I don’t think I am going to buy movies from iTunes Store. Why? For the following reasons:
- Not really cheaper than DVD, or only slightly cheaper. For example, pre-order Cars on iTS is $12.99 and on amazon it is $15.87. The Rock, on iTS and amazon, same price: $9.99. And you sometimes can get promotions for DVDs which cut the price more.
- iTS movie quality is not as good as DVDs.
- iTS movie download has more DMR restrictions than DVDs.
- You can lend your DVD to your friends; you can’t lend your download video to your friends.
- DVD usually has bonus features, and subtitles; iTS download has none.
- So, NO to iTS.
And I am not really buying music from iTS any more either, because 128kps is not good enough. Price is well, OK, compared to movies. This is the same for TV shows. I am not going to pay $1.99 for an episode that I am going to watch only once.
Although iTS may see success, I don’t think it is a fair enough service.
However, this might just be a stragedy that because it is not so good as retail DVD, the threat to Wal-mart and such will decrease. Rumors are that Wal-mart was threatening Hollywood not to sign with Apple. But we can assume that once this is solved and more studios on board, and downloading movies from iTunes becomes common, we could possibly see quality improvement.