From the “Better Late Than Never” files (we don’t know how we missed this one):
“Apple has quietly updated the Apple TV’s movie browsing and renting system to allow for the purchase of movies directly from the device. In addition to the ability to purchase films, a ‘Top Sellers’ category, showing the current most popular movie purchases, has been added to the top of the ‘Top Movies’ menu,” Charles Starrett reported last Thursday for iLounge.
“Apple has previously shown the ability to make live updates to the Apple TV’s iTunes Store sub-menus without the need for a full system update,” Starrett reported.
The full article contains screenshots of the Apple TV’s new abilities here.
Yes, you can purchase movies via AppleTV now. Yet movies for purchase only, are co-mingled with movies for rent, and its frustrating trying to tease them apart. Imagine seeing a movie you like listed as movies that others rented, and its only available for purchase. Ack!
Remember we want to own our music and rent our movies.
Apple, please segregate movies for sale from movies for rent. Thanks.
Or make them all rentable and sellable across the board…
How do you back up films that your purchase directly on your ATV? I could see your hard drive getting full quite fast,
They sync back to your mac then you can burn the data file on a DVD and re-copy back if you want to watch again
Apple will need to add Time Capsule support to ATV, as well as the ability to swap anything you purchased on it from the computer and vise versa.
@iWill:
I agree, but actually instead of segregating them, they should all available for rent and purchase. I hate seeing a new movie pop up (Cloverfield for example) and then find out I can’t rent it.
Not going to buy too many movies, but I would rent the hell out of them.
We Rented “I Am Legend” in HD this past weekend. You can rent or buy it in SD only, but the HD versions of all the movies I’ve looked at are only rentable. While most of the SD movies I looked at are both rentable and purchasable for $9.99 to $14.99.
@ Macintosh
Yes, indeed! I guess that its the old practice of making new movies available for purchase first, before releasing for rental. And this does not apply to only the newly produced 2008 movies. Some classic movies from many years ago are for purchase only. – – This is an ever evolving service. Stay tuned, its still early days. . .
We’ve rented a number of Moves with Apple TV and I’ve got say it’s the best rental experience. Blows the Video Rental Stores out of the water, creams, Netfilx on speed of service and simplicity of getting the movies you want to see when you want to see them, no prior planning needed, no frustration, no return hassle, no membership fees, best of all no DVD Player needed and no media to fuss with.
“movie purchasing on Apple TV”
I thought it was already possible!!! ;-(
@iWill
Good idea. Make sure you <a href=”http://www.apple.com/feedback”>send it to Apple.<a>
AAPLguy
dam, typin too fast
send it to Apple.
Thanks AAPL guy!
In preferences show rentals only, buy only or both. I will check off buy only. If I was interested in renting I would have bought a Played Fer Sure device.
A movie worth watching is worth buying.
@iWill:
Yup. I’m betting that by the end of the year we’re going to be seeing some major changes to the old movie studio practices.
They’ll find out that the more options they offer (along with shorter release times), the more they’ll get in return.
@ 3rd Option: “A movie worth watching is worth buying.”
How do you know it’s worth watching unless you’ve seen it?
Not the same as the rentals
When you rent on ATV, you can only watch on ATV, as they are a higher quality than what you rent in iTunes
on ATV, when you go to buy, they tell you they are compatible (can be watched on iPod) and as such they are lower quality, and I can not see where you can buy HD
@ Demon
“I Am Legend”: Now there’s a really bad movie remake. Heston’s version was bad but still much better than this recent attempt.