hmmm... mb you should watch and read the text on this page then...
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ipod/
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iTunes Movie Rentals at $2.99 for 30 days?
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hmmm... mb you should watch and read the text on this page then...
http://www.apple.com/iphone/ipod/
Brilliant move, Apple! Leopard, iPhone, rental movies at iTunes. Apple understands what we want.
Reading Eric's post gave me an idea of what could possibly a cool feature. Correct me if I am wrong but have they said anything about having iTunes on the phone and being able to download music or movies while on your phone? Sometimes in the car you hear a song you want to get and then forget to download it later. Or if your flight got delayed it would be nice to download an episode of something. The purchased items I guess could transfer back to the computer with the same account when it was synced. Perhaps they have mentioned this but just thought that would be a convenient feature.
It would be perfect if....
-I can choose movies from my AppleTV w/o needing a separate PC
-I can copy the movie to my iphone (when i get it)
30 days to watch a movie is a long time. I think it would be 30 days to start watching it and then either 24 or 48 hrs to watch it once you start.
-I can choose movies from my AppleTV w/o needing a separate PC
-I can copy the movie to my iphone (when i get it)
30 days to watch a movie is a long time. I think it would be 30 days to start watching it and then either 24 or 48 hrs to watch it once you start.
Not bad.
This is where I had hoped Apple would go, but in my case Netflix is still a better value. I pay $17.99/mo and for the past three months (just checked my history) I've rented 8 DVD's per month. I had no idea I was so consistent.
Ignoring the fact that Apple's offering requires a $299 player (ok, not really, but it'd be the only way I'd watch the content), the cost difference is:
Netflix = $2.25/movie
Apple = $2.99/movie
Netflix has a great selection too. Apple is extremely limited right now, but that could improve.
This is where I had hoped Apple would go, but in my case Netflix is still a better value. I pay $17.99/mo and for the past three months (just checked my history) I've rented 8 DVD's per month. I had no idea I was so consistent.
Ignoring the fact that Apple's offering requires a $299 player (ok, not really, but it'd be the only way I'd watch the content), the cost difference is:
Netflix = $2.25/movie
Apple = $2.99/movie
Netflix has a great selection too. Apple is extremely limited right now, but that could improve.
If it goes that way, why even set a time limit to start?
If once I start it I only have 24 or 48 hours to run it, what difference does it make when I start? If I'm willing to use up the storage, lemme just tuck it away for good until I'm damn good and ready to watch it.OTOH, I do like the idea of being able to watch it over and over for the whole 30 days. Not that I myself would, but maybe I'll watch it one day, then other members of the household could watch the same thing at their convenience during the 30 days. That sure beats the hell out of a 3-5 day rental from BlockBuster (brick and mortar, that is).
I do understand a lot of people's preference for a real DVD for quality and extras, and the strong desire for HD versions, but not everybody has an HDTV with a massive surround sound system. Some of us poor folks still have 480p only. Lots of us, in fact.
I think the 3/4/5 dollar options for various resolutions is a sound solution, however. Not only are there more costs involved in prepping 720 and 1080 versions, but the bandwidth to deliver needs to be factored in, too.
I'd like to see an "apply rental to purchase" option as well... Similar to "complete my album" for music. I think they would succeed in selling more full purchases that way... Sort of a "try before you buy" option. Again better than renting a DVD from BlockBuster, finding that you really like a particular one, then still having to pay full price for a keeper.
Ah... yes it is, and it's the second most important reason why I use netflix. The first is I don't have to leave my house to get or return anything, and third is pricing.
I can see this working well, particularly for children's movies. Rent "Cars", see if the boy likes it... if so, he watches it again, and again... until we finally pay the piper and "own" it. If not, well... move on to "Toy Story".
FinancialTimes reports that Apple is in talks with Hollywood studios about launching an online movie rental service. The iTunes movie rentals would reportedly be $2.99 for a 30 day rental."
Amazon has been providing this service to Tivo customers with broadband for a couple months now. I'm one of those customers and look forward to using it. I also got $15 in credit toward movie rentals just for signing up.
If there was ever a dream partnership for me it would be Tivo & Apple.
Going in the right direction
I really believe that the BluRay HD-DVD format war is going to end with neither winning, what is really going to win will be digital delivery. It might take awhile but AppleTV and Amazon Unbox are already prepping people for it.
So with that said I hope I can remember everything I hoped to reply while reading all the comment so far.
1) Think this is great for AppleTV. I have one and I will definitely rent movies. It won't be much longer until I ditch my DirecTV subscription as we don't watch much other than BSG and I can get that from iTunes.
2) NetFlix has been great to me. Anybody that bashes Netflix obviously hasn't tried it. Since joining we've not only stopped wasting money buying DVDs that we'll never watch (though we still buy favorite television series sets), but we've also gotten rid of all our premium channels and we have access to thousands (tens of thousands) of more movies than are available in a physical store. Plus no late fees and we always have four movies sitting waiting to be watched.
The longest I've ever waited for a movie is two days. I live 20 miles from Fargo, ND...not exactly a metro area but they do have a Netflix shipping center. I don't think I've ever had an impulse to view something immediately so a day or two wait isn't a problem.
3) I assume that all the people insisting on HD quality before buying an AppleTV or renting a movie via download ONLY watch BluRay and/or HD-DVD and don't buy or rent anything less than HD quality. That would be hard here since I don't think a single vid store here rents them, but I could be wrong since I rarely enter rental stores anymore. My guess is even places that are renting them have very few to choose from.
You HD purists must live a boring existence. Sure HD is nice but get a grip people. SD was good enough not too long ago wasn't it? Give it some time. It will come.
4) I've used Amazon Unbox quite a few times with my Tivo ($15 original credit and taking advantage of the 99cent weekend rental sales they've been having) and they do the 30 day limit as well. But once you start watching it you have 24 hours to finish. Has never been a problem and other than Party Girl I've never watched the same movie repeatedly within a few day span.
I really believe that the BluRay HD-DVD format war is going to end with neither winning, what is really going to win will be digital delivery. It might take awhile but AppleTV and Amazon Unbox are already prepping people for it.
So with that said I hope I can remember everything I hoped to reply while reading all the comment so far.
1) Think this is great for AppleTV. I have one and I will definitely rent movies. It won't be much longer until I ditch my DirecTV subscription as we don't watch much other than BSG and I can get that from iTunes.
2) NetFlix has been great to me. Anybody that bashes Netflix obviously hasn't tried it. Since joining we've not only stopped wasting money buying DVDs that we'll never watch (though we still buy favorite television series sets), but we've also gotten rid of all our premium channels and we have access to thousands (tens of thousands) of more movies than are available in a physical store. Plus no late fees and we always have four movies sitting waiting to be watched.
The longest I've ever waited for a movie is two days. I live 20 miles from Fargo, ND...not exactly a metro area but they do have a Netflix shipping center. I don't think I've ever had an impulse to view something immediately so a day or two wait isn't a problem.
3) I assume that all the people insisting on HD quality before buying an AppleTV or renting a movie via download ONLY watch BluRay and/or HD-DVD and don't buy or rent anything less than HD quality. That would be hard here since I don't think a single vid store here rents them, but I could be wrong since I rarely enter rental stores anymore. My guess is even places that are renting them have very few to choose from.
You HD purists must live a boring existence. Sure HD is nice but get a grip people. SD was good enough not too long ago wasn't it? Give it some time. It will come.
4) I've used Amazon Unbox quite a few times with my Tivo ($15 original credit and taking advantage of the 99cent weekend rental sales they've been having) and they do the 30 day limit as well. But once you start watching it you have 24 hours to finish. Has never been a problem and other than Party Girl I've never watched the same movie repeatedly within a few day span.
Perfect?
I realise that all this is moot (for me anyway) since iTunes does not even offer their current movies in the UK yet, but in any case $2.99 is too much for renting sub-SD quality. Based on the current quality I would always take a DVD over iTunes movie rentals unless they brought the resolution up to at least full DVD (SD) quality.
And why should the HD version cost substantially more than a DVD rental? Blockbuster, Lovefilem and amazon (in the UK at least) do not charge any more for renting Blu Ray or HD-DVD titles through their postal DVD rental services.
Apple still does have to encode (I assume they do the encoding, though I could be wrong), store and then distribute these massive HD movie files, providing enough bandwidth to feed to a substantial amount of the customers that have access to the movie store. Blockbuster, Amazon et al don't have to worry about encoding and providing bandwidth. All they have to do is warehouse the hard media that's already made ready for distribution to the customers by someone else.
(1) Are you seriously telling me that with all the hardware that Apple can throw at encoding that they have costs which justify a (theoretical at this point) $2 price difference between e.g. 640*340 movie and a 720p encode? I assume that they do not encode each movie download on the fly, therefore only need to do this task once for each movie/tv show offered on the site?
2) Same argument would apply to the storage. Granted, larger formats are going to be many multiples times larger in terms of file size, but again, only a few instances are needed - although I can't obviously know the inner workings of iTunes - it is conceivable that have multiple instances across multiple server farms to speed up disc access, or maybe they use some sort of Layer2 acceleration. Dunno. But in any case, not a huge difference in hosting cost given the economies of scale of hosting 100s even 1000s of titles and
(3) Bandwidth is the most likely justification for additional cost for HD, but I'm still not convinced that it is going to add up to an additional $2 per rental. Granted the brick and mortar online rental outfits do not have high bandwidth costs beyond providing access to their online system, but they do have real estate to manage and pay for in addition to staff to put those discs into packages for mailing out etc. Whist on the other hand once the initial set-up of each movie on the Itunes system is taken care of, one would assume that the vast majority of the interactive process of purchase and distribution from itunes would be automatic and not nee human intervention except on the part of the customer.
Since the download time for the customer is going to be substantially longer for HD and the traditional online DVD rental outfits are ramping up with HD media for the same cost as SD, then the convenience aspect of iTunes is diminished - it takes the same amount of time to turn around an SD rental from netflix et al as any other title. On that basis I don't see how Apple could charge a substantially higher price for HD offerings, especially if their aim has to be taking customers away from DVD rental houses.
/mij.
No, no, no. That's very creepy.
That's like saying "Here, have a movie. It's yours. Just be sure to pay up every time you actually want to watch it."
I use (and LOVE) NetFlix, but I'll be more than happy to drop it in favor of digital rentals. However, there are still a few nitpicks preventing me from doing so.
1. Picture quality. I spent a lot of money on my HD projection system, and I want my content to take advantage of it. DVD resolutions are usually "good enough" but anything less and I hate parting with my money for it.
2. Audio. Give me true 5.1 discrete surround sound, in a format that will work with my mass-market surround-sound receiver, or don't bother with the rest of your sales pitch. If Stereo/Pro-Logic was "good enough" for me, I would have bought a pro-logic-only receiver and saved a lot of money. For that matter, I could have settled for a stereo system and bought 4 fewer speakers.
3. Features. DVD's sometimes offer interesting commentary tracks and other special features. More importantly, foreign films and anime are sold with the ability to watch in the ORIGINAL LANGUAGE (with the option of subtitles for viewers who only speak Enlgish.) iTMS offerings currently have neither. I will *never* pay money to watch a re-dubbed film or program.
For those reasons, digital downloads are worth *A LOT LESS* to me than conventional DVD purchases or rentals. They should be priced accordingly.
With NetFlix, I'm paying, on average, less than 3 bucks a movie. For iTMS to get my dollars, even simply matching the price (with a lower quality and smaller selection) is not good enough.
Looks like I'm going to keep putting up with exchanging disks via mail for a little while.
1. Picture quality. I spent a lot of money on my HD projection system, and I want my content to take advantage of it. DVD resolutions are usually "good enough" but anything less and I hate parting with my money for it.
2. Audio. Give me true 5.1 discrete surround sound, in a format that will work with my mass-market surround-sound receiver, or don't bother with the rest of your sales pitch. If Stereo/Pro-Logic was "good enough" for me, I would have bought a pro-logic-only receiver and saved a lot of money. For that matter, I could have settled for a stereo system and bought 4 fewer speakers.
3. Features. DVD's sometimes offer interesting commentary tracks and other special features. More importantly, foreign films and anime are sold with the ability to watch in the ORIGINAL LANGUAGE (with the option of subtitles for viewers who only speak Enlgish.) iTMS offerings currently have neither. I will *never* pay money to watch a re-dubbed film or program.
For those reasons, digital downloads are worth *A LOT LESS* to me than conventional DVD purchases or rentals. They should be priced accordingly.
With NetFlix, I'm paying, on average, less than 3 bucks a movie. For iTMS to get my dollars, even simply matching the price (with a lower quality and smaller selection) is not good enough.
Looks like I'm going to keep putting up with exchanging disks via mail for a little while.
don't even gimme that...
You can't say that $1/day (Plus driving and the possible lack of selection) is a better deal than $2.99/30 days (minus cost of gas, inconvience of driving and dealing with whats in stock...)
I think if Apple gets this goin it's a great idea - ESPECIALLY if you can rent, then if you like it buy it minus cost of rent...
You can't say that $1/day (Plus driving and the possible lack of selection) is a better deal than $2.99/30 days (minus cost of gas, inconvience of driving and dealing with whats in stock...)
I think if Apple gets this goin it's a great idea - ESPECIALLY if you can rent, then if you like it buy it minus cost of rent...
I like the idea of renting movies not music though, but I would rather Apple push for getting TV and Films out in other iTunes stores other than the US, it makes the 
TV unit for the rest of us just a little more pointless, if you looked at the graphics for the background of the TV the US store had movies and TV shows but in other Apple onlines stores the background only had some images not of TV or movies, I don't think we will ever see this or TV or Movies come outside of the US.
TV unit for the rest of us just a little more pointless, if you looked at the graphics for the background of the TV the US store had movies and TV shows but in other Apple onlines stores the background only had some images not of TV or movies, I don't think we will ever see this or TV or Movies come outside of the US.
I think to say that we will never see movies in UK/Europe is a bit strong. granted Apple has not been too vocal about their plans, but they have never said that they would not be rolling out movie downloads to the EU. My understanding of the issues surrounding the delays aredown to contractual negotiations with the studios and VAT issues, not a reluctance by Apple to introduce the service.
You are right that the lack of movies in UK is downside to owning the Apple-TV compared to the US, but it is only a matter of time that the service will roll out in Europe - which is after all a potentially much larger market and surely to be a growth engine for Apple to meet those high expectations Wall Street is setting. In short (long term) Apple can't effort NOT to be in the European online movie retail/rental market.
I Agree I have 2 and I love them, I Have a ton of TV show content on 3 Hard Drives. I've reduced my Direct TV to the very lowest and will end up buying a few Season Passes off of Itunes starting with The Dead Zone S6. I like the Idea of Rentals I would definitely rent newer releases from them as Netflix it's harder to get newer releases, I rent mostly classics from them. But they say these will work on Iphone and Ipod so I doubt they will be Hi Def, maybe just rentals of the films already offered, this I would probably pass on
But I can rent 3 movies in the morning when I go to work and by the time i get home their on my Apple TV and ready to watch, perfect.
I work for the Ministry of Immigration of Denmark and I'm off for a vacation whole month of July. Maybe its an American thing