“Apple Inc., maker of the top-selling iPod media player, will let iTunes users rent movies as well as buy them and will add Warner Bros. and Fox as suppliers, according to people familiar with the agreements,” Andy Fixmer and Connie Guglielmo report for Bloomberg.
“Joining Warner Bros. and News Corp.’s Fox in supplying rental films are Viacom Inc.’s Paramount, Walt Disney Co. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., said two people who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public,” Fixmer and Guglielmo report.
“Apple will announce the rental service Jan. 15, the people said. New releases and older titles will rent for $3.99 for 24 hours. The lower-priced rentals and additional titles may help boost the popularity of Apple’s iPod media players, iPhone and Apple TV set-top box, which delivers shows to widescreen TV sets,” Fixmer and Guglielmo report. “‘Once a couple of studios do it, how long can the others resist?’ Richard Greenfield, a Pali Capital analyst, said in an interview. ‘It becomes only a matter of minutes before the others come on board too.'”
“Jobs may also use his [Jan. 15th Macworld Expo keynote] speech to announce an update to Apple TV, which transmits content from a Mac or PC for viewing on widescreen TVs, Bear Stearns & Co. analyst Andrew Neff said in an interview,” Fixmer and Guglielmo report.
Full article here.
The “Burma Shave” strategy.
$3.99 for 24 hours?!? There are Red Boxes all over with $1/day rentals. With surround sound and extras, if I want them. I sure hope that price is way off, or Apple rentals will fail.
@hh,
I just think the solution you propose is messy. I don’t see the average customer dropping cable and going OTA and AppleTV. BTW, I live on Long Island, far away enough from Manhattan to make OTA useless.
I think the AppleTV has alot of potential and does what it does well, but my ultimate endgame solution would be more streamlined. I don’t want to have to switch boxes, inputs, etc to get live versus recorded media… I know theres very little chances of this, but the only way I’m going to ditch cable is with an AppleTV that offered IPTV with ala carte channel subscriptions, movie rentals/sales and did this all with instant gratification (i.e. whether its live TV or recorded, it starts instantly just like my cable box already does). Having to wait for a movie/TV show to download will eventually be unacceptable to the average customer.
Maybe even this idea is too limited to the traditional way of consuming video.
If these reports of movie rentals are in fact true, I sure would like to know what magic equation Apple came up with to woo the studios.
What ever it was, its got to be quite something to have engaged their participation.
Apple has very bright people who have probably already done the cost analysis/comparison to what’s already being offered in order to bring the rumored movie rental inline with what’s currently being offered through legitimate similar services (PPV, Netflix, brick and mortar retail). The pricing will also take into consideration current consumer trends in renting movies, most likely based more on B&M;and PPV than Netflix. Even Blockbuster is having a problem competing with Netflix’s mail order service. Apple has probably also analyzed the movie rental industry’s dvd rental time out, price per day of rental and base the iTunes pricing on these figures.
People will bitch, which they always do, but in the end the pricing will be fair and inline with what consumers are willing and able to pay for current services.
Re:”I hope it’s not 24 hours from time of download. Even the xbox live service let’s you hold onto the movie for two weeks, and doesn’t start the 24 hour countdown until you start watching it. Would really suck if xbox had a better deal than itunes.”
The problem with the X hours after you start watching model is – if I download the video, then load it on 3 iPODs, iTunes will not know when I started watching till I re synch.
The other problem is transfer speed, I was trying to shi my kids a 1 min 35 sec 720P trailer for the new Pixar file from the Apple site lat night and it took 15 min to down load on a high speed cable connection (5Mb Sec) so 20 Hrs or so for the hole movie?
This is very good news for Apple and consumers but dose anyone think they will ever invite vivid (adult). Including an Adult entertainment company with parental controls in itunes could slam the doors on any new comers to this new market. Just watching the coverage at CES you know everyone is in this game now even T.V’s with built in WiFi.
ChrisM is right Apple TV is not as streamed line as it need’s to be switching your audio Video input is not good enough. I want to surf my Apple TV to see if the new Digg nation is out yet while watching my other shows.
I don’t think Apple has the balls to talk with an adult entertainment co. They always say this is how VHS won the Bata war. Net Flicks has done well with out it but now they have a box too. I see it as a race to the Adult industry. Right now as I see it Apple has an upper hand but give it two years an who knows.
How do you see it?
“announce an update to Apple TV”
There had better be a big update with provisions to view personal video content *without* iTunes or the TV will continue to languish. If they only add video rentals then my response will be the same as it is now … no sale!
I think $3.99 per rental is a bit high too. However, if this was $3.99/month subscription, where the downloaded files live for 24 hours after download, with unlimited (or even limited) number of downloads, I’d buy into that. I saw a promo for Blockbuster’s monthly service on Facebook at the same rate. Coincidence? I think not.
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‘It becomes only a matter of minutes before the others come on board too.’
What are these analysts smoking? Any remaining studios are going to take weeks or months to join Apple because of the lawyers. Have you ever had lawyers agree on a contract in minutes?
Pricing is not in the hands of Apple – (yet)
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If it’s only for 24 hours, it won’t be as popular.
And will you fucking retards stop suggesting subscriptions. Why do you idiots want yet another bill. There are only about two to three movies worth watching in any given year. I don’t want to spend $48 a year for that. No one should.
at ZT,
I enjoy your eloquent posts but 3 percent market share? This is not limited to Apple Inc. computers. Any computer that has iTunes on it. I think there are a couple more computers out there with iTunes.
Individual download movie rentals are great for those of us who
(1) only occasionally come across a movie that we want to watch,
(2) dislike feeling that we have to watch a minimum amount of entertainment because we have subscribed to it,
(3) don’t want to clutter our shelves with rarely watched DVDs,
(4) don’t want to clutter our hard drives with huge purchased movie files,
(5) would much rather select and download a movie in the comfort of our own homes than drive (perhaps with the kids) some distance through traffic to shop for a DVD in a brick-and-mortar store.
Yeah, no thanks. I’ll stick with Netflix.
Yeah, what Listmaker said.
All this iTunes movie rental talk has accomplished at least one thing — I just signed up for Netflix. Redbox gets my impulse business.
I still haven’t downloaded a TV show and these moguls are worried about DRM and think people will pay $3.99 for a 24hr download? I’ll let you download movie for $2.99 and you can keep them forever.
Hey effword,
“Subscription”, in this case, doesn’t mean you pay a monthly bill. You’ll subscribe to individual movies for a given period of time. Just means you pay for it, download it, but then it disappears after you watch it. Get a grip dude.
TOO EXPENSIVE! I might pay $3.99 to get it for, say, 2 weeks, but 24 hours!?!
What a bunch of whiney nitpicking babies.
The rumors don’t match up to what you want or feel you are entitled to so you have to rend your clothing and scream to the heavens,”Why have you forsaken me Apple!”
Get a grip, take a valium and wait until Mac World to get the truth.
The first step would be to establish the new business model. The second would be to grow it. The third, change it and add value.
Pay per view on cable sits there like a bump on a log, relatively unknown by most people. Apple and iTMS is used daily by millions of people when they actively what they want. Just like people expected the music store to fail because downloading/paying for music didn’t match current patterns of digital music behavior. iTMS changes that because it made it compelling to pay for content. Expect the same with a rental service.
Imagine in several years, once not only the kinks have been worked out, but when Apple is able to leverage the iTMS to provide daily content to users on demand, including network programming. Traditional tv, watch out. If I can dump my cable subscription and watch Lost or what-not whenever I feel like it on demand, I will be one satisfied customer.
Apple has become incrementalist in its approach to paradigm shifts. It used to be that Apple would offer new technology before people were ready for it, so it died on the vine, only to be resurrected by some other company years down the line. Now, Apple has a game plan to usher in a new paradigm on their own terms. Slow steps. Be sure that they have some pretty amazing ideas of what may come.
Next week will likely bring version 1.0 of a rental/on-demand service. In a year or two, it’s going to have shaken the industry yet again if Apple gets its way.
Between iTunes and Blue Ray consider HD dead people.
cheapo,
I don’t believe Apple is going to sell porn movies so you can play with your wanker for two weeks. Or maybe you have to watch a movie dozens of times, or reeeeally slow, due to your lack of comprehension skills.
@HH, OTA HD would be great. My bro-in-law and I setup a RadioShack antenna inside his garage and he can pick up a couple dozen HD channels in the Denver area. His neighbors and friends can’t believe how great the picture is, but of course, people don’t realize OTA HD is not as compressed as the HD channels you get from cable or satellite operators. I live in a rural area and only get PBS HD OTA, so I have to get cable, TW, in my area.
Interestingly, since I have two homes, which I go back and forth at least once a month, it doesn’t make sense for me to turn off cable in one location and turn it on, later. I use a Slingbox, and it works great. I get 16 HD channels from TW in Maine, for $30, and use their $50 Turbo broadband service, 10MB/1MB, to sling the service to my other home, where I pay for cheap, slow 1.5MB/500KB DSL for $25. It actually works out great, since I have the same channels in both locations. Of course, I was in Quebec City over the holidays and watched the NBA in HD using my Slingbox. And, when I go to my home in Shanghai, China in April, I’ll be able to do it as well.
So, free OTA HD would be great if I could get it, since I have a EyeTV 500 box, but I don’t, so my $30 TW HD subscription is pretty darn good for my needs.