“If earlier reports are accurate, Steve Jobs will soon be in the movie rental business,” Dan Frommer reports for Silicon Alley Insider.
Frommer asks some yet-unanswered questions, including:
How much will rentals cost? In June, when the FT said Apple was in “advanced talks with Hollywood’s largest movie studios” to offer rentals, the price was $2.99 for a 30-day period. Most Amazon Unbox rentals range from 99 cents to $3.99 for a 24-hour viewing period. Our cable company usually wants $3 to $5 for an on-demand rental. Apple’s current iTunes movies from Disney cost about $10 to buy.
Can you rent to own?
Will rented movies play via the Apple TV?
Will Apple sell or rent movies via its Wi-Fi iTunes store for iPhones and iPod touches?
Will Apple offer HD movies for sale or for rent?
How will Blockbuster, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Sony, cable, telco, and cellphone companies, and other rivals respond? Apple’s iPod line dominates the portable media player market, and the iPhone is taking a big chunk of the smartphone market. And now, it appears, there will finally be digital rentals compatible with Apple’s gadgets. Surely Jobs’ rivals haven’t been sitting around doing nothing. How will they fight back? Lower rental prices? More portability/less DRM? This should be a fun one!
Full article here.
A quick look at the smartphone and digital media player markets show quite clearly that Blockbuster, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Sony, cable, telco, cellphone companies, and other potential rivals most certainly could have been and still are sitting around doing nothing. Sounds like a new group of companies are about to get run over by Apple. At least they can ask those who’ve been already pancaked by Apple’s iPod+iTunes+iPhone (Microsoft, Sony, Motorola, etc.) how it’ll feel.
dallas is right but is not always about the girls. Apple and Nintendo aim for everyone not catering to certain group of consumer.
@GotApple
Nope. I honestly believe it’s about the girls. Can you name one mass consumer hit that wasn’t marketed to girls at least as much as boys? The iPod was. Remember those dancing ads, yeah they were for the ladies. The Wii is advertised to mothers. The original iMac was for the ladies. Brown and Green Halo 3 Zune, who cares. Easter colored iPod Mini, now thats cool.
The one exception to that might be the iPhone. It’s advertising is pretty neutral. Honestly I think if they marketed it showing girls having fun it and with it’s tricks it would sell even faster.
RE: dallas
I think you’re almost right, but I’d say ‘non-gamers’, not just girls. I’ve seen boys leave the room, too. Boys who weren’t stereotypical ‘fat smelly gamerz’. And adults as well. Basically, anyone who isn’t 14, chugging WIRED and screaming “PWNED!!!” every 12 seconds.
I’ve been playing Guitar Hero 2 & 3 with a group of girls non-stop for the last 3 days, and I can’t remember ever seeing an ad for it at all, so I can’t comment on how effective they are. But the appeal is just as strong as with any group of gamers I’ve seen.
“The original iMac was for the ladies.”
That’s your own prejudices at work. We had those original iMacs (and the matching G3 towers, or ‘smuf condos’) all over our company and no one ever associated them with male or female. Not until the toilet-seat iBooks came out – Graphite was ‘for boys’ and tangerine was ‘for girls’ – did gender enter into it.
$1.99 for a 5 day rental. $9.99 per month gets you 6 downloads.
@ HolyMackerel
Not that I’ve tried pirate sites or anything… but $3.00 for a download that I can receive in a few hours trumps a free flick taking 20 days to get.
“$9.99 per month gets you 6 downloads.”
If it’s going to be a subscription service (which makes sense for rentals), then there should be an option for unlimited downloads.
@HolyMackerel
If own the DVD, I don’t rip it, I play it.
For me, a $3.00 download trumps a $25.00 DVD any day of the week.
@ Sixvodkas
I mostly play them too… unless I want to watch them on my iPhone, in which case I rip them with Handbrake. I also rip movies that I rent and want to keep but don’t want to buy (tee hee!). The only thing stopping me, at the moment, from ripping all my movies is storage space, but as soon as that changes I think I’ll probably touch my DVDs about as much as I touch my CDs. Not much.
My big question is whether Apple will carry the same subtitle information as the DVD release — or at least closed captions. Hearing loss is the #1 disability in the world, and tens of millions of people rely on captions or subtitles to enjoy movies. My biggest disappointment with the iTunes Store is that NONE of the TV shows or movies have captions (even the TV shows that were originally broadcast with captions).
Apple would be smart to be the FIRST company to offer online rentals with all the DVD features (including subtitles).
I pretty much HATE DVD’s. They are not exactly as stable as we or at least I was lead to believe. DVD/CD as far as I am concerned can’t go the way of the 8 track fast enough…The ONLY shows I watch and the ONLY Movies I watch come from iTunes. This also goes for music and now I am hooked on uTunes and several Podcasts. The radio has also gone he way of the 8 track….cya….
@ Jim –
Stable? You mean you have problems with pre-recorded DVD content crashing? Or that the discs become unplayable after a while?
The only problems with optical media I’ve had are discs I’ve burned myself, which DO seem to have a limited lifespan. However, pressed discs (like all those sold commercially) have never been a problem for me, and I have CDs that go back to the dawn of the CD age (I was an early adopter).
@shen,
Very good idea, and very obvious unfortunately the fools at the UPO allowed someone to patent this IDEA a few years ago, and that is why you don’t see a kiosk at every music store, Air port and 7 Eleven, now where you can go in pick your music insert credit card and have unlimited choice of songs burn print and package while you wait. This could then have been extended to other devices. The patent holder are not licensing but waiting to sue anyone who user there?? Idea.
@ChrissieOne
“Not until the toilet-seat iBooks came out – Graphite was ‘for boys’ and tangerine was ‘for girls’ – did gender enter into it.”
Dunno… I’m thinking the “Flower Power” iMac might have had gender in mind.
Remember those? yikes.
http://www.apple.com/pr/photos/imac2001/imac_tokyo.html
“toilet-seat iBooks”…ha ha..got a chuckle from that!
i just want to know how much it costs to buy a movie
hey shen,
Talking about those people who work at blockbuster. I am one of those people who you say must have only 4 brain cells. I just wanted to let you know that just because you work for a company doesn’t make you stupid, what makes you stupid is when you get on to a site and comment about the people who work at those places instead of the products. I am a very hard working individual, and try to better myself all the time. I am sorry that I don’t have the time to take a good place like a comment room and make it a slander room just like my role model shen did..(thats you).