The much rumored iTunes Movie Rental service is indeed becoming a reality…today!
Today Steve Jobs announced that every major studio is on board: Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, Lionsgate, Newline, Fox, WB, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony.
Initially there will be over 1000 movies and in general movie rentals will be available 30 days after DVD release.
It will cost $2.99 for “library titles” (movies that are not new releases) and $3.99 for new releases. HD rentals will be $3.99 for library titles and $4.99 for new releases (only 100 titles available today in HD). You will have 30 days to start watching the movie after purchase and 24 hours to finish it once you have started.
Movies can be viewed on Mac or PC as well as on all current iPods and the iPhone. Movies will be streaming…meaning you don’t have to wait and download the full movie…you can begin watching instantly.
Available today in the US. Available internationally later this year.
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FWIW, Refurbished Apple TV prices have dropped as well.
40GB: $179.00
160GB: $279.00
I ordered a 160 gigger. :-)
I wonder if there’s a way to cache the movie for those on slower/spotty net connections.
Anyone know what exactly “instantly” means? I mean with real numbers? I’ve yet to see an 1080 HD stream able to start playing “instantly” without at least an hours worth of buffering.
I don’t know about HD quality but I rented Ratatouille today. It works GREAT. It took about 30 seconds to a minute to buffer enough to get to the point where you can watch it and I took a bit longer because I was doing other things but after I started it there were no problems at all. One little blip, but I think it was my computer, not a streaming issue.
Works great? Maybe for Macs (on purpose?) but not on PCs. We have no sound. I suspect this will have a real negative impact on the growth of the rental service. Many people probably ran to their computers last night to rent something only to find that iTunes 7.6 takes video back to the days of the silent movie. There are upsides – like making your own script – but I prefer the sound.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1344125&tstart=0
Blog on that! That and how I can get a refund.
Yet again, don’t believe the Apple hype. They ship not according to when things are ready but according to a speaking date.
Why is this a problem? Download iTunes 7.6 and find out! Rent a movie or, better yet, try to watch and old purchased one.
What do you notice? Ahhhh, NO SOUND! iTunes 7.6 sure is nice and new. It is just too bad I can’t hear my bleeding movie.
I want my money back Apple arses!
[...] there’s the movie rental thingy. I think it’s pretty cool. At first I was like “nah, I got me some [...]
Does anyoneknow how I can get the sound restored to my I tunes video library? I made the mistake of buying a movie rental from Itunes and it cooked my entire library. Well I guess Jobs owes me a couple of hundred dollars