Watch out BitTorrent Entertainment Network, for beginning today, iTunes customers will be able to purchase video content from the “largest modern film library in the world.”
A month back iTunes added content from Lionsgate films to its popular online movie download store, and today it has announced that it has secured access to MGM Studios film library as well.
“It’s exciting to be bringing so many amazing films from our catalog to iTunes,” said Douglas A. Lee, MGM’s executive vice president of Worldwide Digital Media. “We have an unrivaled movie library and are looking forward to adding even more films in the future so users can take their favorite movies with them wherever they go.”
“More than two million movies have now been downloaded from the iTunes Store making it the world’s most popular online movie store,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We’re absolutely thrilled so many legendary MGM films are joining an iTunes film catalog that now has over 500 movies.”
Film titles to now be offered include: “Dances With Wolves,” “Mad Max,” “The Great Train Robbery,” “Rocky,” “The Thomas Crown Affair,” and “Ronin.”
Video content downloaded from the iTunes Store are downloaded “…in near-DVD quality at a resolution of 640×480 (up to 480, depending on the aspect ratio) and can be viewed on a computer, fifth generation iPod or widescreen TV with Apple TV.”
This can’t be good news for the BitTorrent Entertainment Network whose real strength is the breadth of video content it offers. DRM and playback issues aside, as iTunes continues to add to its video content library it makes BEN further irrelevant.
I think in the end that the BitTorrent Entertainment Network will be primarily an ad-supported content model rather than a pay per download one. The reason for this lies primarily in the fact that it just can’t match iTunes in standardization and user familiarity. Your average user just won’t be able to configure a BitTorrent client server properly (i.e. port forwarding), nor will he be able to find the content as portable and media player friendly as iTunes allows him. He can’t put content from BEN on his iPod or even necessarily be guaranteed that there will be no playback problems or concerns. With iTunes its “pay, click, and watch.” The average user just won’t stomach anything more difficulty than that.
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