Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic iTunes to offer movie iRentals?
Fuzzy Logic iTunes to offer movie iRentals? | iTunes to offer movie iRentals? |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Tuesday, 12 June 2007 | |
  
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Movies could then be watched on a Mac or PC, or watched on big-screen TV through an iPod or an Apple TV, self-destructing after 30 days and bringing movie studios a whole new revenue stream from Apple that they didn’t enjoy before. The price for rentals is rumored to be US $2.99, and as a rental, would come with protection to stop unauthorized copying to other non-legal devices, although in theory the hackers would soon come up with a solution to make rented movies able to be permanently saved to computers. Naturally, Apple hasn’t commented on the speculation, nor did they announce anything about it during the keynote at the WWDC on this week. Competing movie rental services often only offer a 24-hour viewing period, but Apple changing the rules to a 30 day period would be nothing new – Apple regularly breaks the rules and creates a new playing field that others suddenly find themselves on, giving Apple a unique selling point over competing movie rental services. Problems with movie rentals exist thanks to bandwidth issues. Choosing a movie to buy and letting it download throughout the day before you get home is one thing, actually being at home and deciding to rent a movie, and then having to wait potentially hours to download is not something that users would appreciate in a rental service – it’d be quicker to pop down to the local video store and get satisfaction in a few minutes. There’s also the issue of movie studio support. Despite Apple offering movies from Disney for some time, not all studios are offering their movies through iTunes, with some only offering part of their back catalogue. This is because the remaining studios don’t want to disrupt existing movie distribution outlets, from retail stores like Walmart to video rental stores, all of whom provide strong revenues for studios once the movie has left the theatre. Apple will likely try to undercut everyone else in the rentals game, while still earning a profit for themselves, but studios are unlikely to want Apple to force Walmart and everyone else to drop their prices to remain competitive. There’s also the issue of resolution – with all the HD TV’s out there, Apple’s ‘standard definition’ video quality just isn’t up to the task of satisfying the high-res needs of a high-def screen. If Apple offers movies in HD resolution, file sizes would be much bigger, with download times even longer. Although Apple aren’t yet confirming that a movie rental store is on the way, whatever movie studios might say now, it seems likely that Apple will eventually go down this path – even though Apple doesn’t yet offer a music rental service despite many competitors doing so. Broadband is, slowly but surely, getting faster around the world, and the distribution method of the Internet has clear advantages that have made online music a massive seller for Apple. But as always, in the weird and wonderful world of Apple, no-one ever really knows until Steve Jobs makes an announcement or Apple issues a press release. So, for iTunes users and movie lovers wanting to rent, the ‘one more thing’ you’ve been waiting for didn’t arrive at the WWDC, as video rental stores breathe a temporary sigh of relief! {moscomment} |
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