Full article here.
Apple today announced iTunes Movie Rentals featuring movies from all the major movie studios including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and New Line Cinema. Users can rent movies for as low as $2.99 and watch them on their Macs or PCs, all current generation iPods, iPhone and Apple TV. iTunes Movie Rentals launches today and will offer over 1,000 titles by the end of February, including over 100 titles in stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound which users can rent directly from their widescreen TV using Apple TV. iTunes Movie Rentals are priced at $2.99 for library titles and $3.99 for new releases, and high definition versions are just one dollar more with library titles at $3.99 and new releases at $4.99.
In addition, Twentieth Century Fox and Apple today announced Digital Copy for iTunes, which provides customers who purchase a DVD with an additional Digital Copy of the movie. Just like movies purchased from the iTunes Store, an iTunes Digital Copy can effortlessly be transferred to iTunes and then viewed on a PC or Mac, iPod with video, iPhone or on Apple TV.
Apple today also unveiled all new software for Apple TV that allows movie fans to rent movies on the iTunes Store directly from their widescreen TV, and lowered the price of Apple TV to just $229. With iTunes Movie Rentals and Apple TV, users can just click a button on their remote to effortlessly rent movies from a catalog of over 1,000 titles by the end of February, including over 100 titles in stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound, with no computer required.
Hardly surprising. I’m not giving up my Netflix account any time soon, though.
This is the VooDoo that the VuDu almost got right… Apple was quite a ways off target at first, but with AppleTV take 2.0, now I am getting one.
Don’t understand unless it’s just panic about panic.
Let’s see, with Apple tee vee you can get a movie – maybe a pretty good picture (DVD quality? For sure?) – and you’ve got 24 hrs to watch it.
Same thing with Netflix.
But, with actual DVD in hand – for as long as you want it – you can watch it today, tomorrow, next week, next year.
So, what’s the panic about? Is it just the image of Steve saying its so. Enough to cause stampede of sellers… er, AAPL sellers, too.
no subscription, no dice. I will stick to net flix until DVD’s are actually dead, or Apple has a subscription.
Beyond understanding, the flight from AAPL. Momentum traders bailing, I guess.
The quarterly reporting should fix the price.
Profit takers, investors looking for holiday sells numbers in the keynote and investors looking for a major iPhone announcement. One would expect the sell off from investors that don’t understand Apple. The WWDC later this year will be the major iPhone announcement venue, when Steve goes into depth on the iPhone SDK plans. Apple normally does not make major sells number announcement before the quarterly earnings report unless the date is close and Oppenheimer has given his blessing to the numbers. Not even Steve questions Oppenheimer’s wisdom in this area of Apple.
Well, i loaded new itunes and i have no idea how to rent the movies. apple is retarded for not updated to 10.5.2, there are way to many incompatibilities right now with leopard, especially wireless.
If you rent movies at the spur of the moment like my family does, Apple’s new rental service is just the ticket.
No more loading the family into the car to drive to the rental store.
If you are a heavy-renter, NetFlix is probably better.
And by “heavy-renter” I don’t mean renters with BMI over 25.
it only gets better. i bet that remote disk will end up on apple tv. We will be able to play dvds on the big screen fro the iMac in the office.
This is awesome. Got my AppleTV. High Def with DD, not a heavy renter. Perfect.
Netflix still has a place in the Universe and many will still find them a better deal. But Apple’s new rental deal is very different, and offers advantages over Netflix that many will find compelling. Portability is the big one. A download for iTunes plays on TV, iPod, iPhone, Mac or Windows PC. And there is the impulse buy ability that you just can’t get from Netflix, where you have to monitor and load your list up. Frankly, many will find that a combination of both is ideal. Don’t forget that there is much more to TV than movie rentals. It still brings all your personal photos, movies, music to the home entertainment center. Rental VOD was the missing piece of the puzzle.
And I guess not having to steer the car load of children past the overpriced pop-corn, soda and candy you find in rental stores has to be both a financial and health plus too!
Exactly as Spark points out. ATV gives you more that what Netflix download rental crap service does. One it works on your Mac! Netflix doesn’t. You have PodCast in HD if you want, Music, Audio, Photo and sharing over the net… Very nice update. Oh and no need for a computer to have ATV now. Another big plus.
Hmmm.
Netflix dropped less today than Apple did.
Maybe they’re all just afflicted by the broader market, and not Apple’s announcements?
The pricing is ridiculous. I can rent a DVD for a whole week (or longer from Netflix) for the same price, and it comes with the DVD extras.
The answer is obvious in the purchase price. Why do the studios charge Apple almost as much as Walmart for the sale of a movie? Does it cost more for them to encode the film once and give it to Apple than it does to burn thousands of DVDs, package them in fancy custom-printed boxes, and ship them to Walmart? I’ll bet they don’t even have to encode it–Apple probably does it.
The studios are gouging Apple.
I wonder if Blockbuster or Netflix pays the studio a cut of every rental? If I rented out to my friends a DVD that I own, am I obligated to pay the studio?
Waiting for subscription plans….I’m waiting…..
WTF happened to the ability to buy movies? Why is apple pushing renting now? I want to be able to buy HD quality videos, or dvd quality videos. It seems like movie studios are using rentals as an excuse for not giving people the option to buy and watch the movies as many times as they want to. Steve Jobs himself made a verbal gaffe about “buying” the movie, instead of renting, while he was demoing the apple tv.
Netflix is slowly dying. Yeah, if you live in a swamp, the mail is better than the web, but if your more advanced than a caveman, ATV rocks. Netflix wants (reportedly) around $600 for their set top box, combined with there windows DRM files that can’t play on Macs and ipods, or iphones, it’s a recipe for disaster. They were smart to give unlimited streaming before Macworld, but not smarter than Steve Jobs, who usually makes ‘ his first move, his best move’.
R.I.P. Netflix 2008
re: The pricing is ridiculous. I can rent a DVD for a whole week (or longer from Netflix) for the same price, and it comes with the DVD extras.
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Did you see the keynote????
If you did you would have seen that when you rent a movie on Apple TV you get it for 30 days.
ONLY when you start the movie does the 24hr timer start.
Why does Apple have the power to shape the future? Because they not only have the vision to SEE the future, they also have the inherent creativity and now the capability to IMPLEMENT the future.
In unison, Blockbuster and Netflix: “Say goodnight, Gracie.”
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
This does not compete with Netflix.
This competes with PayperView and any other cable Video on Demand. Have you looked at their prices? Very competitive.
This is great for the family that want to watch a movie Friday night and wants to see what’s available and then click on it. Done. And yes, skip driving to the crappy video store that has a small selection.
What I want to see is what the old catalog will grow to be. Being able to search for any movie by actor and then see all their past movies back to the 50s or later. That is when this will rock.
Blue Ray owns HD.
Considering Blue Ray still means driving/walking to the shop, I think Apple just took the first step in owning Blue Ray (which will be obsolete in a few years anyway) I know the quality won’t be as good but for the price of a general movie your only interested in seeing once you can’t beat it for convenience. Like buying music from iTunes.
mw = audience. MDN up to it’s old tricks again with a cleverly stacked dictionary/word list.
I think you’ll find a lot of stock across the board regardless of what company they are associated with dropping like stones. It’s a good thing. Post christmas sale. Snap em up while they’re cheap and wait for things to climb up again. Unless a company goes absolutely broke overnight and busts you’re pretty safe.
I don’t know why so many people here have to kill one product to accept another. Netflix is great for people who want to watch dvds. You can use the cheapest equipment, keep the dvds with NO late fee, never drive to the store , and they have a lot of really werid movies. What more could you ask.
Apple, costs more, techno advance, but instant and easy as pie.
Steve said it many years ago. For Apple to grow, others do not need to lose. But that does not mean that they have to grow either. Netflix has the dvd rental market, but the download side is going to Apple. Trust me.
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