“Next to the Beatles, the most common Apple iTunes rumor has got to be movie rentals. From the day the first video iPod appeared there has been speculation about it. Now, there is actually evidence beyond ‘unnamed sources’ to suggest it may be a reality soon,” Seth Gilbert reports for SeekingAlpha.
“The most definitive proof a rental service may be in the works was accidentally discovered this weekend by a user trying to report a problem with iTunes. David Watanabe published a screenshot on photo sharing site Flickr that showed an iTunes drop down menu of subject headings that included a rental subsection. According the reports spreading virally around the net, the image, which explicitly references rentals, was taken from live iTunes installations and confirmed by other users as well. It has since been removed,” Gilbert reports.
“The fact that rental related content made it into iTunes is the best evidence yet that an arrival may be soon. Like the Beatles coming to iTunes, rentals are less a question of if than of when,” Gilbert reports.
More in the full article here.
AppleInsider reports, “The most recent report on the matter came courtesy of the Financial Times, which reported in June that Apple was in advanced talks with Hollywood’s largest movie studios about launching an online film rental service to challenge cable and satellite TV operators.”
AppleInsider reports, “According to the report, individual films on the iTunes service would fetch $2.99 for a 30-day rental and would be governed by digital rights-management software that would allow users to transfer the movie ‘from a computer to at least one other device such as the video iPod or iPhone.'”
Full article, with image of the iTunes drop-down menu, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Linux Guy And Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Err…
Is this the same Seth Gilbert, who’s a member of the <i>Theory of Distributed Systems Group. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT<i>? Or… is it Seth Gilbert of the pathetically bad ‘Christian’ Rock Band, Hmm?
hmmm…coinciding with an TV update???
MW: likely
Or it could be the Seth Gilbert Sound Engineer, you know the one, he worked on Jimmy Kimmel Live! TV episodes [whatever they were…]. I’m asking because checking his bio on SeekingAlpha reveals nothing, his image is a silhouette, also revealing nothing. Who is he?
I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!
How about Captioning? PLEASE!! I W-I-L-L QUIT BLOCKUSTER and NETFLIX and join 21st Century business like iTunes so that I can watch any video on my iPod and iPhone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Who cares whom Seth Gilbert is except Seth and his mother?
This might actually begin to make the AppleTV appealing to me… without rentals, I don’t have much motivation to purchase it.
@CLOSED CAPTIONING?
You must have beer bottle glasses to be able to see closed captions on an iPod screen! But for you Apple has put support into iTunes 7.4.
“closed captions on an iPod screen”
C’mon now. The myopic Lilliputian market is at least ten times bigger than the hardcore gamerz that build their own box market and not a whole lot of crossover because of the shortage of tiny tools.
There was a survey. Online.
I hear they developed a special type of closed captioning for porn called 10 CC….
MW:girls…really!
Rentals and a metric buttload more content (TV, movies, documentaries, cartoons, etc.) on iTS and then I’ll stop whining for at least a week.
“C’mon now. The myopic Lilliputian market is at least ten times bigger than the hardcore gamerz that build their own box market and not a whole lot of crossover because of the shortage of tiny tools. There was a survey. Online.”
so far as i know, the myopic Lilliputian market prefers to game using laptops, which they still build themselves. diagnosing a fan issue in a laptop is easy when you can actually crawl inside.
i saw a site that sells head lamps for them to light up what they are working on while inside. interestingly many of them have taken to “extreme repair” where they fix hardware while it is running.
….just waiting for the discovery channel special.
Would like to see my AppleTV updated with the iTunes WiFi Music Store and Movie Rentals. That would make it much more useful.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Linux Guy And Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
And MikeK who sent MDN this link on Saturday.
Wait a minute, is that the same Seth Gilbert that played Laura Ingalls on Little House On The Prarie?
And Apple obviously really likes Nelly Furtado.
Careful Mike, you’ll get deleted doing that. I pointed out the same on an earlier thread and my post disappeared into thin air.
Ooh, MikeK’s post is still there. This is freaking me out. It’s like waiting for that kid to get mad and wish someone into the cornfield.
Maybe it’s the school teacher in me, but it really rankles me to see the word “proof” used in place of “evidence”.
“Proof” is for mathematics and alcohol, kids.