This Week In CE Pro: Rounding Up The Download Services

Ce Pro: 5 Digital Media Services (Not Named iTunes or Vudu)

Here's your scorecard to keep track of which download service offers what.

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Blockbuster Making Inroads On Digital Delivery

More news on the download front:

Reuters: Blockbuster takes on Netflix with new set-top box

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Blockbuster Inc on Monday said it would roll out a new digital media player that brings fewer, but more recent titles from the Internet to consumers' televisions than a six-month old offering from rival Netflix Inc.
The MediaPoint player by broadband device maker 2Wire allows Blockbuster customers to download high-definition quality movies to their TVs via broadband lines for $1.99 apiece, after an initial $99 for the box and 25 films.
Consumers have 30 days to watch a film once it is downloaded to the set-top box, and must finish watching it within 24 hours of pushing the "play" button.
The service, called Blockbuster OnDemand, can be ordered at www.blockbuster.com beginning on Tuesday.

I know what you custom installers are sarcastically thinking: "Hooray, another fucking box to integrate!"

Well, it's a start, at least.

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Blockbuster Video: We Have A Set-Top Box Too!

Electronista: Blockbuster to deliver set-top for holidays

Confirming earlier rumors, Blockbuster has announced plans to build a set-top box that will stream digitalmovies to TVs. The company's CEO, Jim Keyes, further notes that the the device will be associated with its Movielink rentaland purchase service, but has not provided details on costs, capabilities or hardware specifications. A release is expected sometime during the holiday season; also in development is support for Blockbuster streaming through Intel chips inside IPTV hardware.

While on the one hand, I want to roll my eyes and proclaim this to be JGAFB,* I will say that when it comes to bringing digital delivery to fruition, the more the merrier. Choice is good for consumers, and competition will speed up the adoption of higher-tech solutions.

*Just Great, Another Fucking Box.

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Vudu Goes Bonkers With HiDef Content

If you're looking for good news on an otherwise gloomy day, the high definition digital delivery train just keeps on building up steam.

ContentAgenda: Vudu adds high-def titles to online library

Vudu has added hundreds of high-definition titles, including Iron Man, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Mongol, to its online library.
In total, Vudu has amassed 1,000 titles in its proprietary HDX format within its library, which the company touts as the largest collection of available high-def digital content. Other newly featured films include classics Cool Hand Luke and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Huzzah! If you build it, they will come!

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Over At GadgetTalk: Ruminating on HD Downloads

MarketnewsGadgetTalk: HD Downloads Taking Over, Hurry Up Canada!

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EMI Sidles Up To Downloading

Content Agenda: EMI jostles into busy online market

EMI is planning to enter the crowded digital music market, forming its own site to join the likes of iTunes and MySpace and marketing its artists' music directly to fans online.
EMI.com, a consumer-facing portal to be launched before Christmas, has been closely monitored by Guy Hands, head of the Terra Firma private equity group that bought the record label for £2.4bn last year.

Don't get me wrong, I feel like celebrating every time a music label wakes up and embraces downloads. But why do so many labels take a "don't join 'em, beat 'em" attitude? Going solo didn't work for Sony or Virgin. Why not just play nice with iTunes instead of trying to reinvent the wheel? What makes more sense, a bigger piece of a smaller pie with your own download site, or a percentage of the action from a way bigger base of users than the label will ever attract on their own?

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Best Buy picks up Napster for a song

Despite my abiding interest in digital delivery, I have to say that this acquisition took me completely by surprise, since I had imagined that Best Buy had the online music store thing all figured out already. Silly me.

Bloomberg.com: Best Buy Agrees to Purchase Napster for $121 Million

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Best Buy Co. agreed to buy Napster Inc., the pioneer of digital downloading of music, for $121 million.
Best Buy, the largest U.S. electronics retailer, will pay $2.65 a share, almost double Los Angeles-based Napster's closing price on Sept. 12, the companies said today in a statement.
Best Buy, based in Richfield, Minnesota, has tried to move music sales online as demand for compact discs wanes. Best Buy and Real Networks Inc. started a music-downloading test that ran from August 2007 to January, selling digital copies of songs by monthly subscription or individually.

Interesting. It also makes me wonder how many other digital delivery companies are still lurking around, not-yet-acquired by the big dogs. Clearly, I have more homework to do.

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Movies On iTunes Coming To Canada

Marketnews: Movies Finally Come to iTunes Canada

iTunes Canada customers will finally be able to download movies from major film studios via the digital download site, then play them back on the PC, an Apple iPod, or through Apple TV.
Over 1,200 films are currently available for rent or purchase from studios like 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), Sony Pictures Television International and Lionsgate and Maple Pictures. Over 200 films are also available in high-definition quality for viewing on a big screen via Apple TV. Once downloaded, customers have up to 30 days to begin viewing a rental movie; and once it has been started, they have 48 hours to finish it. Pricing for rentaql titles will be $3.99 for library titles and $4.99 for new releases, and $1 more for HD versions. Purchased movies will range from $9.99 to $19.99. As in the U.S., films will also be available for download on the same day they are released on DVD in stores.

You know, not that long ago, whenever I wrote about downloads, I'd get emails and comments telling me that it would never happen. Lately though, when I write about non-download digital delivery (such as kiosk based flash stores) I get emails and comments telling me that downloads are the only way to go.

The shift has definitely begun.

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Bell Hops Onto The Digital Delivery Train!

It's a big week for news about Digital Delivery.

Globe and Mail: Bell launches video download store

Long restricted in the range of TV shows or movies they can buy or rent online, Canadians now have a much broader selection with the opening of the Bell Video Store.
With more than 1,500 movies and TV titles available, the Bell Video Store is the country's first online service to offer download-to-own movies the same day they become available in retail stores. People in less of a hurry can download them to rent shortly after, when they are released for rent.
The site is a collaboration between Bell and its partners, which includes digital delivery services developed by ExtendMedia as well as content from Paramount Pictures, Corus Entertainment, Maple Pictures, Eros Entertainment and Image Entertainment.

1500 titles isn't much, but it's a start. Also 1500 major release titles is better than 10,000 straight-to-video clunkers, so I hope that their mix of titles reflects that.

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When The RIAA Loses, Everybody Else Wins!

I don't generally make a practice of finding joy at other people's failures. But there are some exceptions. I'm always willing to take time out of my day to laugh when the RIAA fails.

MarketnewsGadgetTalk: Music File Sharers: 1, RIAA: 0

The District Court of Arizona has ruled in the case of Atlantic vs. Howell that simply keeping music in a "shared" folder on one's PC doesn't constitute illegal file sharing.

The whole file sharing issue is far from over, and I don't expect the RIAA to pack their marbles and go home just yet. But every time they lose a case, an angel gets it's wings!

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Interesting Facts About Broadband Performance

I'm indebted to The Stalwart for making me aware of the tech policy blog Technology Liberation Front which has now rocketed to the top of my list of favorite tech blogs.

Linked up at The Stalwart was a piece that discussed the evolution of broadband services, and how the actual delivery of service differs from popular opinions about it.

Technology Liberation Front: More Broadband Progress

One of the things that makes it hard to judge is that broadband speeds and prices don’t tend to grow continuously and evenly around the country. Rather, carriers take turns leap-frogging one another, with each upgrade accompanied by a temporary price increase. So it can be tricky to judge the average rate of improvement by looking at just one market, because one market may seem to stagnate for several years at a time. But if one looks at the country as a whole, and focuses on time horizons closer to a decade, I think it’s undeniable that things are improving at a fairly rapid pace.

The facts that Technology Liberation Front present interested me because I've been keenly observing the improvement in broadband speeds primarily because of the advent of HD downloads, a subject that's very important to me. I don't think I'm being overeager when I say that quick and convenient HD downloads on demand are going to be here before a lot of people think.

On a related note, Going Private has an extraordinarily long diatribe (even by her standards) that is both archly caustic and achingly beautiful on several separate levels. There's almost a graduate-level seminar's worth of business acumen in that single post, but what I'm focusing on in particular is her comments about the bogus nature of telecom's service fees for broadband service.

Going Private: The Five ForcesCircles of Hell

Coming full circle, we arrive at the business model for every telecom company on the planet. The amazing part to me is that, almost De Beers like, wireless providers have managed to somehow maintain the fiction that they maintain massive proprietary networks, and price data transmission accordingly.

There's more to her post than that, but she's almost impossible to excerpt into small bites.

Consumers are well aware that they're being jacked by telco's on data rate prices. Note the recent post on Marketnews Gadget Talk about Bell's data shaping plans. Anytime this subject comes up it triggers a flurry of comments from angry readers. As it happens, I was IM'ing on Friday with Christine from Marketnews about the adoption rate of fibre to the home in the US. I glibly commented "If Bell or Telus or Rogers were offering fibre here in Canada, can you imagine how hard they would gouge us on it?"


I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this post, but mostly I'm just talking out loud, putting the pieces of the puzzle together for myself. Thanks for listening.

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iTunes Is Number One Music Retailer

There is, it seems, no stopping them.

The RetailBridge: iTunes Takes Over Number One Spot In Music Retail

Last week, Apple announced that, based on data from market research firm the NPD Group, its iTunes Music Store had surpassed the retail giant to become the number one music retailer in the U.S. According to Apple, iTunes now has more than 50 million customers and has sold over four billion songs since its launch in 2003.

Don't expect Wal-mart to take this lying down, mind you. Is this the prelude to some serious jockeying in the online music biz?

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Can Blockbuster Be A Winner At The Download Biz?

This sat on my desktop for over a day now, just because I couldn't decide how I wanted to spin it: straight or snarky, sympathetic or mean. I'm still not sure, so let's just get right into it and see how it turns out.

InternetRetailer.com: Blockbuster turns to the web for new growth

As Blockbuster Inc. continues to slug it out with rival Netflix Inc., it’s staking its claims to differentiation and its future on a bid to be a multi-channel retailer and not just a DVD rental company. And in repositioning to a multi-platform strategy, the Internet and e-commerce figure to play a big role.

To give Blockbuster credit, they seem to have done a comprehensive job of taking a look at what's going on in entertainment media, and planning to imitate it. As one sage buisness guy once told me, "you don't need a better mousetrap, you just need a good one."

You don't even have to be the first one on the market, or even groundbreaking and innovative, you just have to show up and do your best. Brand recognition and customer comfort levels might even be a factor.

The strategies outlined in the article linked above seem to hit all the right buzzwords: online and kiosk downloads, and online partnerships. The big question is can they fire on all cylinders?

On the one hand, it's been a long, long time since Blockbuster has been on top of the heap. On the other hand, I love a good underdog story, and to be fair, they mean well, and they're trying really hard to change.

I was talking with an industry contact about downloads yesterday, and his two picks for the future movers was iTunes and Netflix. Is there room for Blockbuster on that list?

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Libraries Warm Up To iPod

The ubiquity of the iPod* has been further reinforced by Overdrive's decision to being supplying libraries with DRM-free mp3 files.

Library Journal.com: OverDrive Breaks the iPod Barrier for Downloadable Audio

For years, librarians and patrons have complained that the most popular digital audio player, the iPod, was incompatible with the Windows Media Audio (WMA) files, the format for library downloadable audio. OverDrive nowsays it will offer at least 3000 titles—about 15 percent of its catalog—in MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM), which means compatibility with nearly every MP3 player and mobile phone, including iPods. OverDrive MP3 Audiobooks will go on sale in May at Borders.com and should be available to libraries by the end of June, to be followed with the release of OverDrive Media Console for the Mac.

*does anybody remember when Apple was a computer company?

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No Blu-ray for XBOX360

Despite Microsoft's vehement assertions to the contrary, the rumour that a Blu-ray drive for XBOX360 would be released continues to have legs. Maybe this will put an end to it:

RetailBRIDGE: Xbox 360 Won't Support Blu-ray, Microsoft Says

"Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience," Aaron Greenberg, group program manager for the Xbox 360, told Reuters this week, emphasizing the fact that theirs is "the only console offering digital distribution of entertainment content."

Downloads. It's all about downloads. All I'm saying is don't get too attached to your optical discs, okay?

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Maybe Music and Movie Revenues Are Down Because They Suck

Christine at Marketnews just made a fantastic blog post about the underlying malaise afflicting Hollywood. She argues that their protests to the contrary, it's not downloading that's killing music and movies.


MarketnewsGadgetTalk: Is it Illegal Downloading, or a Lack of Creativity?

Sure, the Internet is making it much easier for consumers to get pretty much anything when they want it. But perhaps there's a reason beyond this changing face of technology that leads consumers to want to gather as much content as they can as quickly as they can. Do they feel they're not getting the quality they deserve? All I'm saying is that entertainment companies should take a long, hard look at issues like those mentioned above before forcing all the blame onto illegal downloading.

I've little else to add other than to say that I think she's exactly right.

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Breaking News: Music Industry Still Doesn't Get It

Unbelievable:

Marketnews Gadget Talk: SAC Wants to Charge You $5/Mo. For Using the 'Net

That headline might sound misleading, but it's actually not. The Songwriters Association of Canada (better known as "SAC") wants to charge Internet users $5/mo. in order to compensate artists for music that's illegally downloaded. The reason I say the headline is not misleading is because really, what SAC would be doing is charging all Internet users $5/mo., whether they download music online or not.

Wow.

Just wow.

It's hard for me to formulate a diatribe response to this that doesn't include lots of profanity.

This is exactly like receiving a speeding ticking before you even leave your driveway, and it's exactly as unfair. I don't download music illegally, but if SAC actually got away with making this asinine surcharge happen, I would start pirating music immediately. With gusto. I would be the terror of the Seven Seas. Hey you bastards, I've paid the fine, I might as well do the crime!

Does anybody in the music industry actually think before they speak?

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Naxos Music gives its blog a facelift

I'm way late to the party on this, but I just thought I should mention that Naxos Music has a new publicist, and a revamped new look for their Naxos blog.

So if you want to keep abreast of what's going on in the world of classical music, and especially if you want to support a record label with a progressive attitude towards selling lossless, high quality downloads, check in at Naxos.com

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Video Rentals on iTunes: what does it all mean?

I'll tell you what it means: it's the future of media distribution.

Marketnews - Gadget Talk: Rent Flicks with iTunes

As it stands in the U.S., participating studios include 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures, MGM, Lionsgate, and New Line Cinema:pretty much all the majors. Movies can be "rented" for 24-hour periods, and watched any number of times during that slot. If you watch the flick immediately, no worries: you'll have 30-days before the rental expires, so to speak. And the movies are actually comparable in price to what you might pay in an actual rental store: US$3.99 for new releases, US$2.99 for library titles, and US$5 for new releases in HD. Not too shabby.

If anybody can be trusted to bring about paid HD downloads, it's iTunes.

This is the thin edge of the wedge that will open up the brave new world of content on demand via the Internet. It's also bad news for Blockbuster Video and bricks and mortar rental stores like them.

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Head of Warner Music recants music industry's bad attitude

Seriously, you can't write comedy this golden.

MacUser: Music boss: we were wrong to go to war with consumers

The boss of Warner Music has made a rare public confession that the music industry has to take some of the blame for the rise of p2p file sharing.
Speaking at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, Edgar Bronfman told mobile operators that they must not make the same mistake that the music industry made.
"We used to fool ourselves,' he said. "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won."

Props to Bronfman to wising up, although hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?

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