View Full Version : Apple to rent movies via iTunes


Ervin Farkas
December 27th, 2007, 06:46 AM
"The agreement will allow consumers to rent the latest Fox DVD releases by downloading a digital copy from Apple’s iTunes platform for a limited time, according to a person familiar with the situation. Walt Disney is the only Hollywood studio selling its new releases on iTunes but these are available to buy rather than rent. Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate sell older library titles. The Apple-Fox deal, likely to be announced at the Macworld show on January 14, has the potential to transform film distribution."

Source: the Financial Times, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/91d21b3c-b3ee-11dc-a6df-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

The big difference is that so far you could only buy movies online, now you will be able to rent them instead. Rumors about the upcoming deal have been floating on the internet since the beginning of December, see http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/12/03/apple_close_to_movie_distribution_deal_with_fox_report.html

Boyd Ostroff
December 27th, 2007, 09:28 AM
While this does look likely, Apple has not yet announced the program, so as per our policy it's still just a rumor and has been moved to Area 51.

Boyd Ostroff
December 27th, 2007, 09:30 AM
Some more info here: http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/12/27/what-the-apple-fox-itunes-deal-means

Citing an unnamed “person familiar with the situation,” the FT reports that the two companies signed an agreement that would allow customers to download the latest 20th Century Fox movies through the iTunes store and watch them for a limited time. No pricing details were available, but earlier reports suggested that Fox and Apple were talking about charging $2.99 for 30 days viewing. That’s considerably cheaper than competing services from BlockBuster and NetFlix, neither of which work with iTunes, Macs or iPods.

Ervin Farkas
December 27th, 2007, 09:40 AM
While this does look likely, Apple has not yet announced the program, so as per our policy it's still just a rumor and has been moved to Area 51.
With all respect Boyd, who do we trust if not the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Yahoo, Google News?

The Financial Times article says: "Apple signs film deal with Fox studio | By Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles and Kevin Allison in San Francisco | Published: December 27 2007 00:07 | Last updated: December 27 2007 00:07"

"Apple HAS SIGNED News Corp’s 20th Century Fox studio to a new online video-on-demand service in a deal that could change the way people pay for online film content."

Hello Financial Times, welcome to Area 51! FT was an acceptable source for this thread started by you Boyd, I wonder what has changed... http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=110682