The deal that allowed Apple to offer Disney movies for paid download via iTunes is off to a pretty good start. Not sure what their goals were, but WSJ reports that 125,000 movies, to the tune of over $1M, were sold in the first week. This isn't much $ really, but many people thought that the internet was only good for short form content. The rise in broadband access has changed this and the race to own the movie download business is on.
Amazon has entered this fray as well with its UnBox movie service. I think it is interesting that they offer these downloadable movies for "rent" if you want to.
Forbes digs way into the weeds to explain the difference between the two services. The highlights are:
- Speed of download - iTunes will download much faster because of smaller file size. However, both are progressive downloads, so you don't have to wait for the whole file to download before you can start watching.
- Quality - Larger file sizes mean that Amazon will provide higher quality videos, so if you want to watch these on a tv, you should go with them. They also provide a lower quality version for use in portable video players.
- Openness - someone tell me if I'm wrong here, but I bet that these videos downloaded through iTunes will only work on an iPod. The Amazon solution would be hardware neutral.
