>Buy Movies From iTunes? Why Not Just Rip Your DVDs? Oh Yeah, It’s Illegal!
Apple revolutionized the ease of placing your music on your iPod by enabling iTunes to be set to automatically convert your music when you placed a CD in your computers drive. But why not DVDs? The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which made it illegal for you to circumvent protection on a DVD, and duplicate what you already own. Ahh, remember the good old days where protection actually had to be intelligent enough to stop people from circumventing it? Now all it has to be is ‘there.’ You defeat it, you’re breaking the law. But what if you want your favorite movie on your iPod? Well, according to the law, you have to PURCHASE IT AGAIN likely through iTunes, or convert it from an unprotected format (feel like going through the long process of digitizing your old videotapes or laserdiscs, and encoding them?). So, today, you need to go to iTunes, and purchase your favorite movie from a major studio for ANOTHER $10; with quality that doesn’t even compare to a DVD! But wait, with superior hidef quality on the horizon, the byte (pun) may soon be worth the extra money.
Quality:
A basic fact. The higher the resolution, the better the picture quality is. That’s a generally true statement when you accept that the transfer of what you’re watching is of good quality. Historically, an old VHS tape was about 200 lines of resolution, whereas a laserdisc was about 400. The current DVD is at the full quality of the American standard television system of roughly 540 lines. When iTunes first started offering video, the quality was 240 lines; a bit higher than VHS. Now, all videos on iTunes are 480 lines; far better than VHS, and even better than laserdisc, but not DVD. Your DVD is still 11% better in picture quality (not to mention multi-channel sound). So, not only are you buying the same movie over again, but you’re paying for less. Now that’s not too bad when you plan to watch your movie on your iPod’s 320×240 screen, but what about the AppleTV. Apple is pushing a new television commercial that suggests that you should have one copy of a movie on your computer, iPod, and TV (why buy a DVD then?)
Apple’s new ad:
My point here, is that the AppleTV is designed for hidef quality programming. Without the technical description, I’ll simply say that hidef is considerably higher quality than DVD, and therefore WOULD be the best home ‘disc-less’ presentation available. But where IS that hidef programming from iTunes? It has to be here soon.
Personally, I considered the possibility of dropping my local cable altogether. There just isn’t that much that I want to see, and what I do want is available from iTunes. But wait! I want hidef quality. Oh yeah. So until iTunes begins to offer hidef programming, I’ll stick with my current hidef digital recorder, and Xbox 360. (I added Xbox 360 now, because Microsoft is CURRENTLY offering hidef EXCLUSIVE programming through Xbox Live. Too bad you can’t transfer the programming to your computer or iPod).
We’re on the brink of true and successful television replacement through online downloads. Thanks to The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (you should read it, it’s quite frightening), and Apple’s own Digital Rights Management (DRM), you can be sure that anything you purchase over the next few years will be controlled and managed by someone else, and not you. If you want to take your videos with you, then you MUST have an iPod, if you want to watch them in your living room, then you MUST have an AppleTV. (While I can stream video to my Xbox 360, I can’t send iTunes purchased video or audio to it).
There is however, one major positive. Apple is–in most cases–doing it right. They are making the best deals to offer content at reasonable prices, insuring absolute ease of use for everyone, and keeping the innovation ball rolling. Now, if only they’d start offering their video content in hidef. (1080p please, not just 720p, yes, I know it’s higher bandwidth, but do it anyway.) But until we actually start to be offered hidef, I just can’t see myself purchasing any movies or video content from iTunes that is lower quality than the DVD that I should be able to rip into iTunes to begin with. (Soon, under certain circumstances it may be legal too! The first REAL challenge to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, entitled The Fair Use Act of 2007 has been proposed.)
Cheers to the future!
P.S. Apple today announced the addition of the MGM film library to the iTunes Movie Store. Nice work, keep it up!
If you thought this was foolish, check these out: