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What are the advantages of ATV Movie rentals over Pay Per View?
- Thread starter TheBonk
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Likewise. When Steve said people only watch a movie once, it made sense, but the more I think about it, I've seen some movies dozens of times - and some movies I watch every time they appear on the movie channels.
I've found I'm often too lazy to put a DVD on, but if I can watch it with the flick of a button, I'll watch it time and again.
So paying to watch it just once doesn't appeal to me. In fact, given they're so convinced people only watch movies once, why do Apple bother limiting the rental to just one day?
Yes, but that's some movies. I'd bet most people with any respectable sized DVD collection have no small number of things they won't watch again often enough to justify the DVD purchase. I know I do, and I'm going through a massive purge as a result. There are still things I know I'll rewatch often enough to own them, and I'll still be buying physical media for those titles, but there are many things I can sell back to my local disc store for a few bucks and probably still come out ahead even if I should get an itch to rent some of them in the future.
The real question is not whether PPV/VOD from my cable company is a better option -- limited selection makes that a non-starter. The question is whether Netflix is still a better option. I have a decent connection, but nothing like the enormous pipe Steve was working during the MWSF keynote. The time it takes me to download enough of an HD movie to begin watching uninterrupted might make a well-managed Netflix queue a desirable option, particularly when you consider that download is going to be tying up all my external bandwidth for the duration.
A very good selection of catalog titles, like one that threatens the "rare titles" business model of my local independent video store, would sway me greatly, but that's extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Encoding takes time and money, and expected ROI dictates who falls where in the queue.
Another valuable feature would be remote and scheduled management of my AppleTV, so that I could hypothetically rent something in HD from iTunes at work and say "send this to my AppleTV" and have it waiting for me when I get home, or to schedule downloads overnight to avoid clogging my connection at times I'm likely to be using it.
Regarding rental vs. ownership:
Please keep in mind that you are a representative sample. You are one person.
As for my own personal habits, I own about 1,000 DVDs. I have maybe 10-20 of them that I watch more than 4 times (the price of ownership).
What I'd really like to see Apple add to the mix is the ability to upgrade to a purchase of a movie (with credit toward the rental applying toward purchase) within 30 days of rental.
As far as AppleTV vs. PPV goes, I pretty much agree with the OP. If my only need was for movie rentals, I probably wouldn't go the AppleTV route. I like AppleTV because I have all my iTunes and iPhoto content on my TV, plus the ability to rent movies.
Please keep in mind that you are a representative sample. You are one person.
As for my own personal habits, I own about 1,000 DVDs. I have maybe 10-20 of them that I watch more than 4 times (the price of ownership).
What I'd really like to see Apple add to the mix is the ability to upgrade to a purchase of a movie (with credit toward the rental applying toward purchase) within 30 days of rental.
As far as AppleTV vs. PPV goes, I pretty much agree with the OP. If my only need was for movie rentals, I probably wouldn't go the AppleTV route. I like AppleTV because I have all my iTunes and iPhoto content on my TV, plus the ability to rent movies.
iTunes Store Movie Rental:
- no subscription required, no monthly fees
- huge selection (and we're only at the beginning)
- widescreen versions
- multiple languages (at least I'm hoping for that, given that it was a bullet list item in the keynote, it will be good for me if I want to rent a movie to watch with my parents)
Pay-per-view:
- requires either cable or satellite subscription
- most of the time the selection is extremely limited (50 titles at most with older titles being removed)
- most of the time they're 4:3
- french only, sometimes (I'm in Quebec, where the original english version is too much to ask for, it seems)
DVD rental:
- the selection can be limited for older titles, new titles may not be in stock when you arrive at the store (all copies are already rented)
- DVD can be scratched (my old DVD player is kind of flacky and I'm not interested in buying another one, even for 20$)
- sometimes they only order the 4:3 version
- you have to drive to the store twice (rental, return), which is annoying in -40 celcius weather.
Add to that the fact that where I live, there's only one place that shows movies, in french, twice a month at best... I have to wait for the DVDs anyway. Waiting an extra thirty days for the convenience won't change my life, in fact I'm even more likely to wait until it drops to the $2.99 price, unless it's something I want to watch as soon as possible (most sci-fi movies, Pixar, etc).
So, I can't wait for iTunes rentals to come to Canada.
- no subscription required, no monthly fees
- huge selection (and we're only at the beginning)
- widescreen versions
- multiple languages (at least I'm hoping for that, given that it was a bullet list item in the keynote, it will be good for me if I want to rent a movie to watch with my parents)
Pay-per-view:
- requires either cable or satellite subscription
- most of the time the selection is extremely limited (50 titles at most with older titles being removed)
- most of the time they're 4:3
- french only, sometimes (I'm in Quebec, where the original english version is too much to ask for, it seems)
DVD rental:
- the selection can be limited for older titles, new titles may not be in stock when you arrive at the store (all copies are already rented)
- DVD can be scratched (my old DVD player is kind of flacky and I'm not interested in buying another one, even for 20$)
- sometimes they only order the 4:3 version
- you have to drive to the store twice (rental, return), which is annoying in -40 celcius weather.
Add to that the fact that where I live, there's only one place that shows movies, in french, twice a month at best... I have to wait for the DVDs anyway. Waiting an extra thirty days for the convenience won't change my life, in fact I'm even more likely to wait until it drops to the $2.99 price, unless it's something I want to watch as soon as possible (most sci-fi movies, Pixar, etc).
So, I can't wait for iTunes rentals to come to Canada.