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iTunes movie store disappointment

Apr 9, 2008
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When Steve Jobs announced on January 15th the addition of movie rentals to the iTunes Movie Store AND that all major labels were onboard I was extremely excited. I saw this as the rebirth of iTunes and it's companion product, AppleTV.

I anticipated being able to rent any movie I wanted and if I really liked it I could simply purchase it. I even went so far to think that I would be able to purchase the movie within 48hrs of watching it.

As it turns out my vision for the rebirth of the iTunes Movie Store has been far from reality. There seems to be no method to the madness anymore. Three different scenarios appear on the movie store: some titles you can only purchase, others you can only rent, and if you're one of the lucky ones out there, you'll have the option to do both.

I can understand that a new release may be available to rent before it's available to purchase. I cannot understand why a new release may never be available to purchase and why there isn't some indication of this. There is no way of telling if a title will eventually be available to purchase. Would it be so difficult to add a line of test saying "available to purchase on . . .". For now it seems that we'll have to guess and keep our fingers crossed.

But what about older movies or movies that were available before the rental feature went live? For example, I can rent OR buy Kickboxer 4 (and who wouldn't want both options). I know that I have both of these options because it's listed as "View Movie" on the Action / Adventure genre page. The original Die Hard . . . only available to rent. I'd like to have been at the meeting where the decision was made that View Movie would make sense and consumers would equate that to Rent or Buy. This is just plain bad. For a uncomplicated store, it's becoming more and more difficult to navigate, but what about the product pages?

One of the great features on the Music Store is the ability to see what other people purchased who also purchased the album you're looking at. This feature has carried over, but now it's just inaccurate. Some may say it's semantics, but I don't care. If you're looking at the movie Independence Day (only available to rent FYI) you can see that "viewers also bought": The Fifth Element (a favorite of mine), The Matrix, Batman Begins, X-Files, and Aliens. The punch line is that all of those titles are only available to RENT. Apple seems to think that rent is synonymous with buy or the past tense, bought.

A review of iTunes movie rentals

Apr 8, 2008
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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been using the iTunes store more and more. I’ve downloaded hundreds of songs by now, a few movies and tv shows, and more than my fill of [free] PodCasts. Up until last week, I’ve always shied away from the rentals section for some reason. I guess NetFlix online was satisfying my movie urge at the time. Unlimited online viewing of any movie, included with my NetFlix membership didn’t sound like too bad of a deal. However… I use a Mac. NetFlix online requires Windows. At first this didn’t seem that bad because I have VMWare Fusion and in an extreme case could always use BootCamp to boot Windows Vista. But it just seemed tedious to have to load Windows just to watch a few movies in my [lack of] free time. In comes iTunes…I finally came up with the guts (and cash) to use the rental feature. The first movie I chose was Superbad. Went through the flawless and quick rental process, and within 10 minutes (and $2.99) I was watching the opening scenes of Superbad on my MacBook Pro. Too easy… Way too easy…

Here’s some background info on the iTunes Rental feature:

The rental service began on iTunes in January 2008 immediately after it’s announcement at MacWorld Expo in San Fransico, CA, USA
Each “new release” rental cost $3.99. Regular rentals are $2.99 HD rentals (only on the Apple TV) are $4.99
New movies are considered “new release” for 6 months.
Once you download a rental, you have 3o days to watch it. Once you click play, you have 24 hours to watch it as many times as you want.
- One quirk: the 30 day countdown starts when the download starts, not completes…
Takes about 5-10 minutes to download enough to start watching the movie. (This time also depends on your Internet connection speed)
Requires iTunes 7.6 and Apple Quicktime 7.4 or higher.
Rentals work on the iPod,iPhone,AppleTV, as well as Macs and PCs.

Since I’ve started downloading rentals on iTunes, I have seriously been debating if I should cancel my NetFlix membership. I’ve since downloaded Superbad, Resident Evil: Extinction, Transformers, 300, The Simpsons Movie, and The Usual Suspects.

If you have an iPod or iPhone, you can easily watch these rentals on the go. All you have to do is transfer the movies over, a quick and easy process in iTunes.

I really do believe that the iTunes movie rental store is a competitor to NetFlix and BlockBuster. If I were on the corporate board at BlockBuster, I would be scared out of my wits… There are many statistics out there that show that the majority of people see movies only one time. In this new digital world we live in, it’s sometimes not practical to buy and store gigs of downloaded movies. But with digital rentals, not only is it cheap, but you really don’t need a gargantuan hard drive to enjoy movies.

iTunes Movie Rentals are a go, in my opinion. Easier and more convenient than DVDs. The whole process could not be any simpler. At $2.99 it’s cheap enough to take a risk on 1 movie… Hell, that’s cheaper than getting in your car and driving to your local BlockBuster and renting a DVD…

Online DVD Video Rental Guide

Apr 4, 2008
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Welcome, and thank you for visiting my blog. The I am trying to relay a two fold message. 1. That you don’t have to go to the video store to get quality movies and pay a arm and a leg to get them. 2. I want to review some of the best and worse movies that are released. My reviews usually concentrate on if children a able to see them. If not, I am very frank about it. Having three children also, I would like to have someone warn me before I sit down and watch a movie with my children.

So, sticking with the format I want to tell you about a few of the online video rental sites available. Some are very good but some I would not recommend. Lets start out with netflix.com.

I personally use Netflix on a daily bases and I love the service. They are fast and preatty reasonable if movies are lost in the mail or the disc are damaged in any way. They bend over backwards to resolve the issue and to get a replacement in your hand as soon as possible. They have shipping centers all accross the united states so it usually takes 1 to 2 days to get a movie after it is shipped. There website is preatty easy to manuver and they have a great selection of movies for any taste. They also have ondemand movie that you can view, On Demand. That mean you can view them on your computer without waiting for them in the mail. This is a great feature. Netflix is my top choice for online movie rental. I highly recommend them.

Apple has gotten into the game of online movie rentals by opening a movie rental store through their iTunes franchise. It is preaty slick and has a lot of promise. The prices are also very reasonable.

Greencine is the next online video rental subscription service that I want to talk about. The service looks to be very straight forward and reliable. The things that I would be courious about is the payment plans for subscriptions. They have plenty of titles and resources to provide mostly any movie that you would want. But they don’t have a live streaming service like netflix. Nor do they have a store that you can return your movie to after usage. But the plans are pretty reasonable and the mail service is compariable to netflix, and blockbusters, the top two mail online movie subscription services available today.

CinemaNow is the new concept in online movies. Well, its not new, but back when I first found out about this service is was a pretty new concept. You see you don’t get a movie in the mail with this service. No, you are able to get instant gradification with seeing the movie live on your computer. If you have webtv you can see them live on your TV. They also have free movies that you can download to your computer and view on any TV in you local network. That means you can download the movie and transfer it to your XBOX 360 and view it on your TV through your XBOX 360. This is not a free service. But they do have a 7 day free trail service. Personally, I love this service, I just don’t like to have to see the movies only on my computer. Now, like I said before, if I had webtv I would just stream all day. They also have all the latest movies. If adult movies is your thing they also have a adult service that comes with the yearly membership or you can purchase this by itself. I really like this service and I would recommend it to anyone.

Vongo is another online movie download service in direct competition with CinemaNow. The main difference between the two is the Vongo proclaims that users are allowed to download their content to play on any TV in their home. They also only have on subscription rate of $9.99.

Next is Blockbuster total access. I would say that I like this system of online movie rental. Blockbuster totes that you can rent there movies online and either return them in the pre-address envolop or you can go into anyone of there store and return and re-rent another movie. I like this system but doesn’t that go contrary to the online movie rental system. Although I like blockbuster very much, if I am going to the trouble of using a system online, I don’t want to take time to go to a store to return and re-rent a movie. Maybe that is just me.

The last two online movie rental sites are IntelliFlix and Dvd avenue. Both are great programs but the with intelliflix the payment systems is a little messed up. They offer lower prices to start there system you have to pay a year in advance. For some this is alright, for some that is unacceptable. Intelliflix also offers a mature adult section. Something that most online movie rentals stores will not touch. DVD avenue on the hand does not have the best looking site, nor all the bells with whisles but they do have a decent selection of movie to choose from. They used to have a game section also but I guess they gave that up