Macs may be used to make motion pictures and certainly take up enough place as props on movie and television sets, but apparently the Mac isn’t “secure” enough to merit the support of major studios as they launch a new play-on-demand Internet movie service called Movielink, according to News.com.
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The new service is a joint project between MGM Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Studios, and shows a limited selection of first-run and classic films, according to the report.
The initial release of Movielink is not Mac-compatible, although the service hasn’t ruled out Macintosh support in the future, according to an e-mail sent to News.com by Movielink CEO James Ramo. Ramo explained that Movielink has not yet found a suitable security technology that works with the Mac.
Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said that it’s too soon to judge the market for Internet-based movie services, and suggested that the lack of digital rights management (DRM) failsafes in QuickTime and other Apple technologies is because “no one has been able to make a model that works” both for content creators and for consumers. He added that the company doesn’t want to “evangelize products that encourage illegal behavior,” either.
News.com reports that other similar technologies developed by CinemaNow and Yahoo Launch do not support the Macintosh, either.
The report blames Apple’s lack of DRM support in QuickTime as the reason why some movie studios are reluctant to use QuickTime in commercial products — although many of them publish their trailers on the Web in the format. By contrast, Microsoft and RealNetworks have both made significant technology investments in DRM.