Report: Apple TV to stream 99 cent TV show rentals
According to a report by NewTeeVee, the rental program Apple is promoting would work just like existing movie rentals: users would have 30 days to start watching the show, and would then need to finish within 24 hours of starting playback.
Unlike movie rentals and other iTunes sales however, the TV programming would be streamed from Apple's cloud servers. Such a service would seemingly be ideal for the rumored iOS-based replacement to today's Apple TV, which is expected to lack a conventional hard drive and instead reply upon on-demand cloud streaming and local wireless sharing.
The recently unveiled Hulu Plus is similarly seeking to determine what customers will pay to access TV shows. It now charges $9.99 per month for access to shows on ABC, Fox and NBC.
Apple has previously dragged hesitant TV and movie studios to the iTunes market and forced them to drink, typically starting with its closest ally, Disney, and slowly winning over other companies, selling them on the merits of direct downloads and rentals.
77 Comments
99 cents is too much for a TV rental.
99 cents is too much for a TV rental.
I respectfully disagree. Sometimes, I miss a TV show because I failed to record it, or maybe I saw a new show mid-season and decided I'd like to view the rest. Renting for $0.99 is like buying music for $0.99. It's cheap enough to be an impulse buy. And even though you don't actually OWN the TV episode, I think the economics favor that route. I don't have to pay double or more to buy just one episode, which sucks up storage space. I'm not forced to pay full price for a whole season. If it streams over the web, then I can presumably watch it anywhere I go.
In truth, I don't care to own my TV episodes (or movies for that matter) in digital form the way I wanted my music in digital form simply because with video, visual compression artifacts are far more noticeable than in audible music. And video is much larger in terms of file size than audio as well. So if I can pay rock-bottom price just to rent one to watch it and no intention or need to own it, I like this idea.
99 cents is too much for a TV rental.
No it isn't.
We've paid for TV for decades by having to put up with irrelevant ads.
This is a big relief and more equitable, as you more directly pay for what you want to watch as you go. Kinda like paying tolls on toll roads.
I love it! Or I will if it happens.
99 cents is too much for a TV rental.
How much do you spend a year on a cable/sat subscription? How many new programs, not reruns of older shows but actual first run shows, do you watch within that year?
Divide the former by the latter and that is how much you are paying per show you watch. Take that and divide it by the number of eps in a season and that is how much you are paying per eps.
I highly doubt that your number will be significantly lower that $0.99.