As I type this Steve Jobs is still giving his Keynote presentation at Macworld in San Francisco. The most interesting thing that I was looking forward to was anything to do with movies on the iTunes store and HD. As it turns out, they will be supporting HD movies in the movie store, at least for rentals. Here are the rental specs:
iTunes Movie Rentals
- HD quality
- $3 library titles, $4 new titles, extra $1 for HD
- 30 days to start watching
- 24 hours to finish watching
- Movies can be streamed
$4 for new releases?! What are they thinking? Here’s a quick comparison with my Netflix account. In December, I rented 8 movies, and it cost me $15.07. Some quick math: $1.88 per movie. And that’s in HD!! That pricing scheme is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d never spend that much to rent a movie anymore, not with great alternatives like Netflix around.
Omg that IS expensive. Although, the CONVENIENCE — no waiting, no need to get in the car and drive to a rental place…. I dunno. I think some people will still try it out (I might), but if apple was hoping to compete with netflix… not a snowball’s chance in hell.
I couldn’t agree with you more. That’s ridiculous. That’s the same reason I don’t rent any movies off the Xbox Live Marketplace. I don’t want to pay that much just to watch a movie. Between Netflix instant streaming and getting the movies in the mail, there is no reason to get them from iTunes.
The only reason I can see for someone to rent them from iTunes or XBL marketplace would be if they don’t have an HD player and wanted to watch a movie in HD. Even then, I think it’s over priced and I won’t be renting any of them.
Agreed. If I had unlimited money to burn, I’d do it. Just because its instant satisfaction. But alas, I don’t have a money tree, so I’ll stick to Netflix:-)
with HD players costing barely anything these days I can’t see its justified either way. They’ve gotten so cheap