Warner Brothers has done a deal with on-line video site Guba to provide downloadable movies for a fee. The latest titles come in at a pricey $19 for a download to own option and rentals are $1.79-$2.99 for a 24 hour rental. I think it’s great that a major movie house is getting on board the digital distribution train but there are a few problems with the Guba/Warner offering. The price, especially the $19 download to own, is too expensive. I also don’t like a 2 hour time limit to watch a movie. They should give you a week to view it. Another big problem is that the service only works on a Windows PC using Windows Media Player. Well I use a Mac day to day, so you just lost me as a customer. That’s stupid. When iTunes gets around to selling movies it will be cross platform. The unfortunate thing about all this is the movie companies who control the content. You could have the best service in the world but if the content providers won’t give you content, you’re sunk. That’s too bad because the movie guys have not shown that they know what they are doing in this regard.

As Beavis and Butthead would say…heh heh, that's cool. Dell laptop explodes in Japan. Damm, I own a Dell.

Netflix, the company that pioneered movie rental via the mail says it is considering options for a download service. This is a long time coming. Already they have had major problems getting content as the movie studios are running scared of this kind of thing. I had Netflix for awhile but canceled my service because I didn't like the delay the mail put into the system. When I want to see a movie, I want to see it now, not two days from now. A download service would still take several hours but I could live with that. Now, however, Netflix will be competing with Apple and the mighty iTunes store which will likely also soon feature movies for download. 

The movie industry also should wake up and get a clue. Look at what is happening to television. On-line access to tv shows is helping the industry rather than hurting it. There are so many cool ways hollywood could make this work for everyone if they would just get over their paranoia and see the big picture.  

Already a leader in the IPTV arena, there is much exciting news from ABC about their on-line TV experiments. ABC is having even greater success with it's free, ad supported effort than it's $2.99 per download shows via iTunes. Since last October ABC has sold more than 6 million downloads via iTunes. In the first month of the free ad supported service, more than 11 million shows were watched.

Two amazing bits of information from the tests:

The test also showed that making the episodes available on online platforms is not decreasing the amount of traditional television viewing of those shows.

Disney Channel premiered episodes of "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" online several hours before the program appeared on television, yet saw TV viewership for those episodes soar to number one in its time period for viewers ages 2 and older.

 This kind of data is hopefully going to make the other networks go ape shit and start putting as much content on the Net as possible. Props to ABC and Disney for being bold and proving that IPTV is for real. 

Cry me a river; Seth Stevenson at Slate reviews the latest Apple TV ad campaign and complains they are mean spirited and insult the intelligence of PC users. Boo Hoo. I think they are funny. Self indulgent, absolutely. That's Apple for you.