8/24/2010
Rumors of the next generation apple tv and 99-Cent TV Rental Service
There’s a new set-top box coming to town next month. The box, the iTV, will come from Apple and will finally be a refresh of the Apple TV.
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Apple Inc. is in advanced talks with News Corp. to let iTunes users rent TV shows for 99 cents and is in discussions with other media companies about similar deals, said three people familiar with the plan.
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How it works
To put the rental service through its paces, I rented the Bruce Willis action movie Live Free or Die Hard, a $3.99 rental. It took about 20 minutes to grab the 1.8GB file—the speed was the result of limited bandwidth at the hotel room I'm staying at for Expo, as opposed to any problem with iTunes. A faster home connection will easily result in faster download times.
That's not to say the rental system is flawless—I first tried to grab Blades of Glory, the Will Ferrell comedy—for my troubles, I got a message that the movie's status had recently changed.
Additionally, the actual timing mechanism seems a little wonky. When my download didn't finish Tuesday night, I started them up again Wednesday morning—I discovered that the 30-day clock had already started running, via a message that said I had 29 days to watch the movie. Perhaps the clock starts running because Apple contends you can begin watching the rentals within 30 seconds of starting the download on "a modern Internet connection," but it seems like it would be more fair to wait until the download was complete before beginning the 30-day countdown.
When you make up your mind about what you want to grab, you're prompted by the iTunes Store to confirm your purchase—a good maneuver for someone who might have inadvertently clicked on the "Rent Movie" button without realizing what they were doing. And you have the option at this point to turn off that dialog box in the future, if you wish. Once you click on Rent, the movie transfers to your computer.
As the file transfers you'll notice a new icon in the Library section of the Source List—Rented Movies. Clicking on this icon reveals any movies that you've rented complete with information about the studio, the movie's run time, and a short synopsis describing what's going on.
You have the option to watch the movie as soon as enough of the file has downloaded to build up a buffer. And when you double click on the movie to begin watching, you're advised that you'll have 24 hours to finish watching the movie.
From there, the experience of watching the movie is the same as it would be if you'd bought it. Chapters are marked, you can make the movie player go full screen, and so on.
You can also transfer your rental to another device—specifically, an iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Transfer is the operative word here—you are, in fact, moving a file from one device to another, not copying it. You'll need to be connected to the Internet to move files off your computer to allow iTunes to manage the FairPlay DRM transaction that makes this possible. 
Given how cumbersome managing files encrypted with DRM can be, Apple has been able to disguise the process to make it as unobtrusive as possible. Still, some users are likely to wonder why they have to move movies, rather than copy them as they do with music—and they're likely to find explanations involving movie studio concerns about piracy unsatisfying.
When the transfer is complete, the copy of your movie disappears from the iTunes Rental Movies list on your computer and reappears on the device you've copied it to.
Once the 24-hour window closes, your rental disappears from the Rental Movies list as well.
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