Will we ever get to purchase HD movies from iTunes?

[Pedgie06]

I just purchased my first movie from iTunes (I bought "Cars"), just to see what the quality was. The movie is just under 2 hours and it was 1.36 gb. While the quality isn't terrible it is no where near the quality of the HD "Simpsons" that I rented last week.

This leaves me with one question, do you think we will ever see a purchase in HD option on iTunes? I think I would be more than willing to pay $25 for a movie in HD format. Anyone else agree?

[VideoFreek]

I suppose it's possible, but the price point you mention intrigues me. This means you'd expect to watch your movies five times or more (in order to justify purchasing them vs. renting)?

[hotshotharry]

i am thinking like maybe 15 bucks :-)

[Pedgie06]

Well "Cars" cost me $15, but if they could drop the price that would be great too!

[Diatribe]

Yeah, for $15 I would not care that there is a better version (Blu-Ray) out there. That would probably be the sweet spot. And for the rest renting it twice would probably be enough anyway.

[JimmyDreams]

I suppose it's possible, but the price point you mention intrigues me. This means you'd expect to watch your movies five times or more (in order to justify purchasing them vs. renting)?

Therein lies my (old) argument against rentals. I watch damn near every movie more than once, and I'm usually late in returning them (late fees). Plus, at 3am when I want to watch (insert movie name here), the rental places are closed and/or I'm in no condition to drive. So paying $20+ per movie was defendable.

NOW, those arguments are largely out the window.

And while I'll probably watch The Matrix more than 5 times over my lifetime, I'll probably only watch a TON of other movies only once. So renting numerically is better.

I may have to adjust my thinking quite a bit.....:D

[BwanaZulia]

If they can do that and get the iPhone/iTouch to support it, we are good to go.

The thing about rentals, is even if you rent it 5 times in your lifetime, each time your rent it you can rent it at a better quality.

When the Matrix came out in 1999, you could rent it on VHS (crappy quality), if you bought then you were screwed. A few years later, you could buy it on DVD or rent it on DVD. Now, download it in HD, rent it on HD DVD or Blu-Ray.

In 3 years, there will be HD DVD 2 and you can rent it again.

BZ

[jhsfosho]

This is slightly OT, but I just thought of this. Will Apple offer a service so we can rent movies, and then if we like them enough to buy them we can pay the difference to purchase them? Even without downloading? Blockbuster has a similar program in stores and so does Gamefly, where you can pay more to just keep the disc without returning it even.

What do you think?

[hotshotharry]

yep i like that idea ! lol and $15 for HD movies :-)