Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Video Rentals on iTunes: what does it all mean?


I'll tell you what it means: it's the future of media distribution.




As it stands in the U.S., participating studios include 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures, MGM, Lionsgate, and New Line Cinema:pretty much all the majors. Movies can be "rented" for 24-hour periods, and watched any number of times during that slot. If you watch the flick immediately, no worries: you'll have 30-days before the rental expires, so to speak. And the movies are actually comparable in price to what you might pay in an actual rental store: US$3.99 for new releases, US$2.99 for library titles, and US$5 for new releases in HD. Not too shabby.


If anybody can be trusted to bring about paid HD downloads, it's iTunes.


This is the thin edge of the wedge that will open up the brave new world of content on demand via the Internet. It's also bad news for Blockbuster Video and bricks and mortar rental stores like them.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The God's of fat bandwidth are smiling.