Macworld Details: iTunes Movie Rentals
As expected, Apple will begin offering rental movies through iTunes starting today, and Jobs says there will be more than 1000 films available by the end of February.
Apple has been busy acquiring rental content from some of the biggest studios; these include Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, New Line, Lions Gate, Fox, WB, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony. That's a lot of rental content, and a real coup for Apple.
The move may lend more juice to sales of Apple TV, which has been overshadowed somewhat over the past year by the iPhone. Apple TV users, or prospective ones, currently have to BUY movies (and store them) in order to use Apple TV, which streams video content from the PC to the TV in the living room.
The rental titles, Jobs says, will become available 30 days after DVD release. That's the shortest interval we've heard of for Internet video.
You can also watch the videos on any device, any place, including on Macs, PCs, iPods and iPhones. You can actually transfer any movie to another device in the middle of watching--for instance, transferring it to your iPod before you dash to the airport to catch a flight.
With a decent broadband connection, the movies will start playing only 30 seconds after purchase. You'll have 30 days to start watching it, and after you start, you have 24 hours to finish watching it.
Renting a library title will cost $2.99, new releases will be $3.99. Jobs says the service already has 100 HD releases, which cost a dollar more each. The service has a bunch of TV show rentals too; they cost $1.99 an episode.
Apple TV, Take 2, as Jobs called it, at a new price of $229, will automatically sync up with your computer, but no computer is required to rent movies. You can rent movies directly from your widescreen TV and you can rent them in DVD quality or in HD with Dolby 5.1. "The quality is unbelievable," Jobs says.
You can also get audio and video podcasts on your widescreen TV. Photos can be retrieved from your computer, Flickr or .Mac. And, of course, you can still watch video from YouTube. You can also buy TV shows and music on the widescreen TV, and it'll automatically sync them back to your computer.
For full coverage of Macworld Expo 2008, go to the PCW Mac Info Center.
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y would u rent an episode for 1.99 wen u can buy it for the same price???
Sounds like a good idea, especially as they are also launching iTunes movie rental in the UK. Giving it more global reach for fast download speeds. But I agree with KevinG. Why bother with the hassles of downloads and time limits for viewing when you could rent a dvd locally or buy it cheap. I'm sure it would be handy for people in rural locations though.