Apple In Talks To Launch iTunes Movie Rental Service This Fall
- June 11th, 2007
- Read 1647 times
- 1 Comment
Apple wants to launch an iTunes film rental service by the fall and is currently discussing the possibility with several Hollywood studios to see that it happens. Reports show that Apple wants to charge $2.99 per 30-day downloadable rental and that the download would be DRM’d “like whoa” (m wording) in order to prevent wily pirates from further distributing the downloaded file. Yeah, well, would the file be Snapz Pro-proof?
The reason for this is that Apple now believes that, while people love to own their digital music, they don’t necessarily want to own digital films, especially since they only watch them a few times. $3 for a 30-day rental or $15+ for something you’ll send only a handful of times? With this, Apple puts the cable companies and their video-on-demand on notice.
Hollywood studios in video talks with Apple [Financial Times via AppleInsider]
David Mackey (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I’ve been hoping for this. Movielink and Vongo are good alternatives right now, but having Apple enter the race would be a humongous plus. One thing that I think is the way to go with this, however, is subscription model instead of pay-per-use. Vongo implemented this model well. I used Vongo as my primary for a good period of time, but then moved back to Blockbuster when they came out with Total Access. I would probably stick with Blockbuster unless Apple was able to offer a very large selection for a similar price. I might occasionally use Apple iTunes if I was “impulse” browsiing and didn’t want to go out to pick one up w/a free rental receipt.