iTunes 电影租赁:好莱坞的木马程序?

貌似很多人都忽略了 Macworld '08 keynote 上的一个重要细节。

老乔宣布 iTunes 推出电影租赁服务,然后 20 世纪福斯电影公司的董事长兼 CEO Jim Gianopulos 上来代表好莱坞六大片厂说话。

他先简短夸奖了老乔一番,然后说,他要说说苹果和好莱坞合作的背后故事。

他说,几大片厂都在考虑数字媒体时代的电影业该使用什么商业模式,然后结论是,电影观众其实需要五样基本的东西:多种选择可获取性便利性控制权,以及易携带。老乔带着这个新型租赁业务来找他们,实在是一个“不用脑子思考就知道好的东西”(no-brainer)。

接着,他突然话锋一转:说到给用户更多选择,正好今天 20 世纪福斯公司发售电影业史上第一张带有数字格式拷贝的 DVD。换言之,购买了这张 DVD 的用户,再不用费心思去破解、然后把视频抓下来、转换成适合的数字格式、导入其他移动设备了,这里面就自带该片的数字格式拷贝(digital copy),电影公司都准备好了,让你直接就可以导入各种酷玩意儿(all the cool toys)。

还用说?你买了正版 DVD,就不需要 iTunes 了。想想看,DVD 在美国 25 美元一部,iTunes 下载 15 美元一部,真喜欢看电影、而且家里设备齐全的人,我相信会真的考虑不下载,而是买碟了。

算算这笔帐吧,假如家里电视机、DVD 机、电脑、手机、iPod 都是现成的——

  买 DVD iTunes 下载 iTunes 租赁
电脑上看 Yes Yes Yes
iPod 上看 Yes Yes Yes
手机(或其他掌上设备)上看 Yes No No

电视机上看

Yes
Yes/No

* 需另付 229 美元购买 Apple TV
* 可能还要花钱购置外置硬盘、或者 259 美元起的“时间胶囊”
Yes/No

* 需另付 229 美元购买 Apple TV
* 不需要外置硬盘或“时间胶囊”,因为影片 24 小时后就废了
带到别人家去看
或借给别人看
Yes No No

联想到去年老乔曾写公开信,要求大唱片公司都去掉 DRM,不知道好莱坞是被老乔教会了呢,还是自己想到了出路,给 iTunes 来了这么一道(新片 DVD 发售 30 日之后才能上 iTunes 租赁,24 小时后就失效,这样的政策,毫无疑问是好莱坞在与苹果的合作中留的一个后手)。

(点击下面链接,进入本帖阅读 Jim Gianopulos 的发言)

Wow. What a great crowd. I'm at the back stage, listening to Steve talking about movie rentals and getting all excited. And I already knew about it. I can't imagine how else it's gonna feel.

I'll give you a little back story. You know, you don't get to talk about movies, media and technologies for very long before you start to talk about the business models. So, like other studios, we spend a lot of time talking about business models. Old models, new models, evolving models, haven't-proved models...When you really get down to it, all those models, all those complexities, are just down to two things -- make great movies, and give them to many people as possible as you can. That's basically it. When you talk to people about what they want, the same thing comes back. They want a wide variety of choices. They want easy access to it. They want it to be able to be convenient. They want to be able to control when, where and how they watch it. And they want to take it with them every chance they get. Choice, access, convenience, control and portability. All so pretty basic, basic enough even a studio guy can understand. So, when we do things that way, we have to think them through, right? So, we go to our in-house technology department, or Google, or futurists, or technologists. Give them all the ramifications and this and that. Give them more data, And that'll be the the slide as the result.

这就是我们分析研究后的结论……

Homer is on board, and its species is coming to the video rental for The Simpsons movie. Actually, the real back story is that when Steve came to us with this idea, it was a no-brainer. Just the most exciting and coolest we'd ever heard. And certainly we still feel that way.

You know, video rental is not a new thing. They are certainly available in other ways and continue to make people make choices. But then there was music, and there was the iPod. There was a phone, and there was the iPhone. So, you know, Apple does things in a very intuitive, insightful, innovative -- a couple of i-words left. But you got the idea and now you're all here. So, you understand. So, I think it's a transformative version of the rental model and we're incredibly excited about it.

Go back to the idea of giving people choices, options and ways of enjoying movies, because that's kind of what we do. There's another idea we've talked to Steve about and we've been working on for a while, which is DVD. You know, DVD has been with us for a while, especially now with the next generation format -- the Blu-ray, it's like. Right? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. But, you know, people will still wanna buy DVDs and enjoy the benefit of hard media, but we don't wanna deny them the benefit of having the same movie available to their iPods, iTunes library and Apple TV. So, we developed a digital copy that will be on the discs going forward.

 正好今天我身上带来一张碟……

What I happen to have is a copy of the first one with me. Again, auspiciously, today, coincidentally -- it actually was. We've actually planned for this a long time ago. The DVD premiere of Family Guy: Blue Harvest* video, which is Seth MacFarlane's historical take on his favorite movie, Star Wars, which George Lucas, fortunately, has a sense of humor about. I think you'll really enjoy it. But this contains a digital copy, which you can instantly and easily move into your iTunes, into your iPod and into all the cool toys. First one! And it's free! So, you know, we're really excited about this.

正版DVD附送免费数字拷贝,用户可方便地导入iPod以及其他厂商的设备

(此时,乔布斯示意自己要上台了。)

But today, for us, certainly is the exciting beginning of the movie rentals on iTunes. We couldn't be happier and are proud of our partnership and friendship. We're looking forward to bring you a lot of exciting entertainment in the years to come. Thank you, folks. (和乔布斯招手示意,走下舞台。)

* 福斯电视公司一部极受欢迎的动画片《恶搞之家》(Family Guy)的第六季第一集