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Apple Announces iTunes Movie Rentals
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On Wednesday January 16th, 2008 I downloaded 5 movies to rent, on the 20th I watched them all. On the 23rd my little sister deleted half my hard drive. On the 24th I time capsuled back to the 16th. Are they still there?
I'm guessing since you are using future tense that this is a hypothetical question....
My guess would be yes.
Just rented Live Free or Die Hard. I'm in Kuala Lumpur on a crappy hotel wireless network with terrible bandwidth issues. I started watching the film 5 minutes after the download started. It never hung and even with the awful download speeds, the film played flawlessly. The download finished 10 minutes before the movie ended. Frankly, this is about a worse-case scenario for streaming and as far as I'm concerned, it's great. Who cares how long they take to download if they can be played in process like this. Quality was good. This will grow into a big business for Apple and the studios will be under tremendous pressure to migrate reasonable improved terms in the near future.
Could the terms be better? Yes. But to me, this is a HUGE step for Apple, considering they got EVERY studio on board (Universal and Sony almost made me spit coffee on my monitor) This thing is going to be huge in the near future, and the terms and selection will only get better. Sure...200 some movies right now, but they promised 1000 by the end of the month (or February, can't remember) That coupled with the Take 2 and from-the-couch rentals....makes me a VERY happy customer.
EDIT: Is it just me, or do the movies all seem to be in full DVD quality now...?
EDIT: Is it just me, or do the movies all seem to be in full DVD quality now...?
Did anyone else noticed or is it just me that the titles Steve demoed during the first part of the iTunes movie rental screen is made up of Paramount Pictures releases- i.e. when he was demonstrating the rental system, on the following Paramount releases were featured:
Out of all the titles only 2 weren't Paramount releases: Saved! and one other which I cannot make out.
Things that make you go hmmm...
- Mean Girls
- Blades of Glory
- Zoolander
- South Park movie
- How to Lose aGuy in 10 Days
- Jack Ass
- Team America
Out of all the titles only 2 weren't Paramount releases: Saved! and one other which I cannot make out.
Things that make you go hmmm...
All you guys need to take a chill pill. First of all, this isn't a service that meant to replace Netflix or Blockbuster. Its a service thats meant to compete with On Demand services. So when you are busting all over it saying its dumb and you'll just stick with Netflix, ask yourself this. If you have Netflix, have you ever used a VOD service at your house? Is not, then obviously you aren't going to start using this iTunes service either.
Seconldly since when has Apple, or any company really ever come out with a product that was perfect the first time. It took a while for iTunes to catch on, the iPod definitely has seen multiple revisions, the Apple computer has taken a lot of time, OS X etc. This is the second iteration of the Apple TV and its gotten a pretty boost over what it first was. It first came out to be an add-on to your computer and iTunes. Now it can function as a stand alone product, the video quailty got a beefy upgrade, sound quality is up and you can rent movies in the same manner as On Demand services. It ought to be pretty cool to see what take 3 is going to be. Maybe up the quality even more, juice up the title options, or a subscription plan or how about an internet browser maybe. Who knows, but this isn't a failure by any stretch. Its a slow evolution in an area where so far everyone else has failed.
Seconldly since when has Apple, or any company really ever come out with a product that was perfect the first time. It took a while for iTunes to catch on, the iPod definitely has seen multiple revisions, the Apple computer has taken a lot of time, OS X etc. This is the second iteration of the Apple TV and its gotten a pretty boost over what it first was. It first came out to be an add-on to your computer and iTunes. Now it can function as a stand alone product, the video quailty got a beefy upgrade, sound quality is up and you can rent movies in the same manner as On Demand services. It ought to be pretty cool to see what take 3 is going to be. Maybe up the quality even more, juice up the title options, or a subscription plan or how about an internet browser maybe. Who knows, but this isn't a failure by any stretch. Its a slow evolution in an area where so far everyone else has failed.
I am pretty sure movies with closed captioning actually have the CC icon next to the tv icon, when you click on buy/rent now. Sadly I don't have iTunes on my work computer so I cannot verify. Oh, at the time when I last looked it didn't seem like you could search based on movies with CC. But I am not sure if that is still the case.
Your problem is probably the DSL thing. I've go Comcast cable internet and Robocop took about 25 minutes.
Did anyone else noticed or is it just me that the titles Steve demoed during the first part of the iTunes movie rental screen is made up of Paramount Pictures releases- i.e. when he was demonstrating the rental system, on the following Paramount releases were featured:
- Mean Girls
- Blades of Glory
- Zoolander
- South Park movie
- How to Lose aGuy in 10 Days
- Jack Ass
- Team America
Out of all the titles only 2 weren't Paramount releases: Saved! and one other which I cannot make out.
Things that make you go hmmm...
...hmmm ... who cares as long as the movies show up as promised
Bought my second Apple TV last night. 40gb model goes into the bedroom. To me both are worth it just to stream music and podcasts. TV shows and now movie rentals will be a plus.
I have a Netflix membership since their first month of operation. Unsure how many movies I watch a month. Some months maybe 8 to 10 from their service, some times the movies stack up as I don't have time to watch one a week. I just accept that fact. Never priced out the cost per movie. At less than a bottle of good wine a month, who cares. I haven't been in a video rental store in 8 years and that alone is worth the fee.
When possible, I rent Blu-Ray versions of course. That said, iTunes rentals has me excited. I don't know if Apple expects all of my rentals to come from them. If so, this will be a failure. I often find myself in the mood to watch a movie different from what I have from Netflix. This will allow me to browse around and pick out something without leaving my house. Yea, the content is only 720p but that's acceptable. Additionally, I love the ease of transfer to the iPhone. I can see myself picking a couple of movies to watch on the plane when I travel.
So the basic Apple TV features alone are great, the new link directly to iTunes makes it a bit better and the price dropped. Not elated, but happy enough.
I have a Netflix membership since their first month of operation. Unsure how many movies I watch a month. Some months maybe 8 to 10 from their service, some times the movies stack up as I don't have time to watch one a week. I just accept that fact. Never priced out the cost per movie. At less than a bottle of good wine a month, who cares. I haven't been in a video rental store in 8 years and that alone is worth the fee.
When possible, I rent Blu-Ray versions of course. That said, iTunes rentals has me excited. I don't know if Apple expects all of my rentals to come from them. If so, this will be a failure. I often find myself in the mood to watch a movie different from what I have from Netflix. This will allow me to browse around and pick out something without leaving my house. Yea, the content is only 720p but that's acceptable. Additionally, I love the ease of transfer to the iPhone. I can see myself picking a couple of movies to watch on the plane when I travel.
So the basic Apple TV features alone are great, the new link directly to iTunes makes it a bit better and the price dropped. Not elated, but happy enough.
Did it download in Widescreen or Fullscreen? All the Fox rentals say Full-Screen, but I find that hard to believe.
Here's a good question: can you transfer HD rentals between AppleTVs in the same house? Since it appears that they will only offer HD via purchases made from an AppleTV, I really wonder if this is possible. I am thinking about getting a second one for my bedroom as well, and this could be nice to do.
I just downloaded the Simpsons Movie and the quality is defiantly DVD and in Widescreen thank God...the Fullscreen listings in iTunes must be wrong. It is interesting...the file container says 853x356...but in MPEG Streamclip it was a 640x356...I wonder if these are Anamorphic encodes?
While there are CC on some movies, this picture implies that there might be english subtitles encoded in some movies (at least in Ratatouille), as shown below. I rented WarGames just for the heck of it to experiment, but it doesn't have anything. Oh well it was only $3.
I wonder how long until we can rent a movie using only our iPhone/Touch? It would be sweet to have that option on your iPhone when stuck in an airport or when airline eventually roll out in-flight wifi.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
WTF? Can't watch rentals on previous gen ipods? What a rip!! I'm traveling cross-country tomorrow and was really hoping to watch a couple of rentals on my 5.5 gen Ipod. Sucks ass!!
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/16/itunes-and-apple-tv-rentals-and-purchases-what-you-can-and-can/
I'm traveling cross-country tomorrow and was really hoping to watch a couple of rentals on my 5.5 gen Ipod. Sucks ass!!http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/16/itunes-and-apple-tv-rentals-and-purchases-what-you-can-and-can/
Apple's iTunes/
Tv pages say 640x480, then footnote to say actual dimensions will change with aspect ratio. I read this as 720x480 being a very unlikely resolution for any SD broadcast coming from iTMS.On Wednesday January 16th, 2008 I downloaded 5 movies to rent, on the 20th I watched them all. On the 23rd my little sister deleted half my hard drive. On the 24th I time capsuled back to the 16th. Are they still there?
Completely unverified, but my money's on there is a server call when the play starts, which tells the server that this movie has begun playback and verifies that it has not exceeded 24 hours since the first call. Given that your local clock is 100% in your own control, that seems the only semi-comprehensive approach to this. If that is correct, then your movies are all still there, but unplayable.
On the other hand, if this is NOT correct, then it is quite likely that you would be able to rent a movie, play the first five minutes of it, wait a week, set your clock back to the time you stopped the movie previously, and play the rest. Which would be very nice, but a loophole studios would be clamoring to close the moment they caught wind of it.
Note that the iPhone sync screen does state that an internet connection is required to transfer any movie to the phone. I take this as evidence supporting my theory above
Did anyone else noticed or is it just me that the titles Steve demoed during the first part of the iTunes movie rental screen is made up of Paramount Pictures releases- i.e. when he was demonstrating the rental system, on the following Paramount releases were featured:
- Mean Girls
- Blades of Glory
- Zoolander
- South Park movie
- How to Lose aGuy in 10 Days
- Jack Ass
- Team America
Out of all the titles only 2 weren't Paramount releases: Saved! and one other which I cannot make out.
Things that make you go hmmm...
Most likely because most of the movies which had been loaded into the database at that moment had come from Paramount (he mentioned that they were in the process of loading the libraries and so only some of the titles were visible during the keynote). No need to see zebras here.
Folks, it always says "150 items" on the bottom of the screen if there are >= 150 items found in the search.
You need to hit the "More Results" button/link to step through each "page" of 150 results!
Currently, I am seeing 2 pages of 150, then 18 more, for a grand total of 318 titles available. 32 of those are rent-only, and one (The Santa Clause 3) appears to be buy-only even though the search was specifically for movies available for rental. You can't search for "all" movies, so I searched by Rating (G, PG, PG-13, R) and ended up with a total of 543 movies returned (88 G, 136 PG, 170 PG-13, 149 R). I know that is a low number, though, because there were several "Unrated" movies showing up in the "Rental" search (ex, Coyote Ugly and Breakfast at Tiffany's).
The import process seems to still be moving, although the rough count (318 results) hasn't changed here for a few hours.