“Apple has without explanation removed the ability to rent TV shows from both iTunes and its Apple TV, taking away what was just last year one of the major advertised selling points of the $99 streaming-centric set-top box,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“The option to rent episodes of TV shows is no longer available on either the Apple TV, or when browsing content via Apple’s iTunes application. Previously, participating networks offered users the ability to rent a TV episode for 99 cents, with 30 days to begin watching and 48 hours to complete it,” Hughes reports. “As further evidence that the ability to rent TV shows has been removed completely, an Apple support document entitled “iTunes Store: How to rent TV shows,” has been removed from the Web.”
Hughes reports, “The change to no longer allow rentals would seem to suggest that Apple’s experiment never paid off in terms of sales, or gained any new support from studios. Previously, Fox and ABC were the only two of the ‘big four’ major U.S. networks that had participated in Apple’s streaming offering.”
Read more in the full article here.