Yeah yeah yeah, we knew this was coming, and I find this very underwhelming. The 3rd mass media content (cinema) is now made available for the 7th of the mass media (mobile). And how its done. Cumbersome, by side-loading via a PC and the internet.
So here is the news as reported on the Guardian site. Motorola and Paramount are collaborating in the UK to offer mobile phone owners initially 40 full-length movies from the Paramount library, including the Italian Job, the Star Trek series and Team America: World Police. The full-length movies will cost 5.99 UKP (8 Euro, 12 USD) to 8.99 UKP (13 Euro, 18 USD) per title. Very underwhelming. Your basic DVD for these older titles is available for far less.. But yes, of course, some people want some movies onto their phones and can now buy them online from the Motorola movie store (think Apple iTunes). Then the movie must be downloaded to a PC, then moved to the phone. Man, this is cumbersome. Why can't they do the full sale directly to the phone, perhaps chapter-by-chapter; our 3.5G networks are quite happily capable of this kind of downloads..
Anyway, Motorola's Andrew Till thinks movies on mobile are "primed for massive growth". Moto will expand the service to France, Germany, Italy and Spain later this year.
Yeah, like we've been saying, you'll always find when a new media channel appears, that older media content will be ported to the newer media (movies previously came also to TV, the internet and even went to recordings once home video recording equipment was added to the recordings media formats) but the real innovation comes from unique content, that is not even viable on the older media - like TV innnovations like Music TV videos, reality TV, chat shows, talk shows, game shows, 24 hour news, the weather channel - these are all TV content ie for the 5th of the mass media that would not work on the cinema; or YouTube videos from the internet ie 6th mass media that won't even work on TV, etc.
What we really need for mobile - and I'd hope Motorola could help us drive this side - is the new concepts for video on mobile. Not copying the movies, but inventing the new. Look at the videoblogging CNN is now doing with Nokia and the Urbanista Diaries for example.
Another idea that I believe will be better, is create a hot site where the users can select the best scene of the movies and than download the specific part to his phone. (I´m not sure if already exist)
I would love to have the Scene from Terminator with Schwarzenegger saying: HASTA LA VISTA BABY to say bye to my friends :)
Posted by: Dani Porto | June 10, 2008 at 11:28 PM