Apple To Offer Fox Video Rentals On iTunes
Duncan Riley
27 comments »
Apple is said to have signed a deal with 20th Century Fox that will see video rentals on iTunes.
According to FT.com the deal will be officially announced at MacWorld on January 14. The same report also says that Apple is in talks with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount and Warner Bros along similar lines.
Speculation of Apple offering video rentals via iTunes has been around for a long time and is seen as a natural next step for iTunes. We reported in June that the iTunes rental service will charge $2.99 for a 30 day rental, but final details have not been disclosed. Code to support rentals in iTunes was discovered in November.
After a year where Apple was portrayed as the bogeyman by companies such as NBC (who have now withdrawn their content), this is a big win for Apple. Another interesting part is News Corp appearing to continue to hedge its bets; on one hand it joined with NBC to launch Hulu, billed as an iTunes alternative, and yet they continue to deal with Apple directly as well. If Murdoch isn’t prepared to dump Apple and join with NBC exclusively, what does this say about what he thinks about the future of online video? Certainly from the outside its says that Apple/ iTunes is still the biggest and best game in town, and the place to be if you want to profit from your content online. It would also suggest that NBC’s strategy of not dealing with Apple may be bound to fail.
This is great news… let’s hope it works with international IPs as well, not just those located in North America. Amazon has a similar service as well, though I haven’t seen big adoption of that platform because it’s missing what Apple has - a desktop application that people already use just about daily.
Jon
Jon
I doubt it very much (the international stuff) but it would be nice if it did.
Interesting to see if DVD-buring is allowed or not.
The Zune Media store has been doing this for years!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
This will be very likely be US only, as most of the good content deals on itunes are.
I’m guessing this would only work with Apple’s tv device and ipod? Will there be functionality with the dozens of other media center extenders and portable players? Will it be more convienient than torrent? Simultaneous release on dvd street date? Will there be free tv downloads with embedded ads? DVD burning would be useless, because you could hopefully stream it with media extenders. The quality would most likely be “near dvd”, because I don’t know too many people who would wait 6 hours for a HD version to download. They’d have to have nice software like the XBOX360 live marketplace where you can start watching the video while downloading. Many questions about the largest download store. As you can tell I dislike apple, but I try to keep up with them since I’m in the industry. (For the record: Zune 80, XBOX360 elite, axxo torrents and encode to h.264)
>Certainly from the outside its says that Apple/ iTunes is still the biggest and best game in town, and the place to be if you want to profit from your content online. It would also suggest that NBC’s strategy of not dealing with Apple may be bound to fail.
Yeah it couldn’t just be that he’s keeping his options open. It has to be that Apple is the greatest! Jesus man, clean off your keyboard.
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easy template to follow. big, proven market for a good writer with time and insight (+ 18 months of living expenses) on his/her hands.
tc is not google. this ½ ass monster is just waiting for someone to take ‘em out.
If other studios sign up…this could be the shot in the arm that Apple TV needs. Could we also see an update to TV at MacWorld?
The price doesn’t sound all that bad and the length of time. Especially when you compare it to something like, i don’t know, Blockbuster.
Great news!! but is it in USA only??
>>Certainly from the outside its says that Apple/ iTunes is still the biggest and best game in town, and the place to be if you want to profit from your content online. It would also suggest that NBC’s strategy of not dealing with Apple may be bound to fail.
>Yeah it couldn’t just be that he’s keeping his options open. It has to be that Apple is the greatest! Jesus man, clean off your keyboard.
Yup, he said it like the true Apple nutjob. I’m a manufacturer of apples, and walmart just announced they are adding groceries to their store. Should I stop selling to every other grocery store because of my newfound partnership with Walmart? Thats what these Apple fanatics believe. Fox cares about making money, not supporting any particular video store company.
Kudos on this one… maybe we’ll see an apple tv w/ 1080i/1080p support and a 1 TB drive for storage..
are you not covering google horizontal search?
I think Murdock and his buddies at News Corp understand the video space pretty damn well. The fact is that video should not be exclusive but rather distributed cross platform This means as many quality sites that can get video watched. My SMM company has been focusing on this major fact and has watched our clients video being distributed cross platform result in increased viewers and site traffic as a whole.
So Rupert keep staying ahead of the pack.
One last thing, What is the largest video site on the internet?
Oh ya MySpace!
Rupert knows best.
May be this could save AppleTV? I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks. It’d be nice if this turns out to be true. This’ll definitely boost the value of the AppleTV and add value to the entire iTunes+iPod+iPhone system and put more pressure on NBC to come back.
Parul
http://www.bhopu.com
Good
Interfacing of ALL media are a given, or so it would seem. Major networks have experienced continual decline in ratings due to a wider spectrum of available ‘entertainment’ venues…Factual information, sport casts and yes, even educational programming are the wave of the future. Any and all holdup’s or holdouts are merely delaying tactics for this inevitability, which would seem an apparent obvious for the execs to consider.
The only reason to attempt to ignore this fact is how they may profit from such broadcasting. The sports and entertainment industries will be forced to provide an ever wider pay-per-view system across all areas if they are to maintain the cutting edge in our rapidly growing tech world. One vital rule for public attraction: If we don’t see it we do not view it. As for film previews-as it is we cannot keep up with what Net-Flix provides, so what if it is not this years hottest- theater prices plus parking plus +++makes staying home and picking our selection up in the mail at their very fair pricing structure most attractive.
Apple rules in our lifestyle-we depend on all Mac products and look forward to their growth development in all which will be required for public demand….
Maybe Murdoch looked at how NBC was hedging its bets on Hulu (by launching all those other video services), and realized he had better do the same. Hulu looks promising, but if it doesn’t even have the focused support of its two supporters, how is it supposed to survive?
Great news, I hope Apple announced Spanish tv shows store.
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If the charge is going to remain $2.99/30 daya for rental, it would be worth to use.
Last to the party again…