Apple and Fox Set to Announce Movie Rental Deal

mudimba writes "Apple and Twentieth Century Fox are about to announce a deal that will allow users to rent Fox movies over iTunes. The deal will allow people to download movies that will only play for a limited amount of time. 'Pali Research analyst Stacey Widlitz said the deal follows a trend of Hollywood studios selling directly to consumers and cutting out the middleman. "It's just a sign the studios feel ... that another distribution channel is where they are choosing to go, and incrementally it hurts Blockbuster and Netflix," Widlitz said.'"

What a great business model!

[Anonymous Coward]

No one's EVER going to crack the encryption algorithms so that a temporary movie becomes permanent! It's BRILLIANT!

Re:What a great business model!

[daBass]

iTunes DRM has not been cracked in ages. The only thing available is QTFairUse and that only works on Windows and doesn't actually break the encryption; it has merely found a hook where it can grab the stream after it has been decoded by Quicktime.

Maybe something like that can be done with the DRM on movies too, but I doubt that any time soon it will be easy and convenient enough for anybody to do to have any noticeable impact on their business. Even if some people crack and share their files, the majority won't.

And the nice thing about rentals vs. purchase is that they can very easily change their crypto methods at a moment's notice without having to be backwards compatible.

Not that I would ever be a customer unless the price is right (it won't be) and they serve up 720p h.264 files at at least 4mbit. (they won't do that either)

Re:

[dabraun]

Not that I would ever be a customer unless the price is right (it won't be) and they serve up 720p h.264 files at at least 4mbit. (they won't do that either)

Why not? XBox has been doing this for over a year (720p at something like 12mbit) - it's VC1, but obviously Apple's format of choice would be H.264 for the same scenario. This isn't exactly revolutionary - it's not even new. Amazon has online movies, xbox has them, movielink has them, cinemanow has them ... so Apple's joining the game too. Apart fro

Re:

[daBass]

I did some googling, and of all the ones you mention, it seems only XBox Live Video is HD (720p) and at a decent bitrate. The others are SD in 700-1.5Mbit, which simply is not good enough. (Amazon is 2500kbps average, but still SD)

At least the XBox service is evidence the studios are not totally opposed to HD at a decent bitrate, there may be hope yet.

Now all we need is a good box to play them on - I don't want a noisy '360 that I would not use for games anyway. A proper HD Apple TV 2 would be good - so lon

Re:

[igb]

There isn't the slightest evidence that in the mainstream market there is any consumer pull of HD. For practical purposes Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are market failures: they're not selling media in any quantity, it's not being rented in any quantity, the players have passed straight from exotic high-price to discount box-shifting. A download service that offered roughly DVD quality would work well: aside from anything else, a lot of ISPs impose download caps which make the larger downloads less attractive. Mo

Re:

[daBass]

These are just bits; there is no reason *not* to offer HD and SD versions - people can can choose what they want. (good quality or quick downloads)

Build it and they will come...

If HBlueDVRayD players really were discount box shifted, I would buy one. Unfortunately, that is only the case in the US; the rest of the world still pays a premium for first-gen players! The low sales are probably primarily due to the fact that there are two competing standards; those who don't know or care don't buy as with any new

Re:

[igb]

One reason not to offer HD downloads is head-end bandwidth, of course. "Build and they will come" is a nice thought. but the roadside carnage of technologies that have been built and have not come is testament to its weakness as a business plan. Richer Sounds, the canonical UK discount box shifters, have the Toshiba HDE1, whatever that might be, for £170 (say $300: UK prices include 17.5% VAT). Given the cost of a display which can show any difference between upscaled DVD and HD-DVD, this strikes m

Re:

[MBGMorden]

In fact, I have stopped buying DVDs in anticipation of having an HD player; buying an SD DVD seems like a waste now.

I had done basically the same thing, but for a few movies that I really wanted (Harry Potter: OtP for example) I've picked up the DVD/HDDVD combo disc. It plays in my current DVD player (which ironically is connected to an HDTV and upscales), and it's got the HD version already on the disc. I figure whichever player comes out on top it should still play the DVD side of the movie, and if it happens to be HD-DVD then I can play the Hi-Def version as well.

Personally, I'm betting on HD-DVD anyways. The play

Re:

[Znork]

"Build it and they will come..."

Considering that the vast majority of p2p material isnt even SD I rather doubt it. Heck, ripping my own DVDs to disk, with a good encoder I dont notice enough quality difference to make it worth the 50 cents worth of diskspace to use full SD quality.

In what few blind tests I've seen not even experts can reliably tell what's HD content or upscaled SD content under normal viewing conditions, so why bother? You might as well stick a HD sticker on your old TV and be as amazed wit

Re:

[darthflo]

The quality of content in p2p networks is rapidly becoming better. "Classic" single- and dual-disc XviD DVDRips still are the most common format due to ease of use and quality/space ratio, but the share of DVD-Rs (direct copies of DVDs' MPEG streams) has been growing over the past months and are currently being superseded by a (now stabilizing) slew of HD formats (after different approaches by different groups, x264 720p and 1080i in mkv containers at some 4.4 and 7.9 GiB per film seems to be the way of cho

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Toonol]

The others are SD in 700-1.5Mbit, which simply is not good enough.

You are free to set whatever personal standards you wish, but that quality is good enough for the vast majority of people. And I'm not being elitist... it's good enough for me, also. There's a trade-off between perceived quality, storage space, and bandwidth, and the sweet spot is different for different people. I want better quality than youtube, but don't particularly want HD. DVD quality is fine... heck, I'll often settle for VCR q

Fairplay is "honor system" DRM

[argent]

iTunes DRM has not been cracked in ages.

Nobody needs to crack it, because iTunes DRM is "honor system": iTunes will happily make a perfect digital unencrypted copy of an audio track for you any time you want, without QTFairUse, by burning to an audio CD.

Which I routinely do every time I buy a track from iTunes, because I took their advice about making backups of all my music to heart. Good thing too, when a couple of reinstalls on a bad system drive took me over the limit of authorizations... it was the only way I could play my music while waiting for them to remove my authorizations manually. If you (any of you out there) haven't made audio CD backups of your iTunes music, I heartily encourage you to start.

Yes, re-ripping will introduce some distortion if you don't re-rip to lossless... but I can't detect any on anything but classical music, and I haven't bought classical music on iTunes in years. I mean, really, if you care about quality why aren't you buying and ripping CDs, or at least sticking to iTunes Plus tracks (which are, incidentally, DRM-free).

And the fact that there's not an easy equivalent for video is one reason I've only bought a few TV shows from iTunes, to fill in series I've missed. The video side of iTunes seems like a sideshow, really, music is where it's at.

Good argument for subscription music

[benwaggoner]

...and the above is an excellent argument for a music subscription service, so you don't need to deal with the mechanics of preserving files.

I much prefer the Zune Marketplace Zunepass, and URGE before that, as a model. A fixed monthly fee, and I can download whatever I want, whenever I want. Last night I downloaded all of the Rock Band tracks, including most of the albums they were off of, and 85% or so of them were available via subscription (the Metallica stuff required a purchased download). Nice way to

Bad argument for subscription music

[argent]

...and the above is an excellent argument for a music subscription service, so you don't need to deal with the mechanics of preserving files.

That seems rather an odd bit of logic there.

Here I am with a music library collected over the past 30 years, containing quite a bit of music that's no longer in distribution, some of which will never be republished until it goes out of copyright, and the solution to backing it up is to prevent me from having acquired a permanent copy in the first place. Well, I suppose

Re:

[node 3]

No one's EVER going to crack the encryption algorithms so that a temporary movie becomes permanent! It's BRILLIANT!

If it's cracked (which will be *extremely* difficult--don't think that just because DVDs are so easy to decrypt that that means all DRM is futile), Apple will just update iTunes and FairPlay. At worst, there will be a window of time where rentals can be de-DRMd. You won't be able to all of the sudden "rent" a ton of movies and decrypt them, because by the time it becomes cracked, the new FairPlay (which is certainly already prepped) will be in place, so any new rentals will not be crackable via the already

Re:

[Bodrius]

I know you're trying to be funny, but if you replace that with the actual business model it sounds a lot more sensible:

"(Almost) no one's ever going to BOTHER cracking the encryption..."

It will all come down to pricing and convenience - if the price is right, and the restrictions aren't absurd, most people will be more than willing to pay to download yet another TV-show-season pack.

Of course, media companies do not have a history of being very smart about either - but the greatest problem is neither with th

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"No one's EVER going to crack the encryption algorithms so that a temporary movie becomes permanent! It's BRILLIANT!"

By the time somebody's gone through all that, they could have found Bittorrents of the movies and downloaded them. Non issue.

Re:

[aplusjimages]

cracking DRM is out there, but not everyone is doing it. sure the college kids will do it, but your average consumer won't.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[jcaldwel]

I an app developer, not a driver developer, but I have seen a few programs, like TrueCrypt [truecrypt.org] fake-out the Windows Driver Architecture into using a driver that isn't associated with actual hardware.

I don't see any reason that this won't work for Video and Sound drivers (until MSFT tries to shove trusted computing down our throats). I have been considering researching the feasibility of/writing a [OSS?] driver that would take the output and encode it directly to disk. This bypasses the need to actually target

Cryptographic model

[DrYak]

We already have mathematical algorithms that are good enough (both deterministic and 'uncrackable')

Which won't work for DRM.
The basic premise in cryptography is keeping the key secret, exchanging them securely with the destination user while avoiding them to be catched by undesired 3rd persons.
With DRM, the problem is that the person to which you securely transmit the keys (the user, so he can watch his movie) and the person you're protecting the keys from (the user, so he won't make unauthorised copies) are the same person. You're supposed at the same time give the keys to the user and prevent the user from using them.

So the mathematical model behind private/public systems, etc could be perfect, that won't help a system like DRM which is broken by design.

can't rent

[Erpo]

The agreement will allow rentals of Fox's latest DVD releases by downloading a copy from the online iTunes store for a limited time, the Financial Times said.

One can't rent digital data because an integral part of renting something is returning it at the end of the rental period. Some people get this, and some people don't: http://www.bash.org/?104052 [bash.org] (warning: language).

Yes, I know they mean DRM. This is slashdot, so nobody has to be reminded that DRM is impossible.

Re:can't rent

[edwardpickman]

Not entirely true. You can rent services and things like bandwidth that has no physical form to return. It's semantics when you get down to it. I guess it could be called a Limited Use Purchase but the intent is to function like a rental. I'd prefer this over the play once or twice disks that have been tried once before. That really was pointless and a rediculous waste of landfills. It was like trying to commercialize those America On-Line trial disks. All we need is more trash to throw out after we use it once. There are benefits to no physical media. The problem is most of these services try to charge nearly the purchase price of the DVD itself. I think Blockbuster is over priced so why would I pay $9.99 for essentially the same thing only with a higher compression? Yes it's more convient but price will be the decider. I don't personally mind the pricing for iTunes but if they try the $10 crap I'll never use the service. They may not want to compete with DVDs and threaten those but unless it's less than Blockbuster rentals I can't see using the service. I checked out Amazon's service but they were $10 and wouldn't play on my Mac. No thanks. If I wait a couple of months I can buy a used copy at Blockbuster for that and it'll play on any of my machines. At $10 it's a novelty at $2.50 I think a lot of people would be interested. I don't agree with the everything should be a $1 approach but when I'm not getting a physical media I think under $3 is reasonable. If they decide to offer full 1080P I'd be happy to pay $10 for a 48 hour rental but not for an over compressed copy.

Re:can't rent

[hmccabe]

Just a point on the Amazon service. I've used it with my Tivo, and the prices are really good. Actually, I just opened another tab to check the current prices, and ended up renting Transformers for $0.99 and Waitress for $1.99. Most of the rental* prices are around that. The really nice thing about Amazon's downloads is that it's just the movie. While this means no special features, it means no previews and no annoying menus getting between you and the movie.

*And yes, I said rental. Semantic arguments are teh lame.

Re:

[p0tat03]

Do you vent against The Man simply because you can? This is one of the *rare* cases where DRM is creating a legitimate market for a product, as opposed to merely tying the hands of consumers.

None of the usual anti-DRM arguments are valid here. You are NOT purchasing a permanent license to the work. It only lasts for the next 24 or 48h, so the usual arguments of inability to transcribe to another hardware's format is not valid here either. Unlike most DRM, the restrictions placed upon your purchase would b

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Mikey-San]

One can't rent digital data because an integral part of renting something is returning it at the end of the rental period. Some people get this, and some people don't

So you don't pay full price and can watch it for a few days or some other period of time. After that, you aren't allowed to watch anymore without paying again. Everyone who isn't a Slashdot pedant calls this "renting a movie". There's nothing wrong about describing it as a digital movie rental service, because that's just how customers are goin

Re:

[Lars T.]

One can't rent digital data because an integral part of renting something is returning it at the end of the rental period.

By the same logic you can't watch digital movies, because you can't see the bits.

faster to go to the video store

[Jeff1946]

I live 5 min from my video rental store. So unless the cost is a lot less, I doubt I would want to wait the longer time for a download.

Re:faster to go to the video store

[Seumas]

I'd be willing to spend a dollar or two for a movie, if I could watch it for more than 24hrs. Perhaps a week. In very high quality. Perhaps A dollar or two extra for a movie released in the last year.

Going to an actual video store or even using netflix is just too much of a hassle. The membership. The dues. The fees. The lines. The people. The interactions. The driving. Screw that.

What needs to happen is the half-assed cable "on-demand" services need to have more than a few dozen stupid movies -- all either free or for $7 a movie with only 24hrs to watch them. That's ridiculous. Give me a week to watch something I buy. Drop the price to something more reasonable. And then expand the selection from 200 films to 100,000. I will never need netflix or a video store or to buy an actual DVD ever again. I will always resort to the very affordable (preferably) massive library on my television with the flick of a remote control.

Why is it taking so long to accomplish that? It's 2008...

Re:

[Abcd1234]

I'd be willing to spend a dollar or two for a movie, if I could watch it for more than 24hrs. Perhaps a week. In very high quality.

Umm... explain to me how a downloaded copy will be of higher quality than just renting a disc, particularly if you don't want it to take a week just to download the thing?

Re:faster to go to the video store

[igb]

And yet strangely a lot of people spend money with Netflix, Amazon Rental, etc, etc. I believe there is a video store near to me, but the Amazon rental service is priced so low I don't care and works fine. It also has a rather wide range: I'm guess the set of video stores with a copy of Nuit et Bruilard to hand is small.

Something that perpetually fascinates me, which presumably relates to the autism of geeks, is that automatic assumption that all media has to be owned and collected: terabytes of ripped DVD material, etc. I assume these are the people who can never actually see a concert, because they spend the whole time photographing and recording it. I own a handful of films of DVD, although I go to the cinema (the ultimate rental, in a sense) once a week. I rent occasional films, that I missed at the cinema, or want to see for some other reason, and after watching them once, from end to end, I'm quite happy not to have them around any more. What do these people with hundreds and thousands of films _do_ with them? I'm increasingly puzzled at what I myself should be with the thousands of CDs I've acquired over the past twenty years: how many of them do I listen to? How many of them, indeed, have I listened to more than once?

Re:

[fishboy]

i couldn't agree more, there are only a handful of films i would be interested in owning. films are not music and the vast majority of them do not merit a second viewing, much less a third or fourth. as for the cd collection, i converted ninety percent of mine into cash when i suddenly realised i hadn't played a single one of them once in the year since i got my first mp3 player. i haven't looked back at the decision at all, just kept the really special ones and ditched the rest.

the real advantage of o

Re:faster to go to the video store

[node 3]

I live 5 min from my video rental store.

5 minutes from the moment you decide to watch a movie to being back at home watching it? Or 5 minutes from leaving the driveway to parking the car at the video store?

Regardless, no matter *how* close your video store--even if you live *in* it, I can start watching a film from iTunes faster than you could from your live-in video store. Hell, I'd bet I can start iTunes, find a movie and start watching it before you can turn on your TV and DVD player, find and load the disc you've already rented, and start the movie (without even taking into account the FBI warning and superfluous DVD startup animations that will delay your movie no matter how fast your DVD player starts).

Re:

[node 3]

What's all that got to do with anything? Are you somehow comparing your local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video with community theatre?

And don't pretend instant gratification is anything new. The microwave oven, television, telephone, railroad, pony express, sail ships, chariots, carrier pigeons, smoke signals, well, my point is, wanting things faster is nothing new, nor is it anything bad.

I mean, why would you *want* to go to your local video store when you can just click download and watch immediately? Perha

Re:

[Luscious868]

I live 5 min from my video rental store. So unless the cost is a lot less, I doubt I would want to wait the longer time for a download.

Further, most people with digital cable or satellite have video on demand so sometimes renting a movie just takes a few clicks of the remote. I'll likely use this service when I travel for work. I can rent a couple of movies, load them on my iPhone and have something to watch at the airport and on the plane. I used to have to buy the movie when I wanted to do this, with th

A week after the first rental film goes live...

[Chris Tucker]

...on iTunes, there will be at least 2 applications that will intercept or otherwise access the data and convert it to a more permanent format.

Almost certainly it'll be Windows only at first, but very soon thereafter, the Mac OS version will appear.

And then the race will be on! First QuickTime will be patched, then the intercept applications will be patched to defeat the QT patch. The subsequent QT patches will break all sorts of things, like iPhoto and Garage Band and anything else that uses the QT engine.

Hilarity ensues for a year or so until Fox says "Screw it! We're not making enough money off this."

Rest of world pays no real attention, as they're too busy watching all the movies and TV programs they've downloaded via The Pirate Bay and from USENET.

In other words, what we're all doing RIGHT NOW.

Re:A week after the first rental film goes live...

[theurge14]

For every geek who uses Pirate Bay, Usenet, etc, there's about 20 people at my work who see my video iPod and ask "where do you get TV shows and movies for that thing?" Those are the people who will be paying for this service.

Yep...

[Joce640k]

The vast majority of people simply can't grok emule, don't know what to do when Windows Media Player doesn't recognize a file, etc., etc.

If you can make it simple for them you'll make money.

Re:

[ConanG]

For every geek who uses Pirate Bay, Usenet, etc, there's about 20 people at my work...

Holy crap! Where the hell do you work? There's got to be millions of people at your workplace!

The opposite observation

[DrYak]

I usually encounter the opposite situation.

My ex was studying psychology (not exactly a bunch of computer nerds).
We got her a MP3 player for Christmas. And somewhat later, for her birthsday I wanted to offer her gift-coupons for her to go and buy whatever CD she would like to rip and store on the player.

Reaction of all her co-students whom I asked to help ? "Why pay for something she can get for free on LimeWire ?".

So my experience is the exact opposite. For every effort that companies make to attract 1 pay

Re:A week after the first rental film goes live...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

There will also be those moral enough not to break the law.

Lawbreaking != immorality.

Re:

[Lars T.]

There will also be those moral enough not to break the law.

Lawbreaking != immorality.

Not compensating artists/creators for their works = immorality.

Re:

[njfuzzy]

You know, you may be right on that. In fact, as I understand it, being on the receiving end of piracy isn't illegal. I don't pirate intellectual property for moral reasons, not legal ones. In fact, I am surprised that anyone who claims to be a "geek" could do otherwise-- How many of our livelihoods are dependent on intellectual property rights? I do software tech support, and am a photographer-- I'd be broke if it weren't for the value of intellectual property. Let's be honest-- if most of Slashdot needed t

Re:

[GreyWolf3000]

I offer you something at a given price with a restriction. You break the restriction so you get unlimited, unrestricted use. The thing I sold you came at a low price because of that restriction.

I wouldn't call it stealing, but it sure is wrong. If you think DRM is wrong, don't buy it--but it is still wrong to buy DRM'ed junk, then remove that DRM and enjoy the junk at bargain price.

Re:A week after the first rental film goes live...

[skeftomai]

Yes, and the Boston Tea Party was wrong. So was the American Revolution. We should *always* do what the government demands. Always.

Your kind will soon enough be naturally unselected.

You mean like apartheid?

[tepples]

Give to Caesar, what belongs to Caesar.

The Roman Empire is dead. Besides, legislatures do not dictate morality. For example, when slavery is the law, as it was in the United States prior to the 1860s, is slavery moral? When apartheid is the law, as it was in the United States prior to the 1960s and in South Africa prior to the 1990s, is apartheid moral?

Re:

[Cal Paterson]

Morals != Law.

In Saudi Arabia, the law is that homosexuals be put to death.

Not everything your government says comes straight down from heaven.

Re:

[Cal Paterson]

Morality does not change with geography. Saudi Arabia are simply wrong.

Re:

[mrsteveman1]

Morality isn't going to change the market. When these companies are willing to sell what the public wants, they will win. The public in general wants easy to use, accessible music and movies, without the unnecessary locks, for a reasonable price.

Until then all the morality you can preach won't change a thing.

Re:

[Chris Tucker]

"There will also be those moral enough not to break the law."

Yeah, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence, et al, etc.

Immoral lawbreaking criminal bastards the lot of them.

Lock 'em all up and throw away the key, that'll learn 'em!

Re:A week after the first rental film goes live...

[node 3]

In other words, what we're all doing RIGHT NOW.

People "all doing that RIGHT NOW" with music, but Apple has no problem selling billions of songs on iTunes. I don't think movie rentals, provided the price and DRM terms are reasonable enough (like they are with music on iTunes) will be any different.

The biggest problem will be getting the movies to where people want to watch them (ie, the TV). Fortunately, Apple has the Apple TV for just that.

The iTunes music store was easy enough, cheap enough, and the DRM was unobtrusive enough, to convince a *lot* of people already "doing that RIGHT NOW" to actually *buy* music again. Then they did the same with TV shows (until NBC/Universal decided they'd rather have people "pirate" their shows instead of buy them through Apple). There's no reason to expect the iTunes movie rentals will somehow fail to do the same thing, again granted acceptable pricing and usage terms.

Re:

[Ginger Unicorn]

perhaps the dude putting stuff on piratebay is the only thing that will take the power away from the MPAA and change the way everything works. Sometimes you need to tear down what's there to make room for something better. Even if very few of the people doing the tearing down are doing it for altruistic reasons, it still might end up being better for everyone if they carry on.

apple is the middle-man

[Anonymous Coward]

"Widlitz said the deal follows a trend of Hollywood studios selling directly to consumers and cutting out the middleman"

This doesnt cut out the middle-man, it just makes the middle-man apple.

Re:

[mosch]

It cuts out a lot of people.

No pressing discs. No printing boxes. No shopping finished product to distributors.

There's still a retailer involved, but a bunch of other middle-men are removed.

Cutting out the middleman?

[MtHuurne]

Pali Research analyst Stacey Widlitz said the deal follows a trend of Hollywood studios selling directly to consumers and "cutting out the middleman."

Isn't Apple the new middleman?

Media outlet repeats rumor from media sources

[Infonaut]

Film at eleven.

Re:

[Yvan256]

Torrent of the film at ten.

Bandwidth and the TV

[HockeyPuck]

I've only got two concerns with this, and they have nothing to do with 'renting it'. I rent movies from my local blockbuster and so if i downloaded some file and it 'blew up' after X days, I don't care. I have to return the DVDs anyhow.

My concerns are around the following:

-Downloading times. If we were to assume that the quality of the file being downloaded was equivalent to an uncompressed DVD (~4GB), I'm not willing to wait the 8hrs to download it. I'm a comcast subscriber, and the 'on demand' feature should be how things are delivered. Sit down at the tv, scroll to the movie. Click 'pay' and you get it for 24hrs, watch as many times as you want.

-Getting the movie to the tv. I have both a PC and a macbook pro (laptop). However, neither are very good at getting video or audio to the stereo/tv. The Macbook pro had DVI out, but for audio, i have to use a USB to composite (red/white) cable. So even if the media is Dolby5.1, the laptop sends it to my stereo in.. 2channel stereo. While stereos/TVs move towards HDMI, computers are just moving to DVI.

I'll buy into downloading movies if i'm not forced to a) upgrade my broadband connection from cable/dsl to an OC-3, and b) have to replace my laptops with a desktop/mediacenter pc with an optical out/HDMI.

Reminds me of Vista, This is a great OS, if you upgrade to 4GB of RAM and quad core cpus!

Re:Bandwidth and the TV

[bizard]

You do know that your macbook pro has digital optical audio which will send dts surround [digitalmedianet.com] don't you?

Re:Bandwidth and the TV

[Swampash]

the Macbook pro had DVI out, but for audio, i have to use a USB to composite (red/white) cable. So even if the media is Dolby5.1, the laptop sends it to my stereo in.. 2channel stereo.

What are you talking about? Every Macbook/Macbook Pro has audio OPTICAL OUT. It'll do 6.1 DTS.

Don't blame the hardware if the problem is that you don't know how to use it.

Re:

[lakeland]

Use the digital audio output on your macbook, it sounds GREAT!

Cables are pretty cheap too, at least not too bad

Re:Bandwidth and the TV

[node 3]

The movies already available on iTunes are in the 1-2GB range, similar to DVD quality (slightly lower res than progressive DVDs, but a more efficient video codec (H.264 vs MPEG-2)), and will play immediately after the download starts. So as long as your bandwidth is faster than the bitrate of the video file (limited to 1.5Mb/s for the iPod, which is only a fraction of the bandwidth of cable internet), you can start watching the movie immediately.

As for getting it to the TV, that's what the Apple TV is for. Unfortunately, the Apple TV currently doesn't support streaming movies directly from the iTunes store. This seems exactly like the sort of thing Apple would update for a rental service like this.

Re:

[stewbacca]

Doesn't Apple TV use a similar interface to Front Row? Once you've bought the movie in iTunes, it would show up in the Movies section of Front Row. Are you just wanting to be able forego the computer altogether and surf the iTunes store from the Apple TV? That sounds like a good idea. If we can buy songs wirelessly on the iPhone, why not movies with an Apple TV?

I wonder how long

[hyades1]

it's going to take somebody to crack the time limit and make it possible to keep the movies forev...oh, never mind. Some little smartass just did it.

I need a DFD

[michaelmalak]

'Pali Research analyst Stacey Widlitz said the deal follows a trend of Hollywood studios selling directly to consumers and cutting out the middleman. "It's just a sign the studios feel ... that another distribution channel is where they are choosing to go, and incrementally it hurts Blockbuster and Netflix," Widlitz said.'"

Either Stacey is full of it, or I'm missing something. I need a DFD (dataflow diagram).

How is iTunes cutting out the middleman? Wouldn't iTunes be the new middleman? Wouldn't iTunes be

Re:

[edwardpickman]

Actually there tends to be more than one level of middleman and some want a big piece of the pie. Say with a theatrical release the studio makes roughly 50% of the box office based on a sliding percentage. Something like 60% the first week then dropping to 50% then gradually dropping from there so the theaterial gets a bigger piece of the pie as the numbers drop. Some one like Walmart of Blockbuster are going to negoiate for a very big piece of the pie compared to smaller distributors. The small retailers a

Re:

[stewbacca]

Until I can cut out the movie theater altogether (i.e., watch movies that are showing in theaters at home, in my better than any movie theater around here home theater room), there will always be a middle man. And that middle man thinks I'm stupid enough to pay $7 for a tub of stale, synthetic popcorn that otherwise would cost about 38 cents. The same middle man that refuses to upgrade 50 year old projection technology and uses a bunch of buzzwords for audio quality that usually just means the left rear s

Don't Read Manuals

[abes]

I won't argue against the anti-DRMists. I'm generally not a fan of DRM, but have also generally gone with the lesser of the evil. I don't buy CDs, because I don't have the room to store them, I don't like destroying the environment, and I don't use CD players anymore. IMHO Apple's DRM tends to be less evil. In part because Apple doesn't really like DRM -- they haven't yet gone out of their way to really screw you over, and generally ignore the hacks around their system. Sometimes they'll fight back, but so

Flaimbait? Really?

[stewbacca]

Man I can't believe your well moderated post got modded "flamebait". I guess that goes to show how hard core the "anti-DRMists" out there really are! If you even suggest that DRM might not be as evil as everyone makes it out to be, in a perfectly logical, well thought out post, you get ye olde slashdot FLAMEBAIT scarlet letter.

Re:

[bilbravo]

$2/day seems like a lot ... although I guess it could be deemed "convenience". I'm not sure if it's available where you are, but around here there is a service called "Redbox" which is $1/day.

What a total freakin' bore...

[tyrione]

How many decades have to be spent on reinventing ways to amuse ourselves? Holy crap! Being a stockholder of Apple I'm pleased the stock is growing. As an engineer I would rather see advances at Apple getting into the traditional Engineering Fields with products that can expand their reach and make OS X a leader in the Auto, Aerospace, Bio-Medical and more fields.

Oh never mind! Trek 69 was just delivered to my AppleTV.

audio DRM failed, now they try again

[peas_n_carrots]

After the consumer lashback against DRM in the audio arena forced recording studios to go MP3, Hollywood is pursuing the Bush-style I-can't-be-bothered-with-history fiasco and repeating the same mistakes. Maybe after so many billions of lost revenue, they'll finally figure it out too. DRM is a dead end.

Re:

[Mikey-San]

After the consumer lashback against DRM in the audio arena forced recording studios to go MP3, Hollywood is pursuing the Bush-style I-can't-be-bothered-with-history fiasco and repeating the same mistakes. Maybe after so many billions of lost revenue, they'll finally figure it out too. DRM is a dead end.

Listen, I think DRM is a failure, too. But this post is crap.

1. There's no consumer backlash against audio DRM on a large scale. 1+ billion songs sold through iTunes proves this. Conusmers may like DRM-free s

Re:

[dangitman]

A billion songs sold is like ten songs per customer, for the relatively narrow customer base that has any interest in iTunes.

"Narrow customer base" for iTunes? I'd like to know what the hell you are smoking. It's totally mainstream. iTunes is one of the most popular software applications in history.

Re:

[node 3]

Right, because people will be honest and "return" their rented iTunes movies on their own, without any need for DRM to enforce the rental terms.

Clue 1: Audio DRM is different from Video DRM. Clue 2:People have already fully embraced Video DRM via the DVD.

How would the limited-use DRM work?

[DTemp]

Ok so how would this work exactly?

If I watch the first 30 minutes of a movie, does that count as one full viewing? Does it mark the first 30 minutes as being watched once, so I can watch the rest of the movie X times but I can only watch the first 30 minutes again X-1 times? They CERTAINLY couldn't make it count as nothing, cause then people would never watch the credits of the movie, or whatever, and it wouldn't count.

And, I presume these will sync to video-capable iPods. If you only get to watch it three times, whats stopping me from downloading it, syncing it to my iPod, and then watching it three times on my computer AND iPod EACH.

Ok... so all of the above relies on a method that allows you to watch it a certain amount of times, instead of a method that lets you watch it unlimited times within a certain time period.

I know far less about DRM and encryption than guys like DVDJon, but whats stopping me from changing my Mac's system clock?

Re:

[stewbacca]

but whats stopping me from changing my Mac's system clock?

This hasn't circumvented trial period endings for years now, so I'm sure the Apple/Fox deal wouldn't fall to such an easy trick either.

DRM and Limits

[VincenzoRomano]

movies that will only play for a limited amount of time

Which should mean proprietary file format and player?
A good bait for hackers to circumvent it.
As stated previous postings, DRM is an illusion, renting digital files doubly so.

No mention of late fees

[DTemp]

What happens if I fail to scp them their movie file back within a timely manner? 99 cents a day?

Can DRM Work?

[LKM]

I think it's more or less obvious that DRM can't possibly work in the sense that it can't protect content perfectly. Since a standalone computer needs all the components to decrypt the DRM in order to play it, there will always be a way to decrypt the bought or rented media in a way which stores the resulting, unencrypted data.

On the other hand, the current iTunes DRM works pretty well, and most people don't seem to bother with breaking it. Why? Because fair use usually doesn't get in their way. I bought a

Re:

[argent]

Short answer: "No".

Long answer:

On the other hand, the current iTunes DRM works pretty well, and most people don't seem to bother with breaking it. Why?

The current iTunes DRM works because Apple makes it trivial to bypass it. They even tell you how to do it without finding or downloading any new apps: MIX, BURN, RIP. Many people don't bother until the first time they run into a problem with Fairplay, but making an audio CD backup of iTunes tracks as you buy them is not only sensible but encouraged (and nece

Re:

[LKM]

I fail to see how what you said contradicts what I said.

Re:

[argent]

I suppose if by "works pretty well" you mean "doesn't actually work", we're in agreement.

Market Research

[babbling]

I have to wonder whether any company using this business model has actually done any market research into whether the target audience exists. It seems about as feasible as selling dog food for cats.

Geeks are into watching TV shows on their computers. Normal people (aka "non-geeks") are not. Normal people don't want to sit at a computer and watch a show, and they want it immediately rather than waiting for it to download. Normal people tend not to even have internet connections good enough to enable a "rent

Re:

[tepples]

Normal people don't have devices that allow them to watch TV shows on their computer on normal televisions, either.

I thought most PC video cards nowadays came with composite TV output, and I thought a lot of HDTVs had a VGA-style DE-15 input for RGB signals.

Re:

[babbling]

Okay, so perhaps no device is required for newer hardware, but the point still stands. Normal people do not have their PCs connected to their televisions.

Re:

[stewbacca]

Hey, I have all that stuff (minus the benz or the bimmer) but I'm hardly rich (*firmly ensconched in the middle class is more realistic*). I'm not sure I'd use this service, though, since it is only one studio's movies. Since most movies are crap, it would take all the studios jumping on board for me to be able to find a movie worth renting from time-to-time.

You sound bitter and jealous by your example. How does renting a movie via digitial download apply only to the wealthiest of society?

DIVX failed, FlexPlay failed...

[dpbsmith]

...all the limited-time and streaming-only music services have failed....

as far as I know, every attempt to deliver a pseudo-rental experience by providing a time-limited copy--as opposed to a physical copy that is physically returned--has failed.

All of the promoters of these schemes simply assert that consumers will perceive this as being just like a rental, only better because you don't have the inconvenience of having to return the copy.

But a decade of experience seems to show that whether consumers ough

Re:

[stewbacca]

as far as I know, every attempt to deliver a pseudo-rental experience by providing a time-limited copy--as opposed to a physical copy that is physically returned--has failed.

Well if anyone can make a failed model work, it's definitely Apple.

Pretty Much Old News

[imstanny]

http://www.macrumors.com/2007/09/08/itunes-movie-rentals-coming/ [macrumors.com]

This has been pretty obvious for a while now...

I hope Jobs hasn't started fooling himself...

[argent]

I mean, Jobs keeps saying DRM can't work, and now this scheme which actually depends on DRM working.

Apple is going to fix Quicktime on Windows?

[argent]

Oh, one more thing...

The biggest problem I see with it is that Quicktime on Windows, well, it's got reliability problems and it's got performance problems. My wife downloaded some episodes of one of her TV shows and had to borrow my first gen Mac mini to watch them, because her *much* faster and more up-to-date Wintel box couldn't play them without cutouts... no matter what I did in upgrading drivers and reinstalling Quicktime and the rest of the Wintendo voodoo games.

It plays WMV and RM just fine.

Apple is the Middleman

[Bryansix]

Pali Research analyst Stacey Widlitz said the deal follows a trend of Hollywood studios selling directly to consumers and cutting out the middleman.

Uhm, No. Apple is the middle man here. They are distributing the content just like Blockbuster and Netflix. They also are not the first to deliver content over the Internet. Netflix already has that capability built into every single Netflix account.

Why is this exciting or news even?

[TheNetAvenger]

Why is this exciting or news even?

In the non-iTunes reality, people have been renting Videos online for over 6 years more. Look up Vongo, Cinemanow, Movielink, as well as some of the subscription based music services that also allow limited video and music video downloads.

I like most people in the non iTunes wrapped world have been clicking my media center remote to grab the latest movie online from my chair for a long time now. Yes Media Center 2005 and Vista work great with online Video rental services, it is one of the reasons to pick up a remote for your computer even if you don't use the tuner and DVR functions of media center. (Let alone the online content access to stuff normally found on the old TVLinks sites automatically available inside Media Center)

The only news here is the Fox deal, not the 'renting' of freaking movies, even though it is a new model to Apple.

I know that 'owning' the rights to music is a great plan or getting access to stuff the Windows world has had for years is always exciting to Apple users and they think Jobs invents it everytime, but come on...

As for renting media, I pay my $15bucks a month to Napster or Rhapsody and have access to virtually every song ever made and reload my Creative Zen on a weekly basis with about 1000-2000 new songs. THis also includes loading my Theater computer, and the rest of my family's MP3 players with everything they could even want. How much would that cost in iTunes world?

I guess the part that kills me, is that I have avid iPod and iTunes friends that won't pay for subscription based music, but yet they pay for the deluxe TV/Cable package everymonth or have several XM devices they pay 20-30 bucks a month for, when they oculd be be podcasting and paying a music subscription service cheaper and getting instant access to literally millions of songs as faster as your connection can grab them.

I'm not a personal fan of the Zune, as MS's plans got screwed over by the wireless restrictions, but the model works better. Buy if you want and burn it to CD just like iTunes, or don't and just pay the subscription fee and get access to all their content on a monthly basis.

Consumers are finally taking notice of the 'cable bill' subscription concept and this is driving users to Zunes and non-Apple WMA based devices. Think of it this way, give your kids the option, I can buy you 4Gb Ipod that is cool, but you can only buy 10 songs a month, or I can buy a Windows PlaysforSure or Zune device and for the same money you can download everysong you ever wanted to fill the device.

Kids get the difference here, even if the Apple drones don't. Ipod is cool, but there is the high school and campus crowd of non iPod users that are considered in 'the know' that become more trendy with access to a larger selection of music and videos and movies and TV Shows without having to buy them.

Besides the geeks in the crowds that like the Zens and even cheaper Insigna 4gb players that have better audio support and better video quaility that even the most expensive iPod. Pick up a old Zen M or newer device and not only does the internal screen kill even the new iPods, but the A/V out is DVD resolution giving you a portable Movie jukebox to hook up at any friends house to watch movies on the fly.

I guess the whole iPod thing has left some of us geeks a bit bitter, as we have seen better devices doing what the iPod started years before the iPod, and continue to seen better sounding and more capapble MP3 devices from other companies, but once again Apple's marketing can turn average into spectacular. Maybe instead of bitter, we should just be in awe of Apple's marketing machine and go on our way and buy better quality devices cheaper than iPod with the horrible iTunes lock in 99% of the average users get sucked into.

Re:

[stewbacca]

So basically you are saying you hate Apple and iPods, thus an Apple + Movie Studio + Rental plan is automatically going to be bad? That's fine, but what about those of us who actually like iPods for reasons OTHER than you complained about? For example, I like owning my music, so rental plans are a non-issue. I like devices that are well engineered, have a nice polished UI, and connect easily with my home computers. An excessive feature list (fm radio, voice recorder, toaster, etc.) is not important to m

Will it clone the output to my HDTV?

[DaveCBio]

Most other players will allow my video card to clone the video out to my HDTV and play it fullscreen. Quicktime doesn't do this. I'd rather watch movies and TV on a large screen than my 17" LCD.

Re:

[stewbacca]

This is a common complaint. However, with iTunes content and/or anything put into Apple's Front Row software, even though it uses the Quicktime video codecs (and the Quicktime player itself doesn't play full screen unless you go pro), the video content from iTunes and video played via Front Row, indeed DOES play full screen.

The limitation you are experiencing is because you are using the Quicktime player, instead of iTunes (or Front Row, if you have a Mac). Yeah, it's dumb, but you really wouldn't use

Re:

[the_B0fh]

Does it freaking matter what the market share is/will be? All they are asking for is a percentage of it. If the market share is *0* percent, then pay them a big fat ZERO. I can't believe there are still people who can't see through the spin on this.