Movie studios, faced with dwindling DVD sales as consumers turn to streaming, want to create their own cloud-based storage option to compete with Apple. Aptly named UltraViolet, the service apparently hinges on invisible interest by audiences that have abandoned physical sales.
A version of DRM placed on DVD movies, UltraViolet allows consumers to buy media but store it in a digital locker. An included passcode lets users then access the movies online. So far, other than Apple — which has its own iCloud service appearing Wednesday, Oct. 12 — Walt Disney is the only company not going along with the studios’ cloud plans. The late Steve Jobs was Disney’s largest shareholder. Disney says it will launch its own service, Disney Studio All Access in the next few months.
Although Apple has had trouble obtaining licensing rights to provide movies via iCloud, finance chief Peter Oppenheimer said this summer he expects “neat stuff” appearing in the cloud-based iTunes store. Just what “neat stuff” remains unclear. However, UltraViolet appears to be a preventive measure against Apple gaining the ability to stream movies from the cloud.
This latest move from the studios could be just the latest example of fighting a rear-guard attack. Already, much of movie sales happens either via Netflix streaming, the ubiquitous Red Box kiosks or Apple. Whether consumers will purchase physical DVDs that can be stored online is anyone’s guess. But perhaps such uncertainty just further explains the studios’ choice of words: ultraviolet cannot be seen by the human eye.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
20 responses to “Hollywood Wants To Bring Movies To The iCloud”
This will never work because the studios will of course shoot themselves in the foot anyway.
It would require them to release the digital movie the same time as the DVD minimum (they currently don’t do this), and would work a lot better if the digital movie was released when the original was released to the theatres (never happen). For these reasons I predict failure.
Someone beat them to it, it’s called a Torrent site.
Not endorsing them, just stating the somewhat blindingly obvious.
Torrents don’t start playing immediately, and obscure titles can fall off the radar quickly. “Someone SEEEEEEED please!!!!” There is also the
risk of lawsuit.
Pirated movies and TV shows are available, but Netflix streaming does quite well.
Pirated MP3s are available, but iTunes does quite well.
Many people can’t be bothered to pirate, or have a copyright conscience, or simply can’t figure it out. Once you make legitimate media affordable and easy enough to access, it sells just fine. Hollywood is slowly learning that $29.99 blu-rays don’t sell, and $9.99 blu-rays sell just fine. Their attempt to fix this is to bundle in streaming with the $29.99 blu-rays, but I don’t think that will work.
What most consumers want: an unlimited library of on-demand titles, streamed at high quality, for an affordable price, and available immediately after airing/showing. The studios seem to oppose everything we want: they limit selection, provide low quality streaming, demand prices similar to retail physical media, and require a long delay before making a title available. It doesn’t sell, and they are shocked. Shocked!!!
Ultraviolet also causes cancer
I’m sure Ed didn’t mean to write an erroneous headline that implies that Hollywood is going to allow the same downloading of purchased movies etc from iTunes that the networks are allowing with tv shows. When in fact the article says just the opposite.
I am going to go with autocorrect replacing his use of cloud with iCloud and he just didn’t happen to notice it.
Your title needs to be fixed. Hollywood is trying to salvage sales. Hollywood should sign with iTunes, but everyone wants a piece of the pie, understandable. Too bad people with XBMC can easily download movies off of various torrent sites and stream it to their TV. Essentially people could run XBMC (free), have that connected to a 2 TB hard drive (< $100), and stream it to their various products (TV, computers, tablet, notebooks, phones, etc). OR Hollywood could sign with Apple and have a ton of people that (as a whole) don’t believe in pirating (generally speaking here) and are willing to pay fair prices for music, movies, etc. Only time will tell, but I’m guessing that different companies have been trying to convince Hollywood of this, not hard to see why they are getting approached by everyone, just walk into best buy and take a look of the rack of $5, 10 blue ray videos.
I agree with most of what you say.
Torrents dont… You’re right, but with today’s internet speed it takes about 20 minutes to download a movie.
Pirated movies and tv shows… Netflix streaming does very well. The content after a couple of months starts to seem outdated however. I’m not sure if you feel this way but it’s my personal opinion.
Pirated MP3s… I agree iTunes… Which is because of the Apple community, however Hollywood is going out on it’s own.
Many people cant be bothered to… I agree that if it’s affordable enough people will purchase it. $10 blue rays are not as often purchased as you think. The same people that are not interested in downloading torrents are also not interested in buying a blue ray and ripping it so that they can put it on their cell phones, tablets, computers, etc so that they have access to it everywhere.
Most consumers what- Yep I think available immediately after airing/showing is key.
You need to talk to these people because I’m tired of Netflix putting movies from the 80s in my ” New Releases” sections. Maybe you should mention their stock price to them also.
Why do you need “physical” media (DVD’s), when you’re going digital anyway?!?! Doesn’t make any sense. Why go to the trouble of manufacturing the DVD in the first place, when all involved are only interested in the digital content?? The movie studios need to stop thinking they’re smarter than consumers & start pricing things accordingly. Calling it a DVD, just so you can charge users DVD-prices is ridiculous!
Hmmmm…..after reading some of the posts on the thread I’m demanding those two minutes of my life back. As usual Tribe iTard have no clue WTF they’re talking about. Whether the iTard nation wants to admit it or not iCloud will be a dismal failure. First of all anyone with brains will buy a DVD and not pay almost the same price for a digital DRM download that forces you to use ShitTunes. I knom this isn’t an issue for Club iTard but those of us who aren’t stupid would rather pay the extra two bucks and be DRM free.
Second of all the movie companies are just as greedy as crApple and will never give crApple a slice of the pie. Those rich assholes are rich for a reason and if the iTard nation thinks crApple can dictate terms to all HollyWhoreWorld they got another thing coming. crApple should just concentrate on better serving their fanbase and provide downloads of gay porn. They’ll sell by far more gay porn then movies on ShitTunes.
Do you really think your physical DVD is DRM free? At least here in Europe it isn’t. And it is as plain annoying not to be able to watch a DVD on a Laptop because the cope protection doesn’t allow it to play as it is annoying to have an iTunes file which won’t play on anything that isn’t apple …
But the fact is that even on a physical DVD you are not allowed to copy or play the content as you like.