Posted by Derek Janssen on 09/11/06 05:10

M.B. wrote:
>
> It wasn't actually announced. It was quietly released and announced on
> their web site. The big announcements are supposed to be coming
> Tuesday. But the rumor mill for that is most likely movie downloads and
> MAYBE a new iPod.

Just to throw out a few absolute guesses [-GUESSES-]:

iPod Video is just starting to become the default technology for studios
to push their TV-rerun download product (yes, even Warner's given in),
but that's essentially become king of the frog pond--
It hasn't really become the "replacement for DVD" yet that clueless
analysts thought it would.

So far, Steve's big push to make the iPV (which he didn't really want to
make in the first place) a new default technology has been to ask
studios to include "iPod-ready" .MP4 versions of their movies as an
extra on the commercial disks and HD's...Which would make the iPod the
new universal/affordable replacement for the UMD and Mini-DVD disasters,
the pricey portables, and the bulky laptops which may become too
difficult for plane trips.

Up till now, the Big Studios have been too busy fighting their HD-Blu
battle with each other to listen to him, and the only one company who's
taken him up on it so far was one of the mom-and-pop Public-Domain
vultures who leap at anything.
But I'll blue-sky a guess that we'll hear from one
aggressively-marketing studio that's "decided" to experiment with the
idea on a few upcoming disks...And by strange coincidence, will it just
happen to be the studio Steve owns? :)
(And the one that pretended they hadn't gotten bad customer reviews on
"High School Musical", when customers who were already planning to buy
the disk anyway didn't want to pay extra for a crappy 320 download?)

Derek Janssen (I'm makin' this up, but who's in for a fiver?)
ejanss@comcast.net

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