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iTunes Movie Rentals Coming Soon?

flickr.com — I was trying to report a problem via iTunes, and this pop-up for selecting a reason contains some interesting strings... looks like someone slipped up and that "RentalMovie"s might be coming to the iTunes store in the near future.

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SATURN 251 days ago, made popular 251 days ago

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ZogDog, on 10/10/2007, -18/+6"I'd rent that for a dollar"
-Quote derived from Robocop, snoogins.
- npk2006, on 10/10/2007, -8/+1It's "I'd buy that for a dollar"...
  - Shorties, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3the key word was derived...
eihwaz, on 10/10/2007, -16/+27in case you didn't notice it: that's David Watanabe's flickr page. He's one of the best mac software developers, and one of the worst men in the world when it comes to treating his customers.
Buried.
- TeebZ, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13Care to elaborate?
  - alexmuller, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5See this http://flickr.com/photos/dcharti/434147689/
    
    DCharti is a blogger at http://tuaw.com/
    The first comment is from David Watanabe
    - orph3us, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That doesn't seem horrible, but if it's true that he copied gpl code and delivered a bad product for $30, thats not good :P
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -7/+2sed s/best/worst/g
- flickr, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8Dave's a better guy than people give him credit - I think he just has a healthier balance between real-life and business-life than most Mac devs do.
- johnpaul191, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1does that mean he might have faked the image?
- SATURN, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13And the way he treats his customers is relevant to this screenshot, how?
- rootadmen, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2buried, movie rentals=lame, David Watanabe=asshole
- ThreeDee912, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Dave copied Transmission's (open source bittorrent client) code, put a different UI on it, called it Xtorrent, and sells it for $30. Way too buggy to use, and when you complain... well, don't complain.
Shorties, on 10/10/2007, -10/+6I don't know if I am unique but I prefer purchasing movies, I don't really like the idea of rental anything. But maybe this will bring more studios which hopefully will translate into more purchasable movies.
- Chicken2nite, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8I would like to see them work it out so that after renting a movie to try it out, you could pay the difference in order to make the purchase. If it's 4-5 bucks to rent and 10-15 to buy, then this would make sense for both consumer and publisher, potentially translating into more rentals (people giving the movie a chance) and movie purchases (people willing to 'own' the content because it's enjoyable). Plus, if Apple were able to work out the DRM properly, they could save everyone the hassle of downloading it twice and thus prevent any extra bandwidth costs.
- richmessenger, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2If you ask me, and i know you didn't, they could even come down further from your hypothetical prices. If they charged $2 for rentals, they'd own it. They could probably do this because unlike Blockbuster they wouldn't have to pay for buildings, a staff, etc..... I'm sure there's a lot of things I'm not thinking about that goes into it.
  - Chicken2nite, on 10/17/2007, -0/+2Sure, if they could undercut the competition they would drive the market. The thing is, the going rate for a rental right now (unbox, on demand services through your cable provider, blockbuster) is around 4-5 bucks for a reason, that being the content providers want to make money off of it. While they could make up the difference in volume at a lower price point, they don't want to kill off those other revenue streams by undercutting it with iTunes. The idea of paying the difference makes sense to me since it would get rid of the stigma of paying for a movie twice in order to try it out before putting down 15 bucks or so (the going rate for a movie purchase on iTunes as far as I know, again because the content providers don't want to undercut the DVD).
- KnightWhoSaysNi, on 10/17/2007, -1/+11I don't see the point of buying movies, since I only watch them once.
  The only exception is kids movies, because they can watch the same thing 100 times.
  - Shorties, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Most movies I enjoy watching multiple times, its really only the mediocre movies that I only watch once.
    - MacParrot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3So you haven't watched any recent movies more than once then...
  - DavidtheDuke, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I watched CONAN THE DESTROYER like 39084234802 times
- tsunamisteve, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Subscription makes sense if they offer something like $19 unlimited h264 streaming to iPods and iPhones over wifi and any Mac or Apple TV in HD over high speed connections.
  - Chicken2nite, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2If I'm paying for a subscription, I would want better quality than streaming would provide. Also, if I'm paying for an all you can eat subscription, why the hell would I be limited to streaming that on my ipod? When you have DRM on there and everything? Geez. just do what the Zune lets you do with the all you can eat music and download what you want. It stops playing when you stop paying. ***** streaming. That being said, with the rare exception a subscription would be more than suitable for me in terms of 90% of the TV shows out there. The only reason I would want to rewatch a TV show is to show it to a friend, and at that point a DVD set is much more practical.
- __J__, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3if we've learnt anything from google video going under and making all their DRMed video not playable, I think it's safe to say we are all just renting our music/video even if we have the delusion of thinking we own it...
- catwoman2970, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0iTunes - the future Sam's Club of media entertainment
Ranneko, on 10/10/2007, -2/+34Does the iTunes store sell non-pixar shorts/music videos anywhere outside the US yet?

I certainly doesn't in Australia yet.
- Shorties, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15They have TV in the UK now.
- aliguana, on 10/10/2007, -0/+22does iTunes do ANYTHING outside of the US? We're only just catching up with iTunesPlus, there is vastly more iT+ stuff on the US site than the UK one. Don't get me started on TV shows. OK OK, I know its all down to different licencing in different countries, but like.. when Jobs was making his big announcement about the "amazing" access iTMS from Starbucks, then they went on to say its going to be rolled out across the US in stages over the next year, I was like.... "hello?? rest of the world calling". Annoying.
- pixelperfect, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I hope they come here soon! But Australia only 21 Million, I don't think we are priority #1.
Morky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+30Sounds promising. While Steve is right that people want to own their music, they generally want to only rent movies.
- tnoy, on 10/10/2007, -6/+4I prefer to rent my music. Its the only reason I went with the Zune. At least with Microsoft, Napster, Yahoo!, etc, you have the option of owning or renting. Why cant Apple do that to?
  - moofer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1LOL - you bought a Zune. That's the funniest post I've read in a long time...
- battletrax, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4Apple Exec : "Look at all the money there making on xbox live" "I got an idea! Lets rent movies too!"
- QueyJoh, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0Yes. Of course. That's why DVD sales are so damn high.
  
  /sarcasm
sappyvcv, on 10/10/2007, -20/+4In other news, Steve Jobs went to the bathroom 10 minutes ago!!

*waits to be dugg down for daring to be sarcastic about Jesus Jobs*
- MacParrot, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5I think you got dugg down for non-relevance...much like the rest of your life
qpdb, on 10/10/2007, -1/+25I want partnership with Netflix. I might buy an Apple tv then, if I could use their "Watch now" feature straight from it.
- bigbertha8, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7I'm not sure what Apple would get out of this partnership.
  - tnoy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16It would actually put some value into their Apple TV product, and get people to buy it.
  - johnpaul191, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4selling more AppleTVs? iTMS was launched just to support the iPod (since the other supposedly big stores were not going to). Apple never planned on making any money on the music store, just to make sure there was content for iPods.
    it's implied the studios *want* video rentals, and Apple (Jobs?) doesn't think it's the way to go. if they want to mess with that, they may be able to throw that switch at any time. honestly that would probably make the AppleTV a lot more appealing. adding the ability to use it as an interface to an online video store seems pretty ok. it would maybe cut the iPod out of the equation though? that may be Apple's fear.
aliguana, on 10/10/2007, -13/+5I'm not wasting my bandwidth renting digital anything, not when there is a Blockbuster 5 minutes walk away.
- KnightWhoSaysNi, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Wasting your bandwidth? You know there's more where that came from, right? You can't run out.
  - aliguana, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4you can when it's capped
  - tnoy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Not everyone has unlimited bandwidth.
  - johnpaul191, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2i guess you're not a Comcast customer! hahaha
    
    seriously though, even with our cable being so much faster than DSL, i think it would take forever to download a movie from a single source (as opposed to bittorrent). downloading 30 minute shows from iTunes can take forever at certain times of the day. i know it's our ISP because whenever i download something huge i notice the massive speed fluctuations. anything huge just seems to bog down, and people i know that use p2p said their speeds have gone down the tubes (no pun intended).
    - aliguana, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1well, lets put it this way: I downloaded the latest Ubuntu distro FASTER on BT than I downloaded an album from iTunes the other day. Granted, it was straight after that ringtones version came out, but regardless...
- Luigi239, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Yes, but why would you _want_ to go to Blockbuster?
  - aliguana, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1well, lets see..... I can rent a dvd, take it home, watch it in full DVD quality, get some popcorn while I'm there. Keep it for a few days, take it back. Plus the fact that I'm getting off my arse and going outside, meeting people I know, and I can get to BB and back BEFORE your average movie would have downloaded.
    As opposed to: I sit on my arse, download a movie from iTunes, watch it in iPod quality, keep it for a few days, delete it.
    Seriously, I mean I could see a use for this if you live far out in the Australian outback or something, miles from the nearest town, but then, they probably wouldn't have the cable/dsl to support downloading movies anyhow.
fugazied, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4And with wi-fi download of those movies available at every starbucks and from apple booths everywhere, and everyone quickly downloading the movie onto their ipod touch/iphone how quickly will they dominate the market. mmm how much are apple shares atm?
bigbertha8, on 10/10/2007, -0/+28$2 a rental would be perfect. I really hope this is for real. I really want to get rid of my annoyingly slow Blockbuster Online account. This would totally give me an excuse to go out and get an Apple TV.
- PAJK, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7I'd prefer a subscription. That would rock.
- Typhoon2009, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Apple TV still escapes me. You need an HDMI cable... to watch SD content blown up onto an HDTV?
  - HerrEisenheim, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1When the average bandwidth speeds in the US are high enough that HD content can actually be downloaded in a reasonable time, then it will make sense. Right now the average speed is something like 2Mbps, and just downloading a crappy 640x480@1500Kbps takes a while. At least streaming of SD content is possible at that bitrate. HD content won't really make sense until we get the average bitrate up to around 6Mbps.
- joshmiao, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I think no higher than $1.
  Otherwise I'll stick to Redbox.
astrosmash, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12That's all the proof I need.
DaviDaviDaviD, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Nice find! I would like the idea of renting a movie, just for trips out when you don't want to blow £10-15 on a movie that you don't want long-term! Once again, good find.
LeonardNimrod, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Apple has been trying tog et movie rental contrats solidifiied for a couple years now. The problem is with the distributors. Apple wants you to be able to watch your rented movie on your Mac/PC via iTunes, AppleTV or iPod with video capabilities.

This makes securing a DRM scheme for rental purchases very difficult to accomplish. I don't think Apple has demonstrated that they can protect the studio's media well enough.

Though one can keep hoping...
- MindStalker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Not really, with a time limited download one doesn't really expect to be able to transfer it to another machine. BUT with the new Wifi features on the iPhone and iTouch movies could be rented directly from your device. This would make the DRM much easier to implement.
OdinEye, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I'd love to see rentals, particularly in association with Netflix allowing something like iTunes access to the online streaming video included in my current agreement, but which I can only access through a PC. Perhaps with direct streaming access through that venue, but with an additional rental fee option (no more than $2.00, and preferably less) for a higher quality, time limited download.
This would definitely put additional value to the video capabilities for the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as for the AppleTV.
johnpaul191, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1i wonder how Apple would work that out? you know they would insist the video can be played on an iPod/iPhone. it seems like there would be a lot of work to make the DRM as generally friendly as iTMS currently is (which the public is mostly ok with).
peestandingup, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10God, its about time! I would seriously ditch my cable if iTunes had a monthly plan for all you could rent for cheap. I dont wanna own/download/store every single piece of video I may happen to wanna watch. Music yes. Video no.

Im tired of waiting for Netflix streaming to come to the Mac.
jeek123, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1:S
How do online (non-disc) rentals work?

Like, couldn't that pose as a security problem? People would just strip off the DRM and voila, bootlegged movies.

Unless I see some proof, I ain't buyin this.
readme, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I'd drop Netflix for a cheaper AppleTV and $2 rentals on iTunes.
ZPWeeks, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Bad idea. At least in the US.
Consider this: Apple starts renting new releases out for $2.99 ( http://www.*****.com/news/story/apple-pitches-itunes-movie-rental/story.aspx?guid=%7B50874E8B-A602-4653-82D3-F3278D9D96ED%7D ) as opposed to the new release price of $14.99 or the back-catalog price of $9.99.
Regardless of the term of your download (permanent or temporary), that movie still takes up 1GB or more. While some of us prefer to own our movies and will pay more to do so, the rental market is still strong because of its lower initial costs (think Netflix). There will be a much higher demand for these huge files at such a low price, meaning that there will be a lot more people "clogging the tubes" (apologies to Ted Stevens) on our already archaic internet structure. $10 / $15 for buying movies, while higher than I would like to pay for DRMed files, doesn't offer a huge hand up over the already ubiquitous DVD market, which can transfer large quantities of data pretty efficiently.

Rentals would work great if we had the infrastructure to support it. Right now in the US, it's hard enough just to stream a crappy-quality video off of YouTube, but iTunes Store files are about 1500kbps! The artificially high price of permanent downloads keeps the infrastructure fairly stable, but if it were to go mainstream... I don't even want to imagine.
- battletrax, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Sir.. get xbox live, go to the movies blade. This is going to amaze you but.. you can actually download movies. Fast! I wonder how they do that? Its easy, the movie streams when its about 12% complete. So you can watch it and you don't have to wait for the entire thing to download.
  
  Its not bogging down the US, MS just has to buy more servers!
- tyboulder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4They say that 90% of Internet activity is P2P activity anyway. I don't think one site's pay-to-view option is gonna hurt the "tubes." JMHO.
iDMG, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You can do that on XBL marketplace, so not a new concept. I'd like to see what it'd be like, though.
andycr512, on 10/10/2007, -8/+2This sounds beyond retarded.

1. It requires DRM to work.
2. How does one conceptually rent bits?! Once you have them, you have them - they are not physical, material things; they are simply a set of 1's and 0's on a disk.
- ThreeDee912, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Well, once you have a DVD, you have it. It's not like you have to return the DVD. It's only a disc. [/sacrasm]
iName, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I've been a Netflix subscriber for years and I'd love it if there was a way for Apple to partner with Netflix for delivery of content.
Zbrah, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I haven't bought a tv show or movie on iTunes in forever...but I would seriously rent stuff all the time on iTunes.So ***** convenient!
PDave, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1720p please! I could actually use my apple TV for something other than watching Diggnations.
mesomorphicman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0how do you get to the REPORT A PROBLEM screen on itunes i couldn't find it!??!
JoeLeo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You used to be able to see Report a Problem when you view your purchase history in the iTunes Store.
Now, when you click on Report a Problem the Web page that's returned is the same page sans the Report a Problem button.
Someone got called into work in a hurry, this weekend.
joshma, on 11/11/2007, -0/+0What would we do with iTunes rentals? We'd only be able to watch them on the computer without buying new Apple hardware (i.e. apple TV and/or iPod) to play it elsewhere. I'm sure there's ways around it, but frankly, it would be inconvenient.
joshma, on 11/11/2007, -0/+0What would we do with iTunes rentals? We'd only be able to watch them on the computer without buying new Apple hardware (i.e. apple TV and/or iPod) to play it elsewhere. I'm sure there's ways around it, but frankly, it would be inconvenient.
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iTunes Movie Rentals Coming Soon?

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