“Apple is in advanced talks with Hollywood’s largest movie studios about launching an online film rental service to challenge cable and satellite TV operators,” Matthew Garrahan reports for The Financial Times.
“The service could be significant for Apple. If it signs enough studios, the group will get access to more premium film content,” Garrahan reports.
“Apple, which declined to comment, is believed to be aiming for an autumn release,” Garrahan reports. “A film would cost $2.99 for a 30-day rental. Its digital rights-management software would allow films to be moved from a computer to at least one other device such as the video iPod or iPhone. The software would prevent movies being copied.”
Garrahan reports, “Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros and Disney declined to comment. Privately, though, the studios are excited about Apple getting into VOD. ‘When you think about Apple customers they are so connected to the brand they will try anything to do with it,’ said one senior studio executive.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Don,” “Judge Bork,” and “Bizarro Ballmer” for the heads up.]
Now we’re talking!
Yes! Bring on da chedda!
This will be a HUGE opportunity for Apple and excellent incentive for people to consider Apple TV. Three dollars for thirty days has to be one of the best movie rental deals for consumers.
Peace.
iTunes was only the beginning.
iPod was only the beginning.
AppleTV is really only the beginning.
Sloooooowly putting all the pieces in place.
All right!! rent my movies
buy “The Tv shows” we want to watch, and along with the podcast available (unsung hero of appleTV) we are set to go, good bye Direct TV
If you own an AppleTV, check out the podcast , all 3 networks podcast their evening news (NBC in full)
Now what would really be cool would be a “complete my rental”, and allow renters to pay the extra to keep it. Netflix is still cheaper, but I guess you’re paying for the convience of not waiting for it to arrive. But it needs to be at least 720p!
http://flickr.com/photos/juliesnooley/371336589/in/set-72157594503431178/
Photo of someone who works on the iPhone.
If they get this done, I will buy an AppleTV tomorrow! (maybe)
Netflix must be shaking in their boots
But it needs to be at least 720p!
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720p would be nice, but even Netflix has a very limited selection of HD movies..
Apple just needs to bring it up to at least match TRUE dvd quality with surround sound and I’d be satisfied enough to cancel my Netflix and start renting from iTunes.
‘When you think about Apple customers they are so connected to the brand they will try anything to do with it,’ said one senior studio executive.”
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I call bullshit. This sounds like some kind of April Fools crap.
This development is great, obviously, we’ve been talking about movie rentals (vs. music) for a long time and I hope it comes, but.. the quote from the executive sounds like it was cooked up by CNET or something.
Doesn’t it have a twinge of fanboyism to it?
Three bucks, though? That’s more expensive than overnight rentals where I am once you adjust for different currencies. Sure, you get it for thirty days but you’re still only likely to watch it once, you don’t get the extras, you have to download the thing and the quality is lower.
Very expensive, this.
Joel, gimme a break.. $3 bucks for a movie is very reasonable. Most VOD services cost more than that.
I hope we’ll be able to purchase these rentals directly from Apple TV.
1.99 for 2 weeks would be a better deal.
jjr makes a really good point. Yes, $1.99 would be a better deal than $2.99. And, I’ll just point out, $0.99 for one week would be better yet. Or $0.49 for three days. Or $0.15 for one day, or, let’s just cut to the point, why not $0.03 for a two hour viewing?
Man, this forum is deep. I’m glad I didn’t go to sleep and miss this.
When you talk about movie download prices you should also factor in the cost of the proportion of your monthly download limit.
In many countries with low download prices and large monthly limits this may not be an issue. In Australia for example many internet users pay a fair whack for what is laughingly called broadband (256kps).
If we’re talking about lower quality files then the download size will be lower again. Let’s say the file size is one gig. then that works out to about one day’s download out of a month.
In Australia we also pay $1.69 per basic quality iTunes track so I would estimate that the price of a movie download in this country would be about four to five bucks per download. Then add the cost of the bandwith and then add another dollar.
So would I pay five to six dollars for an inferior quality movie. No I wouldn’t, it’s a rip!
When I rent from a video store and rent a couple of dvds at a time the price halves. It costs me four to five dollars (per dvd) to rent new dvds and they contain extras. If I really want to be sneaky then I can use MTR/Dvd2oneX/Toast and copy the suckers.
Many people will use the service but I won’t because it’s not economic. Likewise I haven’t used the iTunes (music) store either because of the prices (see above).
Some of us have mortgages and other costs and these services are beyond many people’s incomes. One day the copyright holders might just get the message that if they really dropped their prices then they’d create more business which would still deliver solid profits.
Personally I’d use a legal service over an illegal one any day of the week, if the price was lower. Oh well I guess I’ll just have to keep breaching copyright.
Full marks to Apple for moving the technology forward. Heaps of brickbats to the copyright holders for continually ripping off consumers
“Joel, gimme a break.. $3 bucks for a movie is very reasonable. Most VOD services cost more than that.”
VOD, I don’t know about. I’m comparing it to going down to the video store in Australia and it does not compare favourably.
3 cents for 2 hours with Sum Jung Gal for 3 cents would be a rip off.
you mean 1.5 cents for an hour with Sum Jung Gal would not do anyone justice.
720p movies please Apple Inc. “Near DVD quality”? No thanks!
Expensive. Remember, it has to compete with free bittorent movies… I’ll stick with bittorent for now.
The posts on this forum continue to show just how clueless so many people are. If true, and I think it is, this will be a HUGE WIN for consumers. Better than Netflix, which is a pain in the ass. Better than Cable, with it’s gigantic remote and advertising. Better than Blockbuster, with it’s late fees and drives (twice for each movie). Apple will have made a huge paradigm shift for consumers. Get the TV shows you want, without advertising. Get the movies you want, without the drive and late fees. All at the right price points. Anyone who doesn’t get it are in the same camp of people who didn’t get the iPod when it first came out. I remember tons of people on these forums yapping away complaining about it when that came out too.
“Netflix is still cheaper, but I guess you’re paying for the convience of not waiting for it to arrive.”
I just canceled my Netflix because I was sick of not being able to finish a movie because the disks were scratched to hell (yes i wipe them down).
I doubt this will be a problem with the Apple service.
This would be HUGELY successful, at least here in the States. My local video store charges $3.99 for a DVD rental for two nights (for recent releases), plus driving back and forth, plus the late fees. My cable VOD is $3.99, not user-friendly, and a hassle to deal with. Frankly, I would pay more for this and still consider it a great deal–but don’t tell Apple!
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This was 1 of 3 things I wanted in order to buy an AppleTV. The others being…
1. DVR capabilities (I know. A pipe dream)
2. An enabled USB drive. (To connect a 1TB HD to for all those saved movies.)
Movie rentals was the #1 issue that kept me from buying an Apple TV. I guess I better go ahead and make that Airport Extreme purchase I’ve been putting off….
What this iTMS Movie Rental will entail
Movie rentals require a much more stringent form of DRM so it can’t be simply copied with screen recording software.
This means Apple will be tapping EFI, the powerful firmware level that is it’s own OS located right between Mac OS X and hardware. EFI can contact the internet, read partitions on your drive and run movies and such WITHOUT THE OS EVEN RUNNING!!
EFI is the most privacy invading firmware level ever created. Created by Intel, handed off to the rather unknown UEFI group out of Apple’s control. It gives complete and total access to your computer remotely without the OS and any software you install in it being aware of it.
Trusted Computing – the industry doesn’t trust you, so they are going to watch you. Mac’s are being turned into some sort of silly TV device, ratting on everything you do. It’s no longer the device you use to do your private buisness on, keep encrypted files safe from competitiors on because EFI is right there between the hard drive to capture what it wants!
So basically this means movie rentals will only be availabe with INTEL MAC’s. Sorry PPC users.
Second, present day cable boxes are basically computers, they have a cable connection, hard drives and a menu based system OS, DRM and encryption to insure the content is not copied.
Sure the SD content can be copied to the TV, but not the HD content because of HDCP.
Third, renting via cable is cheap and has the advantage of suppling the cable line to the house!!! So they are first in the door! How can Apple even attempt to compete when cable is charging a per month rate and then a small rate for each movie?
Cable modem is the way to go to get relaible steady movie streaming and downloads. So cable companies can easily begin throttling your bandwidth and pinching “rent per download” services like iTMS right off!
It’s been awfully quiet as far as we get closer to the Key note. Not a whole lot of wild rumors out there.
I also deal with scratched movies all the time…imagine 3/4 through the movie when the plot thickens and your date is snuggling up and BAM!, the scratched DVD does the turntable dance. Not a fun evening. Apple TV, with enough content and good quality, has a chance to be more than just a hobby.
“Get the TV shows you want, without advertising. Get the movies you want, without the drive and late fees. All at the right price points.”
Excellent! But I hope Apple offers discounts on treadmills as well. Or make an exercise video download mandatory for every ten movies.
Steve McCroskey: “This fog is getting thicker.”
Johnny: “And Leon is getting laaaaarrrrrger.”
http://gb.bbs.ws/book.php?book=djobsblog
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$2.99 for 30-days – and without a required subscription – that sounds very good.
@Joel
VOD means video-on-demand, it is an instant video purchase that many cable and satellite providers offer. They typically charge about $5 for the convenience of ordering a movie directly from your couch and never having to deal with driving, late fees, queues and checked out movies. Tre is right, $3 is “very reasonable.”
Yeah, this will be great… if you’re not in Canada or anywhere else in the world. Something tells me that this will be a U.S. only feature on iTunes and Candadians will continue to get screwed out of content because of dumbass laws.
i’ll stick with redbox for $1 as long as it’s 3 blocks away. But, if I lived in a more remote area, this would be very exciting.
@Centris 650
An Airport Extreme isn’t necessary. You can save some money and use an ethernet cable to connect to Apple TV as long as you don’t mind running a cable around the living room.
I buy my music, I rent my video, what about my music video?
MW : sort — I need to sort it all out, help Mr. Wizard!!
Imagine no cable bill but instead getting a monthly bill from iTunes Music Store for 60.00. Hmmm
@anakinpedro
I’m not sure what the intended feeling of your comment is, but in fact, yes, imagine that. And if that’s too high or not high enough you can buy fewer or more shows (and rent more or fewer videos), as you see fit. And if/when your shows are out of season and you’ve seen all the episodes and don’t care to watch repeats, or like me, you just get tired of watching TV sometimes, you have no bill – imagine that.
To G Spank et alia,
I repeat what I was saying before. The price points for music in many countries does not make the purchase of music economic. Likewise (and I used the Australian example) the sale of movies at lower quality than current dvds is not going to compel me to use this service.
I have not used the Australian iTunes service because I have to pay $AUS1.69 for low quality music and a whopping $AUS2.19 per DRM free/higher quality tracks.
That’s the same price for a cd in this country. And you expect masses of Australian consumers to pay five to six dollars for a movie when we can get a dvd with extras for slightly more? Not me that’s for sure. Linked to my previous comments I’ll guess I’ll just have to keep breaching copyright.