask would be what could possibly need that kind of bandwidth? The natural answer is that in the near future Apple will be pushing video streams through broadband into peoples’ homes. This is the natural conclusion which everyone is coming to, but it leaves one significant question. How will this link in with the iPod. One assumes that because the video is streamed it will not be stored locally on a users computer thereby leaving the iPod out of the loop.

At the same time however, it does answer the critics questions about the quality of the video Apple is offering. With a streaming service in place, using h.264, Apple could significantly up the quality of the video to the extent it would look great on large wide screen TVs. This is critical in my view, as quite frankly the downloads available currently are fine for the iPod, but thats about it.

This leads me to believe Apple will offer a dual video service.

The first element will indeed be a high quality video streaming subscription service coupled with an upgraded Mac mini unit, or more likely an Airport express : video. I believe that both of these products will appear, but I think an upgraded Airport will be first. The main reason for this is that it will be a hard sell if people have to buy a computer to gain access to the videos. I see more opportunity for Apple if they give away a small unit to plug into the TV with every subscription, using their computer as the main control point. The Mac was always meant to be the digital hub after all.

The second element will be a download service implemented as it is currently in the US, providing the iPod link. This will probably not encompass feature length movies, but will instead be a vehicle for TV shows and music videos. I believe that the movie studios are reluctant to allow users to download movies onto local storage because of their fear of piracy. It also explains the relatively poor battery life for video playback on the current iPod. The 30Gb would barely show a whole movie. It does however comfortably play back a few music videos and a TV show or two, with some battery spare for music.

Between these two services Apple would have all the bases covered. People will watch movies, TV shows and music videos on their TVs, wirelessly streamed from their computer. Then, should they want to purchase TVs shows or music videos they could transfer them to the iPod and run.

The only question remaining is, will the streaming video service include the TV shows and music videos currently available to buy individually? My guess is that TV shows will be available to buy or stream, movies only to stream, and music videos only to buy. We shall see. Anyways, those are my thoughts, let me know what you think.

[UPDATE]
As pointed out by xavier below (thanks!) it has recently been stated that the .Mac bandwidth upgrade was a mistake. ( http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20060103085453163 ). It could be that Apple is trying to build up hype for Macworld with a stunt to spark speculation in the media. Any ideas?

Comments

[zcishiukkl]

google soft 1

[mark]

The 1TB .Mac bandwidth might have been prematurely disclosed. I think it will come back along with the Movie Store subscription service and the Airport Video Express.

I agree that it's likely not for iPod (at least not until a larger screen iPod debuts).

[xavier]

dude, the 1TB has already been dismissed as error ---check out macsurfer 3 jan 05