In the first half of our iTunes movie rental debate, Mike stakes out the "Pro" position on extended-duration rentals with an appeal on behalf of tired, stressed parents everywhere.Let me just say it: there is a perfect market for iTunes movie rentals. It's the same market that Netflix or VOD sales addresses, the same audience that prefers (or is limited to) staying at home rather than a night out at the movies. You know who we are -- the stroller patrol, the breeder bastion, the Momfia... the parents. We crave entertainment, and we're willing to pay for it, but our evenings are squeezed to the point of nonexistence. By the time the offspring are fed and watered, tucked away in their beds, we might only have an hour or two's worth of 'we' time to enjoy a feature film. If someone wakes up and needs 15 minutes of settling back to bed, well, forget it. With the 24-hour watch time limitation on iTunes movies, tomorrow night, when we might have another chance to view our movie, it's too late.
Thus, opinionated folk such as David Pogue, Rob Griffiths, Glenn Fleishman, and our reader Marshall (his open letter to Apple is reproduced at the end of this post) all concur that some form of extension past the 24-hour limit makes great sense to parents and great sense to Apple's rental market. I join my voice to theirs, and offer this modest proposal: Add a $0.50 surcharge for a 6-hour extension, or $1 for a 12-hour bump. Make the extra time optional -- you'd still have to decide and pay for it at rental time, not add it on after renting the movie, as the DRM challenges of a shifting finish line + multiple playback devices are probably too much to handle. I bet that parents of young kids, or families with variable evening schedules, would fork over the extra spare change to extend their rental times, and let's remember that those couple of quarters are pure profit (it costs the same in encoding and bandwidth for a 36-hour movie to download as for a 24-hour movie). I'd gladly take the extra time for free, but if you've got to add a modest surcharge I'll swallow my pride.
Give me a 36-hour rental and I promise this: I will buy an Apple TV and I will start renting movies on it. That's $225, cash on the barrel, plus what I'll spend on the flicks. Who's with me?
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Reader Marshall's open letter to Apple and the movie studios:
The recent release of iTunes movie rentals is something that I have been waiting for. The selection is great, the price is reasonable. You really have the video store model beat in almost every respect. Here comes the "but".
But: I am a parent to two young children. While I understand that my personal family situation doesn't really interest you, I think that one aspect of the home life of my demographic could have a direct impact on the success of your product. The aspect is, in a word, bedtime. We put my children to bed sometime between 7:00pm and 8:00pm. There's usually a little time spent to reconstruct the house after a long day and then, my spouse and I make the time to sit and watch a movie. Here's where it gets complicated. My kids, like many children, don't always stay in bed. For any of a million reasons, the hours between 8 and 10 pm can be full of interruption. Some of these are quick, but many times, we find the evening of peace and movie watching derailed.
I'm sure by now that you realize where I am going with this. My next chance to watch my recently rented movie starts about 26 hours from the time I just rented the movie. The 24 hour rule imposed in the iTunes rental agreement, simply put, makes renting a movie from iTunes a risky move for me. There is no small late fee, there is no second chance. Even if I get the movie started the next night before the expiry time, I have limited pause functionality in case there is a small interruption.
How much would it actually cost to you to increase that 24 hour limit to 30 hours. I'm going to guess that the cost would be negligible. There are probably not very many people who would pay twice to watch a movie two nights in a row. I think that you will eliminate large sections of people with the 24 hour limit. Look at the amount written on the internet about the time limit. Look at the real life situations that your customers are dealing with. Look at the cost associated with my proposed change.
Thanks for reading this.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
3-04-2008 @ 10:38AM
Bo Moulton said...
Agreed.
24 hours is simply not enough. Especially considering its digital not physical. Go to Hastings where they are dependent on discs and you get it for 3-4 days. Rent digital (where there is no limit to the ammount of "copies" you get) and we have 24 hours?
Change a few of these issues and I'm buying one too.
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3-04-2008 @ 12:57PM
antimatter said...
AppleTV needs 2-Day rentals for new releases (like new releases at blockbuster) and 7-Day rentals for Kids/Family Movies. Here's why.
People with kids will understand this:
I have three kids. When we rent a movie for them, they like to watch it 3-4 times during the week. Now as a parent I feel bad enough that letting them watch tv at all (since they should be outside playing), so cramming 3-4 viewings of a movie into a 12 hour day (yes my kids sleep for 10-12 hours/day) would mean that in order to get in the usual 3-4 viewing they would spend 6-8 hours of their 12 hours of awake time watching tv. That is just not good parenting right?
I propose rather than a 24 hour clock upon the first viewing that instead you get 7 days to watch the film up to 3 times (at least with kids/family movies). Most adults are not likely to watch any movie (Live Free or Die Hard, for example) more than 1 time in a month because we don't like watching the same thing over and over again. But the 2-day-watch-it-as-many-times-as-you-like plan would work for my wife and I on new releases (which usually are movies that we haven't seen because we rarely see movies at the theater anymore unless they are kid's shows).
sincerely,
desperately seeking hd entertainment
3-04-2008 @ 10:49AM
Dan said...
I'm onboard with the a longer rental period.. If apple makes the rentals 36 or 48 hr rentals I'll buy an apple tv. I've rented via iTunes and watched on laptop and 24 hrs just isn't enough sometimes.
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3-04-2008 @ 10:53AM
Jared said...
Me too! I've been circling the fence on AppleTV and would definitely be moved by a more consumer friendly approach to rentals.
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3-04-2008 @ 10:55AM
Amanda said...
Hear, hear! I also am the mother of two preschoolers, and I already have an AppleTV - the ability to choose a movie to rent with my husband without having to bundle the angels out to Blockbuster is fantastic, but not knowing if I'm going to get to finish it makes it worthless. 24 hours is not enough. We have not yet rented a movie on AppleTV and won't until a longer option is available. On-Demand video from our cable company is the same - 24 hours, which is why we never get on demand from Time Warner either. (This makes me believe this limitation has more to do with the media companies than Apple, but perhaps Apple can use their muscle to lean on the media companies.) Instead, we buy pre-viewed DVD's from Blockbuster for 4 for $20, since that way we have no late fees and no time limits - and which makes the media companies no money whatsoever, since Blockbuster already paid for the DVD's.
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3-04-2008 @ 10:55AM
blinkcowz182 said...
Here is my philosophy make it easy enough for me, and I'll stop my current ways. Back when digital music first became popular, I was on the front lines of the downloaders. Kazaa, Napster, Limewire, etc were my tools of choice. It was too much of a pain to buy a CD, rip it and then put it on my iPod. iTunes came along and made this process simple. And in doing so, I switched to iTunes and no longer "steal" music. Now that movies are the new digital medium, I'm back to fairly questionable means of acquiring digital copies. iTunes made it EASIER to get movies but it's still a pain to rent them. Make them simple to rent and enjoy, with LESS restrictions and I'll stop dead in my tracks, purchase an AppleTV and live your way. The ball is in your court apple.
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3-04-2008 @ 10:56AM
geekmorgan said...
I still think the Apple TV is too much money. I already have an Airport Express, and photos on my TV, so I only use it for movies, and netflix and my DVD player suit this need just fine. Apple would pretty much have to give Apple TV away for me to use one, since it only works with iTunes purchases, whereas my DVD player works with Netflix, Blockbuster and the small local video shops near me. Its still a very exciting product, but I'm not up for spending money to test it out.
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3-04-2008 @ 11:00AM
SoloMalee said...
Likewise...no kids, but just fall asleep factor and otherwise 'too busy' lives make the 24h limitation a non starter....
Oh wait, I'm in Europe, so what am I complaining about when I can't even get the rental movies in the first place :-(
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3-04-2008 @ 11:06AM
-wsn said...
Hi
I have an aTV and I am also in the new parents club.
They need to set it up so that rentals run longer, but I would go further and say offer a selected model that works like this, for .50 more, let movies start 8:00pm on Fri night and expires 8:00am Mon morning...or something like this.
Start off by offering it just for weekends and see what the numbers look like. I bet you see a decent increase in rentals from those of us in the parents club.
I have yet to rent a movie on my aTV, and have already sent email to steve, saying that I love my aTV, but the timeframe is bad.
I live in a neighborhood where folks are dumping their Windows PC and getting Macs. I know of at least 5 houses around me that have made the switch, and have bought more than one items, but we are all in the new kids club, so we need a "real" window to watch these movies.
Here's too hoping for a change
Cheers
-wsn
PS: If anybody from Apple is reading TUAW and see this. I would cancel my DirecTV account and go 100% aTV if the above was an option. I would just add a few more aTV's to my house and stick an OTA (elgato/eyetv) on the house's iMac. Would rather spend that $1000+ a year in iTunes than on DirecTV.
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3-04-2008 @ 11:09AM
Jere Krischel said...
What they should also do is keep track of how many times you've rented a title, and credit that towards purchase. So if you end up renting the same movie enough times, it should count as an outright purchase, so you can watch it anytime you want - that way you never feel like your investment in a given title is wasted.
Otherwise, it feels like you're being nickeled and dimed to death, even if eventually you spend enough money to have bought it outright.
Oh, and lastly, your license should extend to any format created in the future - no more LPs, 8 track, cassette, CD, DVD format changes that make you buy everything again. If they update the resolution on a movie you bought, or change the format from mpeg to avi, or whatever, it shouldn't be an additional charge.
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3-04-2008 @ 11:10AM
cydeweyz said...
Time is not the issue, PRICE is. Who'd care about a 24 hour rental if Apple had a subscription model like Netflix and Blockbuster Online? Give me unlimited rentals for $19.99/month and guess what? You'd sell a helluva lot more AppleTVs!
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3-04-2008 @ 5:38PM
Otsego_Undead said...
I'll take that one step further:
$99 a month unlimited iTunes content transferable to an iPod. I'll buy an apple tv or 2 tomorrow... Maybe a new mb pro too.
3-04-2008 @ 11:10AM
Jesse David Hollington said...
While I fully support the idea of a longer viewing window, I should point out that at least Apple has chosen to not expire a movie while you're watching it. This is in stark contrast to my Rogers' Video-on-Demand service, which will basically stop you right in the middle of a movie once the 24-hour limit has been reached.
With iTunes movie rentals, as long as you start watching the movie before the rental timer expires (even one minute before), you'll be permitted to finish it. The Apple TV, iTunes, and the iPod classic/nano will warn you when you actually stop watching it that it has expired and will be deleted if you choose to stop, but you can otherwise resume watching (the iPhone and iPod touch provide this warning before you start watching the movie if it's within an hour of expiring).
So in reality, you're getting about 25.5-26 hours (depending on the length of the movie). Not ideal, I know, but it's provided me with at least a couple of opportunities to finish watching a movie the next night -- a feature that my VoD service annoyingly lacked (having been cut off in the middle of a VoD movie one times too many :) ).
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3-04-2008 @ 11:11AM
Frank Furter said...
I own (and LOVE) my AppleTV, but like others, don't see renting, solely because of the 24hour limit. I'm sure there is some sort of industry reason why, but personally, it needs to be at -least- 48 hours. Or why not follow the Netflix model - I keep my rented movie as long as I want, but as soon as I rent another, the first one disappears....
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3-04-2008 @ 11:11AM
Chris said...
This open letter should be directed at the Movie Studios, not Apple.
They are the culprits behind this ridiculous time. And if you look at it from their greedy eyes, why on Earth would they change the terms now? People rent via Xbox or Apple TV and the limit hasn't stopped them. The way the studio execs see it: If you run out of time before you can finish the movie, rent it again at full price.
Bunch of bastards.
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3-04-2008 @ 11:28AM
quandmeme said...
That's my take, too. It's the studio's philosophy. They have to keep the other rental models viable too. They don't trust this digital stuff. I guess we have to give it time.
3-04-2008 @ 11:13AM
jamo said...
How about we just get out of 1988 with movie rentals being due back by 5 pm the next day or Blockbusters amazing 2-Day rentals from the early 90's and build on what Netflix has brought to the game? Let me watch the dang movie when I want. It's not like it has to be returned in time for the next customer.
Jason
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3-04-2008 @ 11:13AM
Jason Stratford said...
Sorry but any sort of limit that is measured in hours is a non-starter. Why with advancing technology are we going backwards with user rights? As pointed out in previous comments it is the norm for rental times to be registered in days not hours. Why can't I rent it for a week for the same price. Give me some flexibility and I will come back for more. Draconian limits like this are a real turn off. I will not rent under these conditions.
Shame as I love Apple products and think AppleTV is great. I don't want anything for free I just want something for a fair price. At the moment the 24 hour rental is not fair on the consumer.
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3-04-2008 @ 11:19AM
Michael Rose said...
One of the reasons a Netflix-style "keep indefinitely" model doesn't work for iTunes rentals is the multiple-device capability of the movies. If you rent a movie on iTunes, then transfer it to your iPhone, those devices have to agree on the circumstances that allow the movie to be played.
If your rental lasts until you rent another movie, but you conveniently forget to sync your iPhone -- now you have two movies. Studios won't play.
3-04-2008 @ 11:15AM
Quix said...
"Add a $0.50 surcharge for a 6-hour extension, or $1 for a 12-hour bump."
No way!!! The rental time should be extended WITHOUT a surcharge. Consumers offering to pay more for what should be standard practice anyway is insanity. Please don't.
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