One day soon, the kids won't even know what a video store is. All videos and movies will be downloaded, making a trip to the video store an anachronism. Don't laugh. The next time you ask a child to roll down their windows and they ask why people say that, you'll know what I mean. Soon they will think the same about renting a movie.
The consumer benefits are enormous, especially in these times of high gas prices and terrible traffic. Who wants to drive anywhere to get their video content when it can simply be downloaded? A mouse click is much more convenient. As more people see their computer as the center of their entertainment system, the days of the video store are numbered. With the launch of Microsoft's Vista operating system, which has tremendous integrated video and entertainment capabilities, the consumer took another giant step to adopt their computer as the center of their entertainment universe.
As millions of people bought iPOD and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft Zunes to watch mobile videos, they have gotten used to downloading their content, rather than waiting for it to be delivered or driving to get it. The fifth generation iPOD and the launch of the Zune in the last quarter of 2006 have been incredibly successful. The launch of the video-capable iPOD helped Apple sell 14 million units in the fourth quarter of 2005 alone. The Zune has experienced somewhat slower sales, despite a larger, brighter full-color display and network capacity. WiFi, two features that should have helped Microsoft bridge the gap with Apple.
Many of the reasons why Zune failed to sell on par with the iPOD are due to Microsoft's marketing strategy for the player. For example, although the Zune comes in many colors, Microsoft has been unable to adequately communicate this fact to the buying public. A second reason for the Zune's slow sales has to do with Microsoft's propensity to describe the Zune in a marketing speech, rather than clearly explaining to consumers why they want one. Here is Microsoft talking about the Zune: "It is not really a device. It is a participant in the new connected entertainment marketplace to create new shared and social experiences based on content" Huh ???
In May 2007, Microsoft attempted to reverse its previous failure to capture the imagination of consumers with the introduction of the Halo 3 edition of the Zune. This special edition is loaded with special Halo audio and video content, including Halo soundtracks, theatrical trailers, and a special Red vs Blue episode only available for Zune. It's also stamped with Halo 3 graphics. At press time, the Halo 3 edition of Zune is only available at tubidy mp3 download.
There are fewer technical reasons why the Zune has failed to bring down the iPOD in the portable video player market. Perhaps the main one has to do with its inexplicable decision to exclude a trackball from the Zune feature set. While it has a controller that is seen around the world as a scroll wheel, it's actually a 4-way cursor button, just like on a TV remote control. A 4-way cursor is not how many consumers want to control their portable video players, so they have voted with their dollars in favor of iPOD. With that said, the Zune is truly a fantastic player, and the video quality is excellent for a small laptop. For those consumers who have bought their units with that in mind, they have the ability to download and enjoy all kinds of videos, TV shows and movies on a very nice portable platform.
The iPOD will allow the use of the Apple AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless, AIF or WAV codec for audio downloads. Video content supports H.264, which is also known as MPEG-4 part 10. This is a standard for high-quality compressed video. Zune uses, I suppose, Microsoft's WMA and WMV formats for audio and video, respectively. The Zune also supports H.264 for video and MP3 or AAC for audio. Both players will allow JPEG image formats. There are many file format converters available for use with both players to allow video in other formats and resolutions to be converted and optimized for storage and use with portable players.
No comments:
Post a Comment