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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/20/09
Taking a true-cost approach, I'll ignore subsidies, though that certainly cuts the time in half for early buyers.
Pulling $180 per month out of my butt as an estimate for conventional power, I come up with about 32 years to pay off the difference. Which... is actually pretty good aside from the pile of Li-ion and silicon waste left at end-of-life.
11/13/09
I hate iTunes, but what I hated even more was being unable to view what it has in store. #itunespreview
11/13/09
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11/13/09
11/13/09
Huh. I always thought that was standard company policy. #itunespreview
11/13/09
11/13/09
On the other hand, neither eMusic or the Amazon music store, both of which are MY sources for online music purchases (DRM-free, at that), don't require me to install anything in order to view, preview, purchase, and download songs, and provide a small optional download manager if I want to make it even easier (full-album downloads that are auto-loaded into WMP11). #itunespreview
11/13/09
@Jeb_Hoge: But... But... Apple is so good for all of your needs! #itunespreview
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
The idea of using an external app to play music on my desktop doesn't make sense to me anymore, since iTunes stores, files and plays all my music. #itunespreview
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
iTunes has always reminded me of Jabba the Hutt... slow, arrogant, slimy and difficult to deal with.
I guess Apple are taking the definition of previw rather literally, "To show or watch something, or part of it, before it is complete." #itunespreview
11/13/09
It seems 'rather useless' to you because you didn't bother to read the article. Mark clearly articulated its singular purpose when he said 'In that way, iTunes Preview really lives up (or down) to its humble name—it's a non-interactive preview of iTunes content for people who haven't loaded the software '. Don't have iTunes (or don't download shit period from iTunes)? Then you yourself wouldn't have use for it, yes. But that wouldn't make it generally useless. #itunespreview
11/13/09
I know it shouldn't annoy me that I have wait for iTunes to open and then close the app when I'm done; however, I have often found the whole process needlessly complex. I want to click an app's link view it's info and continue with my browsing uninterrupted. #itunespreview
11/13/09
11/13/09
It would be my preference if I could visit iTunes via browser, listen to the song preview, and purchase DRM-free iTunes content via the web interface. I don't like the iTunes software itself, but it would be great to be able to purchase music that is unavailable elsewhere, if it were possible.
So, I did understand it, I just don't feel that simply looking at a list of songs is of any practical use to me. But bully for them... it's... a list of songs. On the web. Very cutting edge. #itunespreview
11/11/09
Titles: Currently Paramount and Warner titles, the rest of the studio contracts are in the works. So it's not just any no name movie that couldnt hack it in the theatre =) Should check your notes on that one Mark.
SD Cards: There are currently 100's of SD cards and as us techies know not one SD card is the same. The funny thing though is SDXC is coming out 2010, giving the ability to have up to 2TB on an SD card BUT of course thats not gonna happen anytime soon. BUT if you think about it a 32GB card which is the highest you can get right now COULD potentially fit 16 Movies since each movie is roughly 2.5GBs. Hey if your traveling and you are waiting 2 hrs before your international flight that is 14 hrs long and you have the ability to go to a kiosk and browse 1000's of titles and can download 3 movies to a 8GB card for $1.99 each u know thats better than watching the inflight movie that MOST likely was a movie that couldn't hack it in the theatre ie. Wolverine (Fail)
Deleting Content: Yup who the hell would want to accidentally delete peoples photos or files. You have to give the software developers a little bit of credit that they don't want to screw someone over. So yes deleting content from the kiosk it will only detect the movie file and won't delete your other files.
Current Model:Currently it's rental, price bounce around a bit they are trying a few different prices but entry is $1.99 for a movie that consumers have 30 days to watch once they watch they have 48 hrs before it expires. When it expires they don't need to go back to the store to return anything. Next time they go in the system will recognize that the SD card has expired content and will ask if you would like to delete the movie.
Playback: SD Cards on movies, who the hell would want to do that? SD Cards are for pictures..duh...ya thats a pretty small box you are thinking in right now Mark. An SD card is a storage device just like USB stick, just like a portable external hard drive that we all have bit torrented movies on. You can put anything on an SD card, and if we take a look at all the hardware that is being developed right now, laptops, net books, PMP devices, Phones (micro-sd), TVs. They all are coming out with an SD slot. The iphone argument is very prominent everyone argues "hey i can download it on itunes, i've got an Iphone." the issue though is apple only holds a small percentage of the market. Comeon now you know better than that Mark. And the streaming arguement get that all the time, netflix, xbox360, bit torrent. Valid arguements, bandwidth def getting better but at the same time though, it's not as portable as and SD card. Sure you got wifi coming to airlines, but how soon will that actually be prevalent with all airlines? The other issue is, could airlines charge you an arm and a leg to stream movies? Since you are goign to take up a lot of bandwidth? Current playback is a single device, yup, 1 device a set top box that shows proof of concept to say to the OEM manufacturers and hardware manfacturers and software dev that hey you know what this is real. SD cards/Micro Sd cards can be used for something different. By 2010 PC playback App, and other devices will fall in to play. So yes we can look at this current tech and argue a lot and say HAHAHA this is a ridiculous idea, but is it really that ridiculous? SD cards are only getting better with SDXC coming out, and then you have USB 3.0 coming out that will enhance download speeds. Since a movie currently downloads 1gb : 1min with a specific card again going back to the card issue, but as we move forward cards get better they get cheaper in reality this proof of concept is following the tech and if you look at the bigger picture it actually makes a lot of sense.
So Mark, great article, it's easy to say BB this is a ridiculous idea but we all know optical media is going to stick around for a long time and actual streaming of media isn't going to be prevalent for a while since we aren't Japan or Korea where broadband is a requirement. Not everyone streams movies every single day, and to get good speeds to download well you have to pay what $60/month? Most of the time it's just to surf the web, chit chat on our gchat how many people TRULY stream movies right now? So I would recommend taking a look at this one more time review the technology maybe ask a few more questions because it sounds like you asked the janitor that was cleaning the block office that over heard that bb might be trying somethnig new. I would expect better journalism than this from a Giz writer. =) #blockbuster
11/11/09
Again total technical trial, I'm pretty sure they are accepting all forms of constructive criticism boomingEchoes brings up a good point, if it's a little flawed doesn't mean they can't improve on the idea. Who would want a product that is flawed, thats a fail. Always want to make it better. #blockbuster
11/10/09
11/10/09
11/10/09
For me, they'll need to overcome three hurdles before I'll start renting them:
1. They need to include all of the bonus content that typically would be left out on rentals.
2. They need to be actual DVDs.
3. They need to be selling them instead of renting them. #blockbuster
11/10/09
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11/11/09
Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and a host of smaller store chains would beg to differ. It's not that people aren't buying them because they're downloading them. It's that people aren't buying them _there_ because Blockbuster just isn't the place people think of when they want to go buy a movie or TV show on DVD. I don't know if their price structure is based on the fact that they'd rather have you pay them money for something that they can keep selling to the next dozen people who walk into the store, or if it's based on the fact that there's just not enough movement on that side of the business to make it worth adopting a more enticing price structure.
What I do know is that mall-based stores are prone to charging full MSRP on everything, while the big retail chains tend to discount heavily off of that price point. I bought the first few seasons of Babylon 5 at Sam Goody because they were the only ones who stocked it. I stopped buying anything there once I could start knocking $20 off the price of a box set by shopping elsewhere. And within a couple years they closed up shop (I'm sure that was because Best Buy moved into town, and not because of the small amount of business they lost with me). #blockbuster
11/10/09
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11/10/09
And doesn't the external ports like the sd card slot lead to greater risk of the machine being hacked? #blockbuster
11/10/09
11/10/09
Can digital rentals do that?? #blockbuster
11/10/09
11/10/09
Randal Graves: Hermaphroditic porn. Starlets with both organs. You should see the box. Beautiful chicks with dicks that put mine to shame.
Dante Hicks: And you rented this?
Randal Graves: Hey, I like to expand my horizons.
11/10/09
11/10/09
11/10/09
I'd be more concerned about the DRM scheme they're using -- if I can't play it on my Myth box, there's no point.
Also, they probably should provide this online as well as in kiosks, but I won't hold my breath for Blockbuster to get that idea. #blockbuster
11/10/09
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11/10/09
They already "have an app for that"... Its called itunes. #blockbuster
11/10/09
11/12/09
But no way would apple ever approve another movie rental app, itunes is its #1 app for making money, hell the app store resides inside of itunes.
But then again they allowed pandora which I know is a lot different then Itunes, but it still plays music... #blockbuster