Well heres something I wasn’t expecting, iTunes NZ & Australia have announced and launched Movie purchases and rentals.
I suppose it was inevitable but there hadn’t been an rumours at all. This is great news, not only does it make an AppleTV appealing but actually usable.
Prices seem ok, not fantastic. But low enough to warrant even a test rental/purchase for even the most timid user. Apparently theres HD copies of some movies which cost $1 more, I can’t find one yet. File sizes range from 0.8-1.2gb in the movies I looked at.
700 movies, Studios included off the bat
- 20th Century Fox
- The Walt Disney Studios
- Paramount Pictures
- Warner Bros
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM)
- Sony Pictures Television International
- Lionsgate
So pricing is as follows –
Rentals (30day rental, 48hrs to Watch once you press play, play across all )
- New Release – $6.99
- Older Titles – $4.99
Purchases
- New Releases – $24.99
- Older Titles – $9.99 – $17.99
You’re looking for a test buy, Inconvenient Truth, the cheapest movie I can find right now for $12.99.
The usual peev’s –
No TV yet, which is sad but understandable. I hope this means that theres at least an infastructure for real video delivery and hopefully mean that TVNZ, TV3 etc.. can start deals with Apple.
Listings No way of finding movies by price or quality.
Bandwidth – So I pay $7 for a movie, and then need to pay for the gb of data also adding, say, $1 more to the price. More than a DVD.
DRM – Everyone’s favourite. Apple only – no Zune users…….
All in all though this is a really big day for NZ media distribution, as big as iTunes originally launching music sales in NZ. You can finally sit on your couch, click through a big list of Movies and click a button and be watching a rented/purchased movie in seconds (or minutes knowing NZ broadband). You can have the iphone to play it on finally, and make use of the gimmick of an ipod with video – just like most of the developed world. Exciting stuff – if only I had money on my credit card……. 🙂