Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor
2Chicks1Mac: iTunes Rentals -- Hot or Not?
Christina Warren. Erica Sadun. Two Women. Two Opinions. One love of all things Macintosh. This week, we take on iTunes rentals. Are they the next best thing or a waste of your money? We'll start the discussion and you judge the smackdown winner for the week.
Erica: Totally hot! No commitment, less than it would cost in gas, time and popcorn at the local second-run theater. Plus (bonus!) no used bubblegum under the seats. Why wait weeks for Netflix? You can watch on demand for three or four bucks with at most an hour or two of download time. Plus there's that 99-cent special each week.
Sure, I'd prefer the rental to go for 48 hours instead of 24, but it's really convenient to watch movies that I'd otherwise never get around to seeing. Rock on, iTunes Rentals.
Christina: Erica, you ignorant slut! Hey, I'm always up for new ways to watch movies, but the only real reason I can see renting from iTunes is laziness or random 3 AM rental attacks. And I haven't had random, "Ooh, I want to watch Fletch at 3 AM on a weeknight" moment since college. Weeks for Netflix? More like a couple of days -- I often get my queue replenished in 24 hours. And then I can bask in the joy of extra features, like director commentary, surround-sound, and if it's an older film, I can make sure I'm getting the latest/digitally restored print and not some digital export of a 10-year old print that was just cheap LaserDisc to DVD hack-job back in 1997.
Really though, what saddens me is how many films are available to buy, but are NOT available to rent. I can find new releases at Blockbuster, On-Demand or catch them on any of the premium movie channels, but its the catalog titles that have real potential. The Movie Store baits me by featuring Secretary on its "What We're Watching" section, but when I try to get my Spader-fest on, I find out my only option is to buy the movie. If I'm going to do that, I might as well get the DVD and watch Sex, Lies and Videotape (which is not in the store, to purchase or rent) from my own collection in the meantime.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
monkey_mad2 said 8:11PM on 8-28-2008
Ummm, us in the UK get 48 hours to watch our rentals in.
Woo, something we have and you want!
Great!
(realised we still don't have a non-garageband way to get iPhone ringtones today)
Reply
Maul said 10:20PM on 8-28-2008
In Canada, We get 48 Hour rentals too.
Yay for us!
Darren said 3:05AM on 8-29-2008
In Putin's Russia, they rent for as however long as Putin wants.
Tony said 4:44AM on 8-29-2008
OTOH we pay through the nose for the privilege.. about $5 a film.
Murphy Mac said 8:16PM on 8-28-2008
I usually agree with Erica on many things...
BUT - as a pretty big movie buff I have to say I haven't rented many movies on iTunes. In fact, I can only think of a handful, and the first one was just out of curiosity for the interface.
Why? Not enough movies yet.
At one point I was looking at the Roku-Netflix box instead of my Apple TV. What a mistake that would have been. Netflix has almost nothing I'd want to watch in their on-demand library.
So, for now I'm padding my Apple TV with a Netflix account. I'm a little obsessed with keeping the queue moving, but I'll settle down.
iTunes will get past this 24 hour thing at some point. It needs to. And the studios will come around. It's a little scary watching studios, labels, and networks messing with Apple and playing up to Amazon. But I don't think it can last.
One more thing that needs to be fixed with rentals: Requiring 'net access to transfer the movie to a different device. Another item for Apple's todo list.
Reply
Tim H said 8:51PM on 8-28-2008
I've absolutely loved iTunes movie rentals with my TV. Sure some of the 99¢ rentals have been pretty lame, but the selection is wide enough that I killed off my Netflix sub (1 movie at a time, 2 a month for 5$) shortly after the iTunes rentals went live. I don't have time to sit and watch that many movies.
I love the near instant gratification of picking something, going to the kitchen for a drink and having it ready to watch by the time I sit down.
Reply
mosx said 8:26PM on 8-28-2008
iTunes rentals? Why?
You know how much of a hassle it is for me to hook my MacBook up to my HDTV? First I have to get out my optical cable plus the mini-TOSlink adapter, get out the mini-DVI to VGA adapter, VGA cable, connect all the cables and adapters, and then if I don't want my MacBook's display to remain on, I have to close the lid, connect an external keyboard and mouse, wake it up, etc. Thats after downloading the movie (which only takes a few minutes, but still).
Netflix gives me DVDs. A DVD upscaled to 1080i with Dolby Digital sound beats the snot out of iTunes rentals. Plus Netflix gives a boatload of streaming movies and TV shows that look as good (or bad) as iTunes rentals. I can connect my PC to my HDTV with an HDMI cable and open up Media Center and stream all of those TV shows and movies from Media Center controlled by my Harmony remote.
Plus the cable company is giving me HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, all in HD, all of their SD channels, and all of their stuff on On Demand for $5 per month for the next year, as well as HD on Demand (1080i, 20Mbps, Dolby Digital 5.1 on all movies) for the same price as iTunes rentals.
No reason for me to buy an Apple TV when I have On Demand, $5 premiums, and a PC I can connect with an HDMI cable and no additional setup or cables needed.
Reply
mex said 3:51AM on 8-29-2008
You should buy Apple TV for that... ;)
Steve said 1:22PM on 8-29-2008
You do know you could use iTunes rentals on the PC, right?
kieran said 8:27PM on 8-28-2008
we may get 48 hours in the uk but all the films are almost twice the price!
Reply
Bruce Hoult said 8:35PM on 8-28-2008
We only got movie sales and rentals here in New Zealand a couple of weeks back, so I've only tried one so far, the 1970's SF movie "Logan's Run". The encoding quality was excellent.
We get 48 hours to watch rentals in the NZ store.
Reply
Blu-Sam said 8:40PM on 8-28-2008
I have one great thing about iTunes rentals on movies. It have closed captioning (CC) support on iTunes or any iPod and iPhone to watch. I have know NONE of any other rental online have friendly CC.
Reply
robogobo said 7:00AM on 8-29-2008
Yeah, but no other language subtitles. What's with that?
Koleman said 9:16PM on 8-28-2008
In Canada we get 48 hours also.
I have been watching 1 movie a day from iTunes and it is great. I watch the first 30 mins on the bus to work, then 30 on my break then the rest on appleTV when I get home.
Love it!
Reply
JT said 9:25PM on 8-28-2008
The iTunes rentals definitely have their place in the world, especially with an Apple TV. When the girlfriend isn't particularly interested in what Blockbuster online has sent me in the mail, something both of us can tolerate (usually in HD & Dolby 5.1) is just a few clicks away. No driving, no waiting for mail.
Reply
Chris Hill said 9:29PM on 8-28-2008
That is the most awesome picture I've ever seen on TUAW. You guys rock.
Reply
Justin said 9:47PM on 8-28-2008
I have both AppleTV and Netflix right now. I get MOST of my rentals through Netflix currently, and purchase a few TV shows for my AppleTV via iTunes (we just have OTA television, so shows like South Park are not available otherwise). I rarely watch a movie more than once, or even once per year if I do watch it repetitively, but if Apple offered a monthly rental streaming service for the AppleTV I'd be all over that. Why have an HD TV and surround sound and settle on anything less?
Reply
Tony said 4:48AM on 8-29-2008
You could go to southparkstudios.com and watch them for free instead.
Nick K. said 9:39PM on 8-28-2008
*barf*
Reply
Martin said 11:12PM on 8-28-2008
Agreed ... enough with this stupidity.