The tiny screen of an iPod might not seem the best medium for enjoying the sweeping landscapes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or the breathtaking action scenes from Titanic. But such appears to be the goal of Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, who is in negotiations with most of Hollywood’s big studios to make feature films available for download via the firm’s online music software, iTunes.
The company, which already controls more than 75% of the music-download industry, hopes to introduce a service that would allow users to download films for $9.99 each by the autumn. If it followed the pattern of Apple’s involvement in music, it would launch in the US, and might not prove quite such a bargain when it arrived in the United Kingdom.
”Steve wants to get this done, and the studios want to reach an agreement, too,” one person with knowledge of the negotiations was quoted as saying in the New York Times. Disney, on whose board Jobs sits, is expected to be the first studio to make its films available.
The path to any deal, however, is likely to be difficult. The fact that films have different release dates in different countries will exacerbate studios’ fears about piracy. They are also understood to have defeated Jobs’s attempts to impose a single purchase price for all movies, with the studios receiving a 70% wholesale rate.
”We can’t be put in a position where we lose the ability to price our most popular content higher than less popular stuff,” one executive told Forbes magazine.
The Apple founder won a similar battle with the music industry, but has less power in the field of movies delivered over the internet than he had at that time in the field of music. In the US, several websites already offer subscription-based access to movies online.
The smallness of the iPod’s screen has not prevented Apple from successfully marketing some music videos and, in the US, television shows, via iTunes. But the files are of too low a resolution to be watchable when expanded to the size of an Apple computer screen.
That could prove an obstacle to the success of downloadable films — or it might suggest that Apple is fashioning a deal that would allow films to be watched on ordinary screens. That would lend support to rumours that the company is planning to launch a ”living room device”, combining television and downloadable movies and music in a single delivery system. The new generation of Mac computers can already be used, with a remote control, to act as a jukebox and DVD player.
The iPod, meanwhile, faces potential competition from a rival device reportedly being planned by Microsoft and developed in collaboration with Amazon. – Guardian Unlimited Â