Movie downloads – an interesting debate

Apple CEO Steve Jobs dropped a bombshell on HD DVD, Blu-ray, Blockbuster, Arts Alliance Media (Love Film and Vizumi movie downloads) any everybody else in the movie download business this week.

Steve Jobs announced at Macworld that iTunes will now rent out movies. Users will be able to download movies and watch them on iPods, iPhones, Apple TV or home computers. Inevitably, Apple has the support from all the major movie studios.

So will history repeat itself and Apple repeat what they did to the music industry with iTunes and change the way we watch movies with iMovies?

An interesting battle to come out of this news will be the battle of HD. Movie lovers will have more options than ever on how they prefer to enjoy their movies and no doubts that digital downloads are the future but not overnight. Average Joe isn’t going to immediately throw out DVD player tomorrow to buy an Apple TV.

In the same instance, Blu-ray may never reach mass usage before digital downloads become mainstream. However, physical media will not vanish because many consumers like to own something they can touch and feel so DVDs will still be in demand for the short term. Another thing to support this is that the market is full of DVD players and only in recent year has seen the VHS video disappear from the shelves. And, when up-scaled, many regular DVDs look surprisingly impressive on HD TVs.

One thing against DVD collections is they take up so much room and that is where digital downloads has an advantage. Conversely, you will need a device big enough to store all these downloads and also Broadband that allows you unlimited downloads.

Before Apple announced their movie download plans, many digital movie rental services already have existed. Websites such as Netflix, Cinema Now and Vizumi Movie Downloads allow movie streaming for its users, offering legal movie downloads to own and rent, and importantly backed by film studios.

HD video-on-demand is available from certain cable TV providers. You can download HD movies from Xbox Live but the choice of movies is limited. Downloads can take forever. Quality can be poor and this is frustrating having taken so long to download and although iTunes presence will help movie download rentals forward, home-theater geeks will complain that Apple's HD video quality is only 720p and audio is only Dolby Digital 5.1 which is good enough for the general user.

So what are Apple charging for movie downloads? This is where the battle for movie downloads could we won or lost. Apple is currently offering $4.99 to download a HD movie. Users then have 30 days to watch it and 24 hours after you start watching to finish it. It will be very interesting to see what Microsoft does which already has 18 million Xbox 360s in homes worldwide and also Sony with the recent success of Playstation 3 and also PSP.

Subscription plans are not yet available and users will demand watching HD movies as often as they like with no restrictions.

As for the electronic market, there will be big demand for a combo HD DVR/HD-movie-library downloading unit. One solution would be to merge HD channels, regular TV channels and HD movie-rental services into one subscription package for a monthly fee.

The writing's on the walls of video rental stores such as Blockbuster and I expect they will jump on the band wagon of movie downloads also. Why waste petrol driving to Blockbuster if you can download it from the comfort of your home? Even Netflix seems like a hassle in comparison because who exactly wants to wait hours upon hours for a Blu-ray movie to show up in the mailbox?

One thing is for sure, the movie download market is going to get very competitive which is great for us the consumer as it will bring the best products and lower prices.