“Apple has signed News Corp’s 20th Century Fox studio to a new online video-on-demand service in a deal that could change the way people pay for online film content,” Matthew Garrahan and Kevin Allison report for The Financial Times.
“The agreement will allow consumers to rent the latest Fox DVD releases by downloading a digital copy from Apple’s iTunes platform for a limited time, according to a person familiar with the situation,” Garrahan and Allison report.
“The Apple-Fox deal, likely to be announced at the Macworld show on January 14, has the potential to transform film distribution. Apart from letting people rent online, Apple will also for the first time extend its FairPlay digital rights management system beyond its own products,” Garrahan and Allison report. “A digital file protected by FairPlay will be included in new Fox DVD releases, enabling film content to be transferred or ‘ripped’ from the disc to a computer and video iPod.”
“Apple, whose shares hit $200 for the first time yesterday in intra-day trade, is understood to have been in talks with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount and Warner Bros about making their new releases available on iTunes to buy and rent,” Garrahan and Allison report
More details in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This sounds very promising and bodes well for Apple TV, too. Assume this will include Disney, too.
Jobs should be able to pull a few strings at Disney too…
Great news. Hopefully these movies will be in true High-def for a change? Hopefully I won’t have to trash my existing Apple TV for a second-generation model (but if I do, that’s life!) I suspect they’ll sign on a lot of studios for this….
…except that shithole known as Vivendi Universal.
fm
Looks like I’m gonna finally get me one them TVs
Third!
” enabling film content to be transferred or ‘ripped’ from the disc to a computer and video iPod.””
It’s about time. Just hope its all High Def.
Caca! Fifth!
I’m going to bed!
hmmm…210 by the end of the year?!
“A digital file protected by FairPlay will be included in new Fox DVD releases, enabling film content to be transferred or ‘ripped’ from the disc to a computer and video iPod.” you’d think they know that ‘ripping’ is encoding a file, and since it’s already encoded, it can only be transferred.
Sweet. Although, I’m not holding my breath for HD. I’m expecting standard DVD quality without multi-channel audio, but it’d sure be nice to be pleasantly surprised.
All Your Radical Left Wing Movie Choices Are Belong To Rupert Murdoch!!!
(sry, somebody had to say it)
ChrissyOne, you are a crackup.
Umm, DVDs aren’t High Def people. The article is referring strictly to DVDs. If you want High Def you need Blu-ray for that.
@ Ferf Muckmeyer
You laugh now, but wait until “Sicko” blows up on you right before the Cuba scene. ;P
Sign me up for the “Ready to Buy an Apple TV” club if this turns out to be true.
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ChrissyOne, please point your crack up.
As far as the High-Def moniker goes, DVD quality has got to be an improvement over what iTunes movies dish out. Least they can do is go with some kind of upscaling solution that offers better quality. I’m sure we’ll hear all about this at the show next month.
And @ChrissyOne, ok, ok, got the message, he he he.
FM
I hope it’s more than Fox and Disney, damnit. I want them all lined up at once. Sony, Paramount, Warner, I want the whole kitten kaboodle announced at Macworld!
Current videos that are available on iTunes are generally 640×480, while NTSC DVDs max out at 720×480. So don’t look for much if any jump in resolution of the iTunes downloads as they’re already at near DVD quality. If you want true HD up to 1080p, like the earlier post said, you’re gonna need a Blu-ray Disc player.
“allow consumers to rent the latest Fox DVD releases”
What about the back catalog? They will need oldies to differentiate their service from the video-on-demand that the cable companies offer. Right now, the only way to get old movies is on DVD. I hope the iTunes rental store can find a way to change that.
720p (which is what appletv does right now) is pretty much just as good as 1080. Obviously 1080 is better, but 720 is really good too.
BTW, movies I have bought on iTunes look fantastic on my 720p tv via AppleTV. I know they are scaled up, but they do look great.
Microsoft have been doing HD (720p) movie rental downloads on the Xbox360 for a while now, so would be a bit rubbish if iTunes rentals were only standard definition
“I want my TV!” – Dire Straits
(Anyone old enough to remember this one?)
Apple has to innovate in a bandwidth starved environment. This is a clever way to expand Apple’s business while it prepares for the day that the bandwidth needs are met. Apple will be in the catbird seat when that bandwidth arrives.
And it must be said — are you idiot analysts and pundits listening — that Apple TV will be ready, along with its retail channel partners to crank up the business to spectacular proportions.