Apple pulls 99-cent iTunes TV show rentals

BOOOOO, bad Apple.

"the day Apple and the studios start selling HD versions of TV shows through iTunes for $0.99 is the day I leave my cable company behind"
That is exactly WHY the studios wont do it.
The studios (and their friends in the cable industry) make far more money selling you overpriced "premium" cable packages than they ever will selling shows by-the-episode or by-the-season through a download service. Plus once people start using "the cloud" as their primary source of entertainment, the control the studios have over distribution and over marketing (including acting as gatekeeper to decide which shows get the most promotion) disappears.

Thank goodness I have a DVR that holds a lot of recording time and I got 3 HD receivers for free through DISH Network. They have more HD channels than any other TV provider and the cheapest rates out of all of them plus I got all my HD channels for free! I had the option to add 18 more HD channels to the line up for $10/mo in there Platinum package which you know I had to do which includes EPIX programming and a co-worker at DISH told me that DISH HD VOD section is broadcasted in 1080p. Check this link out www.dishnetwork.com.

TV shows have vanished entirely from ATV2 as of a day or two ago. I was looking at it only a couple of days ago and thinking that I should buy some BBC shows but now they've disappeared utterly. Does anyone know what's going on here?

While upset that they pulled this— I admit I've also only purchased TV series on iTunes. Please let us know where you are getting these full seasons on blu-ray for $25. All my favorite series seem to cost at least $50 off the shelf and not much less on Amazon....

Ironically, the AppleTV could not BUY shows as they removed that feature bs appleTV1.

First, the idea if buying the show and having it stored in iCloud makes more sense than renting. Second, $.99 for TV Is too low. Ars ran a piece last year and studios NEED about $2 per episode, per viewer. The $.99 rental is taking away the $1.50 per episode CABLE is paying them. $2-$3 is about right if you don't want ads and aren't going to pay them again.

You can cry about it not being fair all you want, but that anylasis was from the book as they stood, divided by the shows produced. They money has to come from somewhere, that was the state of what's on the table.

Apple will need to bring more than$1.99 to the table.. Remember cable companies don't want to pay the full bill anymore either if studios are cutting THEM out of rental and DVD sales instead of cable subscriptions.

Great :(. 99c rentals were exactly the reason why we replaced our aTV1 by an aTV2.

And before people will shout "Hulu", remember that it is not available in most (any?) European countries.

I live in Canada, so this news actually brings me joy. Doesn't feel good to be without a highly-touted feature, does it? Welcome to my world since the introduction of the Apple TV. Rentals were NEVER available in Canada.

Sorry, but I've been CLAMORING to buy things on the iTunes Store for ages, but half of what I'd buy isn't available on the iTunes Store in Canada because apparently, buying content online is "broadcasting" and falls under the exclusive license contracts with Canadian TV stations. So THEY control what I can buy and own, despite it being given to them under a "BROADCASTING" license.

Dammit, they need to change the definition of broadcasting in Canadian legislation.

I like the genius comment that if you lower the price to a certain point people will buy "x times as many"

Let's make tv shows 1 cent then. We'll all buy 5000!!!

The concept of "owning" shows with no physical media component is just a hard one to really get past for me psychologically. I've come to accept it with music (and it's nice not to clutter the house with more CDs), but for some reason with movies/TV, paying extra to "own" the show seems like a ripoff waiting to happen, when the magnetic media gives out or the company streaming them decides not to stream them anymore.

Furthermore, the value proposition is out of whack. Of course the issue doesn't boil down to time, but say I pay 99 cents for a song that lasts 5 minutes, and the average number of times I listen to that song in my lifetime is, say, 20 (pretty conservative estimate really). That means I'm paying a penny per minute of enjoying the song. So if we apply that same calculation to a TV show, at presumably a higher cost of $2 instead of 1, and that TV show lasts roughly 20 minutes, then I'm paying 10 cents a minute to watch it once. If I watch it 10 times in my lifetime then I'll get the same value as the music. But the odds of me watching any one TV episode 10 times are almost nil. So really, 99 cents to own the show would be more in line with other media.

You could also calculate it out by the price of a DVD set, which is probably what influences the studios more. I guess in theory you might pay $40 or $50 for a season of a sitcom, but I've never paid that much. Usually, it's in the neighborhood of $25 or so. Again, it's about a dollar an episode.

In short -- charging more than a buck for a TV episode (at least a sitcom) is out of proportion to what we've come to expect. I don't expect it to do that well.

Which may be the point -- studios hate downloadable media. If they have to live in this new world, then they're going to make people pay through the nose. And if they're not willing to pay, fine -- studios prefer a DVD-centered world anyway.