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Monday July 18, 2005 1:44 pm
Apple’s Digital Media Trinity Coming Soon?
With rumors flying around about a video iPod and an Apple videos store (iMovies?) Gear Live would like to take the following opportunity to speculate wildly that Apple would secure dominance in the emerging digital multimedia market place if they do the following things:
- Launch an Apple videos store - not just music videos like iTunes has now, but full feature length movies from all the major movie houses available in (sadly a necessity) DRM’ed H.264. Apple already has the store infrastructure in place through iTunes, and the bandwidth, media savvy, and codec to pull this off.
- Apple then must produce a multimedia focused set top box - A slightly modified Mac Mini would be perfect for this. The device will need to be able to browse the movies store on a TV screen, and include a remote. They might want to include PVR software and a TV tuner, but that is neither here nor there.
- The final spire of Apple’s digital media trinity would be the video iPod to allow consumers to take (compressed) versions of their content with them wherever they go.
With all three of these key points presented to the marketplace at the same time with Apple’s legendary user interface ease of use and industrial design skills they could not only make a big splash, but gain iTunes dominance in yet another new marketplace. If they are going to do it they had better do it quick though as Microsoft is trying to make hollywood connections to do the same thing with their Windows Media Center and Portable Media Center platform, Sony has the PSP and store infrastructure and Tivo is rumored to be in the works with a video download service as well.
This coming digital media revolution will be far reaching - within 5-10 years physical media like DVD’s, HD-DVD’s, Blu-Ray, and CD’s will disappear entirely. CD sales are already starting to sag under the legal downloaded music juggernaught. Whoever gets there first with this “digital media trinity” will certainly end up with the lions share of a market that is set to replace every visual entertainment sales and rental business that we know of.
Did you hear it here first? Did Gear Live call it? Well we will have to wait and see - the industry analysts are saying to expect a big announcement come September.
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Comments:
When Apple first released the iPod, the portable mp3 player market ripe for the picking. It was tiny, fragmented and lacked a central management software companion like iTunes. The portable video player market is currently in a similar state. Handheld video players from iRiver, Creative Technology, Archos, and Sony sell in such small quantities, market researchers don’t aggressively track their sales yet. Portable video players tend to get lumped in with mp3 and/or DVD players.
If Apple does release a <b><a href=“http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/articles/videoipod/”>Video iPod</a></b>, the bigger question is whether or not people will pay $1 (or more) for music videos that are already available for free from the iTunes Music Store. Also, is the small 1.5-inch square iPod screen ideally suited for video? Probably not. A Video iPod will require a larger screen similar to the Sony PSP. Also, video requires much larger storage capacities. Apple will have a difficult time of both providing adequate storage and keeping the price point below $500.
After music videos, what’s next for the “small screen”? Maybe short films, SNL and Conan skits, TV shows and even original content? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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Bravo Jon for a well thought out commment. I do agree that the market for the video iPod is ripe for the picking given the alternatives out there. The one thing I differ from you on however is how they will enter it. Right now there are a few solutions out there to get short clips - even cell phones with EVDO can stream that kind of thing - what the market needs is a sudden influx of DVD or better quality video in a portable format. Yes the player will be expensive and have to have massive amounts of storage and energy, but think of the power if consumers suddenly can browse 1000’s of movies, pay $5-10 to buy one, and then watch it on the train, at a friends house (via a dongle to their TV), or anywhere they please. Whatever company can offer this Digital Media Trinity first will certainly be in the position Apple is now with the iTunes music store - but for the entire multimedia marketplace.
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