iTunes Movie Rentals almost made me stop pirating. Almost.
- January 15th, 2008
- Read 933 times
- 7 Comments
They were this close from getting me to stop pirating movies. Next year, maybe.
The just announced iTunes Movie Rentals isn’t a bad deal at all. For $3.99, you can download standard-def “new releases” (more on that in a moment) and watch them on your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod, and whatever else in the iTunes family. Older releases are $1 cheaper, while high-def version add $1 to the standard-def prices. Movie rentals expire 24 hours after hitting “play.”
The problem I have, and what I see as a big “oh, so damn close” moment for movie industry, is the timing of the releases. You have to wait 30 days after the DVD release of the movie for it to hit the iTunes Store. What’s with the time delay? Who made the decision, “Yeah, let’s hold onto our DVD sales for just a little while later”?
You know what would’ve been great and what would’ve have stopped my pirating ways? If the movies hit the rental store 30 days after their theatrical release. Don’t most movies make the bulk of their money in the first weekend? What’s the harm in, one month later, throwing the movie on iTunes and letting you rent it. I don’t even have to buy the movie. Nine times out of ten I’m fine with watching a movie just once,
Here’s my line of thinking: If the movies were on iTunes one month after hitting the theaters, which you know I hate going to, I’d have no reason to pirate them. What’s the point in downloading a crappy CAM or Telesync if I can get a DVD quality version in one month? At that point, the $4 rental price might as well be $0 and I’d be all over it.
But no, movie industry, keep getting dragged into the 21st century by the likes of Apple. Give me a decent alternative and I won’t have to download your movies (when they’re good enough to even warrant a download in the first place).
iTunes [Apple]
I work in the film industry so to answer your question.
Big budget movies do make most of their money as far as ticket sales in the first 30 days. But it’s not until the movies go international do studios begin to reap the rewards of funding some multi-million dollar project. Going international takes longer than 30 days, unless it’s a block buster like Harry Potter.
Renting is actually the thing that will NOT prevent me from pirating. Just make it like Steam. You purchase once, download it they way you want it how often you want it.
I don’t care about the 30 day wait. What bothers me is having to transcode all the content I get in formats other than MP4. Make it easy to install Perian and other codecs and play from other container formats, and I’m in.
Get it working in linux.. at all Wine or whatever.. Then I might be slightly amused until then it’s netflix.
I’m not sure how Apple TV worked before (perhaps someone can explain where it was before) however, this is very interesting to me. Being able to have on demand rentals from a vast library on any device you have, i.e. ipod, pc, mac, tv, etc. makes the movie experience more enjoyable….for myself anyway. I plan to research a little deeper, but I will be getting one im sure….soon.
I think part of the problem is not the movie industry but the theaters where the movies are played. Each week a movie is out the cut of the ticket that goes to the film company drops so the theaters make more per ticket the longer a show is in the theaters.
Your proposal would probably put a lot of those places out of business.
oh dear, you’re not happy with someone’s decision so you will continue to loot.
it is looting you know. no one is there to catch you so break into the store. i’ve heard all of the excuses and it comes down to looting, - simple theft, nothing more. you can so you do.
are you unhappy with the price of nike’s? does that annoy you to the point of walking in and picking a pair up and walking out? if any company doesn’t do what you like then steal it! c’mon $1.50 for coke and pepsi? sugared water? what a joke! march into that grocery store and steal it!
no? why not? show some melons man, stand by your convictions! oh, afraid of the police if you steal from a store?
it’s looting pal, nothing more, and you’re no different than any other looter when the cops aren’t around.