BitTorrent is shrugging off its reputation as a program that helps pirates find illegal copies of software, music, and video files and launching its new BitTorrent Entertainment Network tomorrow. The new store has support from content producers including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, MTV, Paramount, MGM, and Lions Gate.The store will feature about 3,000 movies at launch, and several thousand television episodes. There'll also be about 1,000 video games, and 1,000 music videos.
TV shows will sell for $1.99 per episode, which seems to be the going rate. You'll be able to rent movies, but not buy them, with new releases, including Superman Returns renting for $3.99, and older titles costing $2.99. Apparently BitTorrent has permission to sell feature length films, but decided against it after seeing how much the studios wanted to charge users for those films
The videos will play in Windows Media Player 11 and include Microsoft DRM. That poses a few problems for the new service. First, it means that videos will only be available on Windows computers. Second, while companies like Amazon or Apple are well known companies that have begun offering consumers a chance to download videos in the last few years, BitTorrent is only really a big name among those who are used to using the technology to download videos for free.
If you have a choice of using the BitTorrent Entertainment Network to download a video that you can only watch on one Windows-based PC for a limited time, and you have to pay $3.99 for it, or turning to an alternative torrent network that will allow you to download the same video for free and without any DRM, which would you choose? Because I don't think it's fair to say that BitTorrent is in the same league as Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple at this point. I think the company's main competition will be piracy.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-25-2007 @ 4:48PM
MacGuffin said...
The studios have a HUGE problem and they know it.
Anyone who has has a little net savvy can DL just about any movie out there to their HD and be nejoying it in about 5 minutes.
I'm not sure that BitTorrent is the answer.
Personally I would be willing to pay $3.99 - 4,99 for a new or recent release if it were 700 MB and easily downloadable.
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2-25-2007 @ 4:48PM
Jeff said...
With regards to network TV shows, I don't know why anyone would pay for something that is broadcast over-the-air for free. Save your money and buy your friendly neighborhood computer geek a 6-pack of something and he/she will probably hook you up whenever you need anything.
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2-25-2007 @ 9:53PM
John said...
That's my problem with all of these services: they all charge the same thing! If you give 1.99 to the Itunes store you get a video in MP4 format which (plays on the Ipod), or you can go give 1.99 cents to the Zune store and get it in WMV format (which plays in the Zune), or you can go--I don't care! I don't care about anybody else's format! I'm not a technophile so I don't notice a difference, and I don't want to have to wait 7 hours for something that will give me less than an hour of enjoyment.
Guilt keeps me from buying too many songs from a russian website called allofmp3.com (it sells mp3s for really low prices and there are some court proceedings in progress that might put them in legal trouble), but come on! Even BitTorrent is doing the same thing now. Give. Me. A. Deal. These big companies don't take into consideration how much time we have to sacrifice to download those big files; a gigabyte for a movie! Even for broadband users that probably takes a long time. All of that and you only get to view it on one computer or on the Ipod--you've have to be joking.
I first used a torrent site to download an anti-virus program because I really needed to update my security and I don't believe that I should have to spend 40 to 100 dollars for some quality protection, but, I have started to download other things...other things that I probably shouldn't have downloaded.
All the entertainment industries are completely insenstive to their customers and are not adapting to the changing climates; when good hearted people are breaking the law, you can't tell me that they've turned bad...that would mean that everyone who drank alchohol during the prohibition period is an evil person.
Music is everybody's possession. It's only
publishers who think that people own it.
-John Lennon
http://myspace.com/novumoculum
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2-26-2007 @ 8:50AM
erroneous_nick said...
Too expensive, too many limitations. Just like all the other greedy control freaks.
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