According to Victor D’Angelo at Revolution Portal, 20th Century Fox will soon be making select movies and TV shows (like “24″) available for download through some of the many sites owned by its parent company, News Corp.
Among the sites that will feature Fox content are IGN.com and MySpace.com.
Even since its June deal with Warner Brothers, the performance of online film content provider Guba’s movie downloading service, much like that of CinemaNow and Movielink, has failed to impress. As a result, Guba has developed a new promotional pricing structure designed to attract new users.
Formerly, movie downloads that were priced at $19.99, $9.99, and $1.79 (depending upon release dates and rental length) are now respectively priced at $9.99, $4.99, and $.99. Guba CEO Tom McIerney contends that the major problem facing the movie downloading model is determining a price that will work for consumers, content providers, and movie studios alike. Accordingly, McIerney thinks that this pricing experiment will be very revealing; he claims that, since the promotion began, traffic on the site has increased by 500%.
I tend to agree with McIerney. The only way that this model will get off the ground is it if offers truly reasonable prices. Consumers are smart enough to realize that, once these sites go up and licensing deals are inked, the only true cost to the providers is bandwidth. These downloads therefore have to be cheaper than packaged, special-features-loaded, DVD
Thanks to Red Herring for the story.
The rumor mill regarding an upcoming iTunes-like Apple movie store has been operating at full power for some time now, on this blog and on many others. Even the editors of MacWorld have gone back and forth on the issue.
Lions Gate CEO John Feltheimer has finally presented us with concrete evidence that lends credibility to all our mere speculations. During a financial earnings conference call, Feltheimer announced that the studio has reached movie downloading deals with CinemaNow, Movielink, and, lo and behold, iTunes. Studio president Steve Beeks also mentioned that iTunes downloads should be available by the end of the year.
It’s tough to say whether or not Apple–which prides itself on innovative ad campaigns and surprise announcements–will be happy about this leak. Brandon Hill at Daily Tech, for one, thinks that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will not be pleased.
But then again, I think it is safe to assume that the whole world knows that iTunes-driven movie downloads are coming sooner or later. The question was always only: When? Assuredly conscious of this, Beeks’ comments show a wonderful level discretion: “In terms of iTunes movie downloads, I think most likely some time before the end of the year. We know when they are planning on launching, but since they have not announced it publicly, I do not think it is our place to say anything more about that.†Way to keep it quiet Steve.
Thanks to Engadget for the scoop.
If you have ever wondered what goes on inside a Netflix warehouse, then you may want to take a look at Susan Sheehan’s recent article in the New Yorker. I’ve always pictured the inside of a Netflix warehouse (a new one of which just opened in Portland, Maine) to be a lot like the inside of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I’ve heard that, much like Wonka’s factory, Netflix warehouses have intentionally non-descript exteriors because the company doesn’t want people showing up to drop off movies. These bland facades must hide something fantastic.
No warehouse or factory, of course, is anything like Wonka’s, with happy little elves singing and dancing their ways through the day. A Netflix warehouse is no exception. But the efficiency of a Netflix shipping operation is amazing in a different sort of way.
According to Sheehan’s story, 40 workers start at 6:30 am and, by lunch, have finished processing all of the returned disks that came in earlier that morning (and yes, they do actually check the comments you scribble on the back of the envelope). After lunch, the workers stuff the envelopes with disks to be shipped out (a good “stuffer” can finish about 1,000 disks per hour). The disks then go to a machine to be electronically addressed and sorted by zip code (which is a major reason why it enjoys cheap shipping rates) before being sent to the post office by 8 that evening. The warehouse workers are generally finished by 5:30 pm (the machines keep working till around 7) and put in around 40 hours a week. The result is the absolute model of efficiency that Netflix subscribers have come to enjoy.
Thanks to an inside scoop from a former Amazon employee, hackingnetflix.com was able to direct us towards some early screenshots from the movie downloading service soon to be available from Amazon.
From the looks of these screenshots (available here), it appears that Amazon will be offering TV downloads for around 2 dollars and movies for as low as 10. The site looks close to done, and only time will tell how successful the movie downloading model will become. The key, of course, is for major players like Amazon to get involved. A report from videobusiness.com suggests that the slower growth of the downloading model is ultimately rooted in problems with securing the rights to music in older films, as many major movie studios are already on board. In older contractual agreements, these movie studios only own the rights to the image content, but not the music, of the films.
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The Netflix Rolling Roadshow promotional tour hits Iowa tonight for what many consider to be the highlight of the tour. A free public screening of “Field of Dreams” will take place in the Dyersville corn/baseball field where the film was shot. Kevin Costner is expected to appear and perform with his band at the screening.
While Kiosk.net’s own megamark thinks that the whole promotion is a bit strange (I’m on the fence on this one), you can see what a Des Moines Register writer thinks about the Iowa screening here.
Bear Stearns analyst Glen Reid recently told investors that Movie Gallery’s recent 53% second quarter loss spells big time trouble for the video rental firm. Reid called MovieGallery’s debt burden “unsustainable” and warned that a complete “restructuring will ultimately be necessary.”
The company itself just announced that it is talking to restructuring firm Alvarez & Marsal to help determine its options. Apparently, the company’s acquisition of the Hollywood Video brand has hurt it badly, as Hollywood Video branded stores posted a 7.3% drop in sales last year while Movie Gallery branded stores posted a 1.6% gain.
See the full story here.
The constant rumors that companies like Apple and Amazon, and even Netflix, are toying with the idea of getting into the movie-download-and-burn business suggest that the model is the proverbial “future” of home movie-watcing.
Smaller companies like CinemaNow and MovieLink already offer this service, for which they have received mixed reviews. While these sites have already been criticized for offering a tiny number of titles, a recent article in Slate magazine also questions the visual quality of the DVDs that have been burned from their downloads. The conclusion of the article is that a viable download-and-burn model is still a ways off.
For now, at least, this comes as good news for Netflix, and even brick-and-mortar rental stores.
A recent Alex Mindlin article (registration required) in the New York Times is reporting that video-on-demand subscribers are renting fewer DVDs, but are purchasing just as many. According to a study conducted by Forrester Research, video-on-demand users rent an average of 11% fewer DVDs a year but only buy an average of 1% fewer DVDs a year.
The latter statistic should come as no surprise since buying and renting are two different things. The former number isn’t really surprising either, but it doesn’t really tell us how video-on-demand is affecting rental subscription services like Netflix. In other words, no matter how much slower your Netflix turnover is (i.e. no matter how many fewer movies you “rent”), you still pay the same monthly fee. In order to really trace the impact that cable video-on-demand service has on Netflix, we would need reports tallying the number of flat-out subscription cancellations and/or subscription downgrades. I would imagine that there is negative effect, but the question, as always, is one of degree. Does anyone have this info?
Thanks to Hacking Netflix for the scoop.