So, the iTunes movie rental has been up for a little while now, and there are several hundred movies available for rent.
We're curious - have rented from iTunes yet? If not, why? If so, what was your experience? A couple of our impressions (and one thing that made us very cranky) below.
What do you think of the rental price? Rentals cost $2.99 or $3.99, depending on recently they were released. We sort of feel this is high, compared to the cost of purchasing a movie on iTunes, but we know it's the same as what you'd pay at Blockbuster. Blockbuster, however, lets you keep rentals as long as a week, compared to iTunes' measly 24 hours (after you begin playback).
The current amount of films available here in early March also falls well short of Apple's predictions, but it still offers some good last-minute entertainment possibilities. We are waiting for a larger back library of classics and hard-to-find indie films. We also would like to see rentals for entire seasons of television shows, as we are not willing or able to shell out for the last two seasons of West Wing yet.
We also would like to be able to move rentals from computer to computer. We started a download on our larger, faster iMac, planning to transfer to our PowerBook and finish it off snuggled up in bed. But no, the rental could only be transferred to the iPhone or iPod. Wow - who decided that? We were very disgruntled.
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I haven't rented any movies, but I've been renting the new episodes of Lost each week. You can get them for free from various places (including the ABC website, which I find user-unfriendly), but I've been choosing to get them for $2 each. They don't run in Itunes as well and easily as a DVD does in the DVD player in my Mac. For instance, sometimes when I stop it and then restart, the picture is frozen, although I can hear that it's on. I have to reboot Itunes then.
view Pixie's profile
The first rental experience on AppleTV was rather hectic, with my wife and daughter waiting expectantly as it kept telling me that there was a problem with my account. Since I couldn't fix the problem from the ATV itself, I had to log on and fix it from the laptop. Turned out that I had my address as ending with PL, but it needed to be Place. After that it worked like a charm, my rental was available within a minute, looked great and played like a champ.
The other times I have rented, three total, have been effortless and worked as advertised. I have yet to rent anything HD though. That is my next step.
view mr_c0w's profile
I rented a movie last week for the first time on my iMac. I was pretty satisfied, but sad to see that HD movies are only available for rental on the Apple TV. Since I use my iMac as a television, it would be nice to be able to have that option.
view Kelly's profile
Also, it takes a while for me to download a TV episode. Do others have that experience, or is my old (ancient: 3 years old!) Powerbook now too slow?
view Pixie's profile
I haven't rented yet. We haven't had that much time lately to watch them, and like to have the chance to watch them at our leisure.
Plus, we download a lot of movies for free. We're bad people.
view burnstoemerge's profile