Movie downloads suck. There are lots of reasons why they haven’t caught on yet, and we have the Top 10 of them here. Sure, everyone’s talking about movie downloads, but in reality hardly anyone is doing anything about them.
The idea of having a limitless selection of every movie ever filmed is compelling, but it’s rife with so many gotchas that the majority of movie fans are staying away in droves. To put it into perspective, Ben Fritz at Variety offers a sobering stat: the total number of movies sold as downloads is less than the first day’s sales of the DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. That really does suck, doesn’t it?
Here are the Top 10 reasons why the idea of digital downloads of movies hasn’t gained much traction yet:
1. Pricing: Apple’s iTunes store charges $14.99 for a new release and $9.99 for an older movie, and Wal-Mart is expected to come close to matching that except for brand-new releases for which it will charge $19.88. That’s comparable to the price of a DVD, but with that you get a disc you can hold in your hand, cover art, a tangible item. Plus, that price is a whole lot more than you’d pay to rent a movie at Blockbuster or have one delivered to your mailbox from Netflix.
2. Meager selection of movies: although Wal-Mart promises movie downloads from the “big six” studios (Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal), it still won’t be able to match the vast collection of an ordinary video store, at least not for a while. And the iTunes store’s selection of films is so slim, it’s just pathetic.
