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February 25, 2007

rivals

BitTorrent Entertainment Network to become latest competition for the iTunes Store

Posted Feb. 25, ’07, 3:59 PM PT by Aaron Freedman
Category | Apple » Rivals

Bt It doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the infamous BitTorrent would be major competition for iTunes TV and movie downloads. But, what does come as a surprise is that BitTorrent is going to be offering video content that’s legal. Yes, BitTorrent, the P2P system that’s well-known for distributing huge amounts of copyrighted content online, is going legit. Well, it’s not actually the P2P system we call BitTorrent. It’s BitTorrent Inc., the company that created and still manages the BitTorrent protocol. As of tomorrow, BitTorrent Inc. will be reforming as BitTorrent Entertainment Network, a totally legitimate video and game content provider.

While we had heard about this months back, the details of the new BitTorrent Inc. have finally been revealed. BitTorrent Entertainment Network will be offering thousands of television shows, 3,000 movies, and thousands of music videos and PC games for purchase. TV Shows will run $1.99 an episode, while new movie releases can be rented for $3.99 and classics for $2.99. And, as mentioned before, all of these will be imprisoned protected with Microsoft’s Windows Media 11 DRM. And, of course, all of the content will be distributed via the BitTorrent protocol.

While it’s great to see another legal video download service, I’m not exactly sure how well BitTorrent will succeed. Joost and Azureus’s Zudeo already have their own legal P2P video services, and competition from Wal-Mart, Amazon, Netflix, Movielink, Apple, and more all could spell bad news for BitTorrent. Personally, I don’t see BitTorrent succeeding. Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Movielink all follow a very similar business model and are direct competition, while Joost, Netlfix and Apple use different methods. In the end, I really see Joost and Netflix coming out ahead. With the makers of Skype behind it, Joost looks very promising with its P2P, free, and ad-supported model. Netflix could conquer online movie watching with its fast, free (with a Netflix account), online streaming method. Sure, Apple could get HD downloads and the Apple TV could be a smashing success, but right now I really think that only Joost and Netflix hold the largest long-term potential.

[via Engadget]


1 Comments

fletcher said:

I don't know why the Mac community expends so much reporting on these services that are not Mac compatible. I find it hard to apply the adjective "great" to the release of another Microsoft DRM-based also ran.

The idea this time around is that you will give them your bandwidth so they can rake in the money while their media files are served through your broadband connection.

And, through the magic of Microsoft DRM you can rent movies. OMG! Nothing excites me as much as the prospect of expiring media files.

February 26, 2007 7:49 AM

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