Apple In Talks To Bring $0.99 TV Rentals To iTunes 274
An anonymous reader writes "On September first, Apple will reportedly announce a new iPod Touch with a front facing camera, a refreshed Apple TV, and more interestingly, the arrival of $0.99 TV episode rentals on iTunes."
Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
What I will care about is when Apple starts to exclusively lock down certain shows making them impossible to get through other services like In Demand, Netflix, etc
I wish that Apple actually wanted to end DRM... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a quote from something Jobs said [apple.com], but with s/music/media/.
Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the media companies to sell their media DRM-free....Convincing them to license their media to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable media marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.
Like any big company, I think that Apple will run with a plan if it can make them money. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't have the power to get big media to distribute their content DRM-free. (And even if Apple could, would they bother?)
this has been done, but freer. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Subscription service (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice, but quite probably illegal as making permanent copies of a rental goes far outside normal fair use and is a direct replacement for a dvd sale. You may call it timeshifting but I doubt the courts would look on it the same way they did with the VHS, after all you can keep your DVD longer or return it and get it later to timeshift. And if you're in the US you're breaking the DMCA etc. too, fair use or not.
Now, it's almost impossible to discover and thus ever prosecute but legally it's pretty much the same as torrents and torrents you can get for free. Of course they're not legal, but again so I doubt is yours. So if you don't care about that you can get them cheaper and if you do care then no, I doubt you get that for $0.99/season anywhere.
But it's only a dollar! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Subscription service (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes and not all of us are stupid or gullible enough to think that something is worth what a company with a history of ripping people off is charging.
Then don't buy it. No one is forcing you to consume that content.
Cable/Sat TV around here is about $10 per month then add another $10 for STB rental, another $10 for the phone line.
I don't know what the local cable company charges for basic cable or phone around here since I don't purchase either or really have any desire to do so. There're really only a few shows that I'm interested in watching, and most of them aren't on basic cable anyhow. I already own the ones I'd ever care to watch more than once, and Hulu usually allows me to satisfy my curiosity for anything I might be interested in, so I don't know if the rental model applies to me either.
Yes. When I can get it for free and I feel its not even worth $1 to buy I'll never pay $0.99 to have use of a few 1s and 0s for a while.
If everyone felt that way, there wouldn't be as many 1s and 0s for you to use for a while. Someone has to pay and right now advertisers cover the cost to get eyeballs in front of a TV. If there aren't any eyeballs in front of that TV and no one will pay to rent or buy the program, it's not going to get made. You might look at it as paying for some bits, but I look at it as an hour's worth of entertainment. Compared to most things, a dollar isn't unreasonable. Just because it costs next to nothing to duplicate those bits doesn't mean that it took no effort to create what those bits represent.
I imagine that a sizable portion of the /. crowd makes a living from software development. Everything that these people make can be had at no cost, but if everyone were to do that, there'd be a lot of people out of the job. I'm not going to claim to be some kind of saint because I pirated a shit load of music and other stuff back in the day, but now that I have a job and can afford music, books, movies, etc. Even today I'll use some non-legitimate source for content if I can't find a legal avenue to access it, but I honestly don't mind paying for something that I get enjoyment from.
I'm one of those people who think that musicians can survive without record sales because they can fall back on live performances. Hell, the RIAA takes most of the money from record sales for even the most highly successful artists so artists must be making the money elsewhere. I don't see a similar situation for television shows, however. Maybe toys and action figures?
I don't want to call you an asshole or something like that, but I can't really understand your point of view. When I was young and didn't have much for disposable income I probably didn't differ much, but I just spent enough money at a local bar that I could have otherwise spent to rent a season worth of episodes of a TV show I like. If it's not an issue of money or availability, what's stopping you from parting with few dollars to enjoy yourself?
Re:Subscription service (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But it's only a dollar! (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately with the state of child rearing in Australia, the standards of authority are quire low. If parent's didn't let their "little darlings" run amok in shopping centres, public transport, aeroplanes, offices and so forth then referring to them as "crotchspawns" would be quite unreasonable.
But this is not the case, worse yet parents over here seem to be rewarding this kind of behaviour by giving the kids sweets as a bribe (since ADHD medication fell out of favour) and then trying to pacify them with the TV. I dread doing my weekly shop as people with kids tend to think they are more important then everyone else.