The Mac Professional's Resource
As we mentioned last week, we are sort of down on the Internet movie download thing. This week sees more speculation arising as Apple is working on movie rental agreements with more studios, after many reports had Apple completing a deal with Fox last week. As Apple looks to compete in the video download business, these deals make sense for them. Unfortunately, the movie rental business does not yet make sense for consumers.
The rumors are that Apple is looking to do movie rentals starting at $3.99 for a 24 hour rental. That should be enough to woo some people who are too lazy to go to Blockbuster, but at that price, Netflix allows you to have up to three DVD movies at once for an unlimited amount of time. Additionally, the Netflix price comes with 16 hours of the “Watch Instantly” movies on demand feature, not to mention a much wider selection. And if you have invested a lot into your home theater, NetFlix offers HD-DVD and BluRay rentals, serving up picture and audio quality Apple can’t match. So while Apple might be better at wooing the studios in, there is much more work to do before their sweet talk works on the consumer.
— Joe Fahs
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