PSound
09-04-09, 03:57 PM
On Wednesday, Apple will hold its annual fall keynote event, the same one at which four years ago the company launched TV show downloads, essentially kicking off the digital movie and TV business, which had been flailing up to that point. Since then, Apple has dominated the TV and movie download and rental business, largely thanks to the ubiquitous iPod.
But with competitors from Microsoft’s Xbox Live to Netflix leading a charge to move the digital movie business from portable devices to the ultimate destination—the living room TV—can Apple hold onto its lead?
An onslaught of devices already in homes and headed to market in coming months are delivering movie downloads to TVs from almost every Internet movie service—except Apple. At the same time, Amazon Video On Demand, Roxio CinemaNow and Xbox Live have all added or announced upgraded features such as instantly streamed movie and TV downloads to make their services more appealing to consumers.
Yet plenty of rumors are floating around about the company’s plans for TV screens, everything from HDTVs to a media tablet, another screen for consumers to watch video.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster put out a report in August predicting that Apple would release an updated AppleTV that includes digital video recorder functions with a possible TV subscription service later this year. Munster and others also predict that, by 2011, Apple will put out its own HDTV with built-in digital movies, music and interactive viewing features.
When Apple moves to the living room, the competitive landscape is likely to be different from that in the portable space, where the company has maintained its market lead partly through its proprietary digital rights management system, which locks iTunes downloads to the iPod and off other players.
Studio execs wouldn’t speculate on how the competitive landscape would change in the living room.
“ITunes is still the biggest player. That’s something that changes as you move to the living room. The degree to which it changes is up for debate,” Sony Pictures Home Entertainment executive VP of digital distribution Sean Carey said.
Lionsgate president of digital media Curt Marvis, who previously headed Apple competitor CinemaNow, said, “Everybody in the industry is grateful that Apple has helped kick-start the digital delivery business, because somebody needed to do this.”
Right now, the Xbox 360 (which sells downloads through Live Marketplace, soon to be replaced by Zune Video, and streams Netflix’s service) and PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network) are dominant players in the living room, arguably because of their direct connection to the TV and their large gamer base, studio execs say.
Analyst Michael Pachter said Apple should be more concerned about Microsoft. Apple’s arch-rival has made plenty of missteps through the years but has been more successful than most in the digital video space.
“I think [Apple] should fear Microsoft as opposed to dismissing them as they do in their Mac ads,” he said. “Microsoft has a huge jumpstart on them with the Xbox base—something like 11 million of those guys have access to all those downloads.”
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6687934.html
But with competitors from Microsoft’s Xbox Live to Netflix leading a charge to move the digital movie business from portable devices to the ultimate destination—the living room TV—can Apple hold onto its lead?
An onslaught of devices already in homes and headed to market in coming months are delivering movie downloads to TVs from almost every Internet movie service—except Apple. At the same time, Amazon Video On Demand, Roxio CinemaNow and Xbox Live have all added or announced upgraded features such as instantly streamed movie and TV downloads to make their services more appealing to consumers.
Yet plenty of rumors are floating around about the company’s plans for TV screens, everything from HDTVs to a media tablet, another screen for consumers to watch video.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster put out a report in August predicting that Apple would release an updated AppleTV that includes digital video recorder functions with a possible TV subscription service later this year. Munster and others also predict that, by 2011, Apple will put out its own HDTV with built-in digital movies, music and interactive viewing features.
When Apple moves to the living room, the competitive landscape is likely to be different from that in the portable space, where the company has maintained its market lead partly through its proprietary digital rights management system, which locks iTunes downloads to the iPod and off other players.
Studio execs wouldn’t speculate on how the competitive landscape would change in the living room.
“ITunes is still the biggest player. That’s something that changes as you move to the living room. The degree to which it changes is up for debate,” Sony Pictures Home Entertainment executive VP of digital distribution Sean Carey said.
Lionsgate president of digital media Curt Marvis, who previously headed Apple competitor CinemaNow, said, “Everybody in the industry is grateful that Apple has helped kick-start the digital delivery business, because somebody needed to do this.”
Right now, the Xbox 360 (which sells downloads through Live Marketplace, soon to be replaced by Zune Video, and streams Netflix’s service) and PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network) are dominant players in the living room, arguably because of their direct connection to the TV and their large gamer base, studio execs say.
Analyst Michael Pachter said Apple should be more concerned about Microsoft. Apple’s arch-rival has made plenty of missteps through the years but has been more successful than most in the digital video space.
“I think [Apple] should fear Microsoft as opposed to dismissing them as they do in their Mac ads,” he said. “Microsoft has a huge jumpstart on them with the Xbox base—something like 11 million of those guys have access to all those downloads.”
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6687934.html