[Gizzer]

Haven't seen a thread for this yet, so anyway:

Ars Technica have supposed proof of the existence of the video store. There are image resources in iTunes 5 that show icons for video documents as well as a "Buy Video" button.

Interestingly in the comments under the article someone has noted that if you go to www.apple.com/movies you are taken to a "You do not have sufficient access" page rather than a "Page not found" message. Hmmm... hidden BETA website anyone?

[709]

WTF is the meaning of the 'Gift Video' button? You can buy it for someone else?

[Eugene]

Originally Posted by 709 WTF is the meaning of the 'Gift Video' button? You can buy it for someone else?

Apple already sells videos that come bundled with special music content. I imagine these videos are considered "gift videos."

[HezMah19]

Well, whatevers going on over there, none of the other Apple sites show it up.
(eg. apple.com/au/movies)

"Looking for something..."

[InactionMan]

http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=9480

[initialsBB]

can't help thinking of the Radiohead lyrics : "just because you feel it doesn't mean it's there"

[kscherer]

Apple will release a video store. This much is certain, and they will spring it onto the market as secretly as they can.

They will NOT do it until there is enough content to justify it and the high cost of putting a video player into the market with enough resolution to justify itself.

A few little icons does not a video store make! And, since we all know they are doing it, Ars Technica's little "revelation" is nothing to get excited about.

[DMBand0026]

Originally Posted by kscherer Apple will release a video store. This much is certain, and they will spring it onto the market as secretly as they can. They will NOT do it until there is enough content to justify it and the high cost of putting a video player into the market with enough resolution to justify itself.

I agree. Apple has shown considerable intelligence and tact when it comes to the iApps, iTunes (includes music store), and the iPod. They are however lacking in many other areas.

My point is, the video store will happen and there will be a portable video player that is released either concurrently or shortly after the debut of the Video Store. I think enough people have a fast enough connection now and enough hard drive space that this will become a reality sooner rather than later.

Think about it. You want to watch a movie on a cold winter night when it would suck to go out to the video store (not to mention the fact that video stores suck anyway). So you hop on your computer, launch iTunes, hit the video store, download that new release you've been wanting to see in H.264 quality, burn it on Blu-Ray DVD, toss it in your DVD player and make it an Apple night. Connections are fast enough and DVD drives are fast enough that this can all happen relatively quickly now.

The iTunes music store changed things, and so will the iTunes Video Store. The movie distribution companies, production companies, crap like that will be quick to jump on the iTunes Video Store bandwagon after seeing the success the iTMS brought to the music industry.

[rasmits]

Originally Posted by DMBand0026 So you hop on your computer, launch iTunes, hit the video store, download that new release you've been wanting to see in H.264 quality, burn it on Blu-Ray DVD, toss it in your DVD player and make it an Apple night. Connections are fast enough and DVD drives are fast enough that this can all happen relatively quickly now.

That would take way too long. A really long time. I bet I could go to Blockbuster and back 6 or 7 times before the video was done downloading, not to mention the time it would take to burn onto Blu-Ray DVD.

I'm sure there's a better, more efficient way to do it, and Apple is working on it right now.

What I don't understand is why all of this is (presumably) expected to be a part of iTunes. "iTunes Video Store" has and always will sound foolish and wrong to me. It's more "Apple-like" to create two separate programs to accomplish what are sure to be two separate tasks, not tack some video store onto a music organization app.

Could you imagine the mess it would make iTunes into? You look at music totally different from the way you look at and play video. Music can be organized into long, huge lists organized by artist and it would make total sense, but it just wouldn't work to toss in a few dozen videos into your list of 10,000 songs.

I just pray those are there for music videos at the most, or even better, turn out to be nothing at all. There has to be a separate app. Call it iFlicks, iShow, iMwatchingmovies or what ever, but it's the only thing that'll make it worth while.

Of course, I could be wrong, which I probably am. Maybe Apple will do it in a way that makes sense, but they'd have to try really hard.

edit: about "apple.com/movies"; it's just a folder where they store their Quicktime content.

For example, the location of the trailer for the movie "Kicking and Screaming" is-

http://movies.apple.com/movies/unive...eaming_480.mov

[nassau]

all in all a good post, but i'd like to comment on the following... ahem

Originally Posted by rasmits Could you imagine the mess it would make iTunes into? You look at music totally different from the way you look at and play video. Music can be organized into long, huge lists organized by artist and it would make total sense, but it just wouldn't work to toss in a few dozen videos into your list of 10,000 songs.

thinkPorn.... there are lots of short snippets out there.....

Originally Posted by rasmits For example, the location of the trailer for the movie "Kicking and Screaming" is- http://movies.apple.com/movies/unive...eaming_480.mov

but that's movies.apple.com, not www.apple.com

[rasmits]

Originally Posted by nassau but that's movies.apple.com, not www.apple.com

It's all in the same place.

[ThunderPoit]

if that were true, wouldnt www.apple.com/movies/... and movies.apple.com/movies/... take you to the same place? cuz it dont :P

not saying that the movie store is hidding there, just nitpicking
too bad the phonetic name is already used, i think iMooV would be a cool throwback

[Gizzer]

Originally Posted by rasmits What I don't understand is why all of this is (presumably) expected to be a part of iTunes. "iTunes Video Store" has and always will sound foolish and wrong to me. It's more "Apple-like" to create two separate programs to accomplish what are sure to be two separate tasks, not tack some video store onto a music organization app.

First off, I disagree with the idea that Apple will make 2 applications for this: "iTunes Movie Store" or "iTunes Video Store" sounds like a perfectly natural thing to actually say when you voice it aloud. "iTunes" has almost become a brand name now, so strictly sticking to what it's name actually implies (ie Tunes) isn't as relevant.

Originally Posted by rasmits Could you imagine the mess it would make iTunes into? You look at music totally different from the way you look at and play video. Music can be organized into long, huge lists organized by artist and it would make total sense, but it just wouldn't work to toss in a few dozen videos into your list of 10,000 songs.

Aren't you forgetting iTunes 5? When you search now, a new bar appears to let you filter your library by music, Audiobooks, etc. One minor update and you can bet that a new "Videos" filter button appears too, not to mention a main "Videos" main category on the left-hand menu bar (like the ITMS, Purchased Music & Library buttons).

I think one app will work just fine.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Gizzer Aren't you forgetting iTunes 5? When you search now, a new bar appears to let you filter your library by music, Audiobooks, etc. One minor update and you can bet that a new "Videos" filter button appears too, not to mention a main "Videos" main category on the left-hand menu bar (like the ITMS, Purchased Music & Library buttons). I think one app will work just fine.

You're missing the point. The overall UI, not just searching, is designed for listening to music. The search filter is a relatively minor part of a larger design.

What people like myself and rasmits are afraid of (regarding the addition of video playback into iTunes) is that Apple will be so blinded by its success that it will forego good interface design just to keep the famous "iTunes" name and to placate the Average Joes by not radically changing (read: improving) the UI.

Have you actually tried using iTunes as a manager for video files? It's awful from a UI perspective. You have this huge wasted area of the track listing unless it's filled with something. Really, do people have thousands of movies on their computer? Hundreds? Dozens? You have filtering and playlist features that are generally useless with movies unless, again, you have a hundred films that are somehow related. For playback, it defaults to showing your movies in this tiny corner of the window of less than a couple hundred pixels in each dimension. Etc.

The problem is that this is turning iTunes into an unwieldily app that tries to do everything and does nothing particularly well (except probably for its original function, playing music). This is true of many everything-and-the-kitchen-sink applications; fortunately Apple has recently been smart enough to avoid designing kitchen sink apps. Just look at Mac OS X. Does it include a one-shot email/calendar/contact application like Microsoft Outlook? No, it ships specialized components as Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Look at the new iWork suite. Is Apple sticking with the one-shot philosophy of ClarisWorks and packing all the features under one skin? No, it ships two specialized components as Pages and Keynote.

Do we need an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink app that tries to play every kind of media format? Where do you draw the line at what media to include? Why not package image-viewing into it and deprecate iPhoto? Why not include DVD-viewing and deprecate DVD Player? What about commerce? We've already got the iTunes Music Store built-in; why not bundle more special stores for buying other Apple goods like iPods and accessories?

Once you start growing like this, the sky's the limit. As things like this grow, though, they become more and more cumbersome, losing focus and losing the ability to do any particular task great, instead doing a million tasks just good enough.

Like it or not, playing music and playing movies are two very different things. Movies require dedicated access to the screen and for you to stop working on other tasks to see them; music can be played in the background without impeding other actions. Movies require a great deal of time, attention, and psychological and emotional involvement in following plot and character developments; music tracks require relatively very little time and generally do not have such sweeping changes that require deeper thinking. Movies do not have a high replay rate, due mostly to the previous statement; favorite songs can easily be recycled every hour or even looped individually.

So, even though the transition from music to movies may seem superficially like a natural one, it's really not. Such a transition (or addition, rather) demands the whole UI be rethought. Of course, it would be better to ship a new, separate app with its own UI rather than obfuscate iTunes' great music-playing UI.

[Koodari]

Maybe DVD Player and QT Player should be combined into one app, considering how they essentially deal with the same thing? That would be the right platform for a video store.

And put in fullscreen already, it's just pitiful how they leave out a crucial player feature that is in every single player on the market. Kinda like screen spanning.

[JayReding]

Originally Posted by rasmits That would take way too long. A really long time. I bet I could go to Blockbuster and back 6 or 7 times before the video was done downloading, not to mention the time it would take to burn onto Blu-Ray DVD. I'm sure there's a better, more efficient way to do it, and Apple is working on it right now.

It's already here. H.264 encoded at 2Mbps - start the download, wait for streaming (and some connections are fast enough not to stream), and then play through your AirPort network to your home stereo system. Anamorphic SD video content is encoded at 720x486 and then stretched to widescreen (which is actually how most video is produced anyway). The reason for the stretching is so that you don't end up encoding noise. HD content can be downsampled to half resolution and streamed using the same bandwidth. Picture quality won't be as good as HD, but it doesn't have to be. If it's as good as the same DVD you get at Blockbuster, except no lines and no waiting for mailings like Netflix, you have a winner.

The technical side of this is virtually done - the iFlicks Video Store could launch tomorrow. It's the legal side that is holding everything back, and that's probably the biggest hurdle to Apple's video initiatives.w

[Eugene]

iTunes needz more tabz.

[rasmits]

Originally Posted by JayReding It's already here. H.264 encoded at 2Mbps - start the download, wait for streaming (and some connections are fast enough not to stream), and then play through your AirPort network to your home stereo system.

He said download, for burning onto a DVD. Downloading a full length HD quality movie, even in H.264, then burning it onto DVD would take a significantly long time.

Streaming is of course, another story, though it still couldn't be instant. Especially comparing it to stuff like "OnDemand" cable programming.

[Messiahtosh]

Seems pretty convincing to me.

[rasmits]

Well, I don't have a whole lot of experience, but if the HD Gallery on the Quicktime site is any indication of what it would take to download a full length, High-Definition video, it's going to take a while, and use a lot of processor power.

Not saying it isn't possible, but I don't see how it could be considered "fast" or even significantly reasonable. My PowerBook stutters like there's no tomorrow on 480p video.

Somewhat contradictory to what I was arguing before, I'm going to say that if there is to be a video store, it would not be High-Definition 1080i video.

[The Return of the 'nut]

Apple's music store uses arguably shitty quality audio files. What makes you think a video store would use anything better?

[rasmits]

High Definition, in low or high quality, makes for unbearably large files. You're proving my point actually, I was saying that using high quality movies doesn't make sense.

Someone made a comment about downloading a High Def movie and burning it to Blu-Ray. I said it couldn't happen.

[MacGregor]

Originally Posted by Brad You're missing the point. The overall UI, not just searching, is designed for listening to music. The search filter is a relatively minor part of a larger design. So, even though the transition from music to movies may seem superficially like a natural one, it's really not. Such a transition (or addition, rather) demands the whole UI be rethought. Of course, it would be better to ship a new, separate app with its own UI rather than obfuscate iTunes' great music-playing UI.

I think the future GUI for video will look more like an Apple-ized version of Delicious Library now that they hired that guy on! Think of a virtual Blockbuster will rows and genres and DVD covers.

Quick searches for online material that will use up the extra space in the itunes frames.

[Henriok]

That's quite stong evidence but they really should change the place where they store the movie files before doing anything else. I thought somewhare in the folder ~/Movies was a pretty good place for storing movies, but Apple seems to favor ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ instead. Pretty stupid if you ask me.

[rasmits]

Originally Posted by MacGregor I think the future GUI for video will look more like an Apple-ized version of Delicious Library now that they hired that guy on! Think of a virtual Blockbuster will rows and genres and DVD covers.

I was thinking that too. It'd be nice.