Film Gecko

Pixar and iTunes Very Much in Love

by Administrator on November 13th, 2005

I recently had a bit of a rant on piracy and how I really don’t feel it’s the underlying cause to the tumble in cinema numbers. Apparently Steve Jobs, the head honcho at both Apple and Pixar, agrees. He feels that people aren’t yet in the habit of downloading illegal videos (with the insinuation that unless something is done, it may become a much larger problem). His solution to piracy is to offer people a legal alternative, allowing them to download high quality films at humane prices. Work with the trend, progress and advance, rather than war against it.

Towards that end Apple’s entertainment download site, iTunes, has been offering short Pixar movies for download. In a single month 125,000 of the short features have sold at $1.99 a pop. Available for download are the Oscar-winning shorts Tin Toy, Geri’s Game and For the Birds, with more to come in the near future.

Jobs makes an interesting comment about the possibility of downloading full length films by similar methods. Like any of us who have ever tried to pull 2 hours of video through a tiny bandwidth pipe, Jobs feels that download times in the U.S. would be far too slow to be a convenient source. I wonder what Mr. Innovation can come up with to help minimize that difficulty.

(source)

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