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Children watch movies repeatedly, but not so much adults. Especially lo-rez iPod-sized movies. And HD-sized movies are going to be too big for the pipeline for a while yet. Discs still have a place in our world - for now.

I won´t be using this service.

I'd prefer time-restricted playback rather than a finite number of viewings - if only to enable viewing across multiple occasions (interruptions, falling asleep, etc...)

Ideally, the clock would not start ticking until you start the first viewing - rather than ticking the moment you click "buy now" on the Music Store.

I might be the exception here, but that model does not suit me. I like to keep my movies, and like to have the option of viewing them whenever I want.
Steve: Please don't give in...

Yes, but can I transfer it to my iPod?

Yeah I guess this makes sense, but I'm curious how they're going to settle the size problem. Heck, it still takes about 90 minutes to get a 700 Mb file at ordinary DSL speeds. It's not quite the "on demand" service that the cable guys are offering.

Netflix + Handbrake is a winning combination. I get some TV shows via Netflix which are also on the iTMS. But the copies I rip are so much higher quality than what Apple sells.

Skullbuster,

Think of a movie as 3-4 iTMS tv shows. It'll download faster than you think for most of their actual target market (who are likely to be at the fast end of the broadband speed scale.)

And the DEVELOPERS are going to care about this because ... ?

JUST A RUMOR.

Steve Jobs will not be using the developers conference to debut a consumer movie renting service.

Renting movies is the right way to go for iTunes, however the WWDC is not the right event to debut such a service.

I say bring on the Home Media Center. I am not interested in whatching movies on small screens or on a computer.

cant say im that excited considering tc shows still havnt arrived in the uk

Here is a good reasoning, why Apple should rent movies not sell them:
http://www.2manage.de/managementchannel/?p=23

Awww! You ruined the surprise! I'm gonna be bummed if you're wrong.

Rumor:

New Apple video iPod to be outfitted with 802.11Z to handle local area man's complaint that ordinary DSL speeds don't quite manage "on demand" as alleged.

What's the price?
Make it 99 Cents!

-Unfettered

You stand as a beacon of cunning, innovation, pirateering.


Full Speed Ahead!

I would like a dot Mac Gold subscription which allows me to view up to 30 movies/TV shows a month from a pool of hundreds, without owning them. If it would cache onto a Mac mini for all the kids' TV shows and my movies, then I could substitute it for the cable subscription, keeping cable for the internet and telephone only.

Then... if iChat goes to telephones with an iPod/iPhone handset then I can get rid of the cable telephone subscription and buy all five of us an iPhone and all talk over wireless VoIP at the one time. We'd keep a couple of mobile phones for when we're outside the house.

Two less subscriptions, only one more.

I agree with some of the previous posts - this sounds much more likely to debut during the Paris Expo. Steve tries to stay clear of iPod announcements at the developer conf. Stick to core hardware and the OS, Steve.

NO ONE SEEMS TO GET IT......

The WWDC is a DEVELOPERS conference, not a consumer electronics conference. Jobs' keynote is going to pertain to developers interests, which means OSX, software and the Mac.... PERIOD!

iPods, iPhones, movies and any other consumer oriented product announcements NEVER have been, and NEVER will be introduced at the WWDC.

THIS IS ONLY A RUMOR

Good points about this being a developers' conference. I don't think this would be the way Apple would introduce such a service. It just doesn't make sense in context.

I don't think this is going to happen soon anyway. Schiller recently talked about how long it takes to download a full-length movie. He hyped up NetFlix instead.

Rentals suck. It will fail. That is the SJ strategy - let it fail and then negotiate movie dl sales.

Why is everyone treating Renting and Owning like mutually exclusive sales models? Why the hell could Apple not do both? I hope they do, as I want to rent most of the time... but buy my favorites and watch them over and over again! (In my opinion, it would be dumb to not do both.)


$2.99 to rent. $9.99 to own.

Think Secret is full of sh*t. This ain't gonna happen...

$2.99 to rent ($1.99 would be better) and $9.99 to own (or the difference to "upgrade" from a rental).

Keep it cheap because the download will lack DVD quality and all the extras.

Rental makes sense for movies. People are comfortable with the concept. Steve Jobs is too smart to not realize this fact. I sense that any attempt to negotiate an iTunes music style "one-price" a la carte sales structure was a ploy to get the best possible "rates" for the rentals. He made the media company execs believe they had "won" a major concession in exchange for better rental conditions, when that's what Apple really expected and wanted all along.

Why does rental make sense? Because in the physical world, there are thousands and Blockbusters, Hollywood Video, and local mom-and-pop video rental stores (there are no music rental stores, by comparison). Some people do buy their movies, but renting is the way most people consume their movies these days. Unlike music, where most people buy their songs to keep, consumers are familiar with the concept of renting movies. They prefer it to buying. So it makes perfect sense for Apple to offer the digital equivalent of a movie rental store. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple went one step further and offered the Netflix-like "all you can consume for one monthly flat rate" scheme, since that model has also been popular in the physical world.

According to rumors iphone shoulda came out in january.
instead all we got was a stupid announcement that "queer eye for the straight guy" show was going to be put into ipod. amazing.

I already pay enough for my HD digital cable service. I won't be renting any movies. If a movie comes out and is really worth seeing, then i go see it where it is meant to be seen, in the theater

It's funny how emotional people get over this. To me, i dunno, it seems pretty cool. I can rent a movie without having to drive or wait for it in the mail. Pretty cool. I guess the quality is what worries me. TV shows are fine at lower quality, but movies have to be better.

We are also probably making the mistake of saying (rent or buy) because what we are really talking about is (Under 5 bucks or over 10) What I mean by this is, if Apple was able to sell individual movies for $5, this would be the only place that you could do this... and they would be a niche player that many people would flock to.

What if they do something totally different... like SELL full length movies for $5 a piece? That would get consumers talking!

With all these loads of good news and the best AAPL can do is ad just $2 to their share?

Trust me, something is fishy here... its gonna fall below $50 soon. and when it drops it wont stop at at $48 at either. no matter who tries to press on a resistance at $50, the triggers will already be triggered. and sell orders will start pouring in globally.

The DIVX format failed at this before. Hopefully Apple can do this the right way. Hope they have a pay to own model also.

So long as this is NOT a monthly subscription fee, and simply a pay per view, I'm all over this.

90% don't buy movies anyways (guessing on the number), and when people do, it is a classic like Sound of Music, etc...

Rentals makes perfect sense.

To not have a purchase option? That will come with Blue-Ray and HD abilities in 6-12 months time.

Correct..

a 2 hour media experience..with characters, a plot, that requires a screen to experience and your full attention is

VERY DIFFERENT

from music which takes a few minutes, can function as background, and can be consumed anywhere on multiple devices such as an ipod, home stereo, or car radio..

While some people DO have massive movie collections...most never will..

The rental model makes perfect sense...and will extend Apple's dominance.

Netflix is a lot cheaper and I can see the whole DVD including extra's. $3.00 a movie just to rent is to expensive and the time to download it and the bandwith you would tie up for hours isn't worth it either. This won't work for iTunes like renting didn't work for any of those other services. Either they sell the movies for $3.00 or they should just forget about it because DVD's are easier to rent and a lot cheaper especially through Netflix.

Again, the only way that I would purchase movies online is if I could burn them to DVD.

Renting movies may be a diffecent story.... maybe.

So will this rental service deliver 480p/4:3, 480p/16:9 or 720p/16:9? If it isn't at least 480p widescreen with new, 16:9 video iPods also introduced, this service is destined to fail. It would be most attractive to consumers if it were 720p widescreen -- HDTV owners do NOT want to watch 4:3 content on their expensive new, widescreen displays...

I also think any movie download sales service would require Intel-based Macs and displays that each have some sort of unannounced, built-in HDCP content protection. So, we may not see such a movie sales model for a few years, until the PowerPC Macs are all out of the sales pipeline and perhaps even ready to be retired. My guess is that Apple would need a sizable, installed base of Intel-based Macs to make an online sales system work...

Divx failed because people hated that model and it was to expensive to watch one time and then toss it away. This is the same concept only worse as you won't get the quality or the extra's. So I really hope this rumor is totally false as it is a really bad idea.

What is the price? .99 okay. 9.99 bad.

I must not fit into the mold on this subject. I absolutely love movies, and I love watching the same movie multiple times. I own about 250 DVDs and watch quite a few of them over and over. For the videophiles out there, Apple needs a download to own model, BUT they should include a "subscription service" similar to the multi-pass that is in place for tv shows. That way people will pay a certani amount of money and have download rights to 5+ movies or something like that. What do you guys think?

Who wastes their time watching movies on a tiny screen?
If I want to see a movie I go to the theater and see it.

Do you think any other OS proponents write to their calendar app (iCal) the date and time of Balmer's speeches like we do for our Steve's keynote at WWDC?

I doubt it!

its not a waste of time if you watch it on a 40+ inch HDTV. HDTVs are going to be ubiqitous in the next few years. Standard Definition tvs are already getting antiquated.

I agree with geo. With iPods, it was okay to have a lower audio quality because the average headphones and ambient noise make the lower quality irrelevant. Most people just don't spend big bucks on true high quality audio gear. But a lot of people are buying bigger and bigger HiDef TVs and when you put low (or even average) quality video on a big screen, it looks awful. Especially when you consider that BlueRay DVDs are (hopefully) not that far off in the future.

I just don't think the infrastructure is quite there yet for movie downloads to become a big thing.

I love this! Either way, something will happen on August 7th that I will greatly enjoy. Either an iTunes movie service will be introduced, which would be awesome, or ThinkSecret makes a complete ass of itself, which would be just as awesome!

Of course, the conference isn't for a few weeks, which gives ThinkStupid plenty of time to puss out and "revise" the rumor. Y'know, like the touchscreen iPod, which ThinkSecret keeps pushing into the future like rumor vaporware.

That's where the onset of Alzheimer's Disease, or as Denny and I say, Mad Cow, comes in handy. You buy the DVD, watch it and a week or two later, watch it over again.

It never becomes stale for me, I think.

Actually, I think anything can be announced at WWDC. As I recall, the iSight was announced at WWDC a few years ago - and the iSight was very much a consumer product.

Apple will probably release the movie program when it's ready and WWDC will be good enough a venue if Apple is ready now.

The issue for me is simple. Apple's program will have to compete with the bargain bins at the big electronic stores as well as the used DVD shops. I generally pick up a handful of cheap DVDs before going on an overseas business trip. Everything in the $5 to $9.99 price range and I'm happy. No way would I consider an expensive ($15.99 to $19.99) DVD for these trips. My only exception is a DVD for the grandkids - they will re-watch DVDs on a daily basis. Can you say "The Wiggles"? Aghhh!

Renting something for watching at home is possible, but it would have to be in the $5 range (or less) before I would give it a look.

Actually, I think anything can be announced at WWDC. As I recall, the iSight was announced at WWDC a few years ago - and the iSight was very much a consumer product.

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It's not so much consumer vs. non-consumer as it is Mac vs. non-Mac related.

The iSight Cam was introduced at WWDC, but it is a Mac-related device, and it was introduced alongside the PowerMac G5.

Apple's Cupertino offices have two official divisions: Their iPod (music related) division, and their computer (Mac-related) division.

WWDC is a conference for developers. Apples product introductions are always related to their computer (Mac-related) division.

This will work if Apple can beat Cable and video rental store prices and if the video is playable full screen on TV sets. Apple could sell a low cost USB/WiFi box to connect a Mac or video iPod to any TV.

Watching a movie or a TV show on a video iPod is cool when your on the go or away from home but while at home, a TV makes much more sense.

Apple could make this work better than any other company out there, including whatever Microsoft has up their sleeve.

Apple is obviously "leaking" a lot of bad information to Think Secret, probably to get back at them for the trial. And Think Secret is lapping it up despite the outrageousness of it.