99-cent TV show rentals quietly removed from Apple TV, iTunes - Page 3

I Dont know but have you read the service agreement? (Itunes)

These kind of things happen all the time but apple is NOT typical in that kind. Usually they integrate that functionality into something else which does the same thing. Nokia ie is an example of changing or deleting the whole service after a year. So you cant trust them because they keep changing course all the time.

Yes but getting water on the plastic make the multitouch interface to haywire. water=capasitor

The reason that $0.99 rentals were appealing was so we could cut the cable cord. I get the major networks, FOX and ABC included, in perfect HD over the air and into my Tivo just fine. I don't need to rent network TV. What I WANT is cable network programming for rent, of which, nothing has ever been available.

It's interesting that the comment came from Fox. I think there may be a lot more to this than meets the eye!!!

For a long time there have been rumors of a "virtual cable operator" product from Microsoft.

Interestingly Microsoft already have (and have had for quite a while) a "virtual cable" service for the Xbox in Australia with Foxtel as well as a limited offering in the UK with Sky.

In both instances the content is provided by companies partially owned by... you guessed it, our friends at Fox!

So IMO a statement from Fox saying that "content ownership is a more attractive long-term value proposition" rings hollow.


What I think is really going on here is that the content providers/cables companies want to maintain control.

I believe Apple could have become a "virtual cable" operator years ago if given access to the content, but they were blocked by the content providers/cables companies to prevent them from gaining control of the TV/movie market like they did with music.

I think Apple will get access to the content, but the content providers/cables companies are doing everything in their power to ensure there are alternatives to prevent an Apple TV-middle-man monopoly.

On a related topic over the next 12 months I think we are going to see the development of four iVOD platforms.

• Apple (with iTunes obviously)
• Google (with YouTube video rental/purchase)
• Amazon (with a cross platform iTunes clone)
• Ultraviolet (everyone else. i.e. Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, Microsoft, Netflix etc)

It will be interesting to see where Hulu ends up - Google is rumored to be the main contender but I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon jumped in.

Also I don't think we'll see Netflix continue as an independent service. I think by splitting their IP and DVD subscribers they are setting themselves up to sell off their IP subscriber base to the highest bidder (again I'd be surprised if Google and Amazon were not the front-runners).

So let me get this straight... HP recognises tablets as growing and important and they DON'T want to make anymore tablets.

People are continuing to pirate TV shows but some have also been paying 99c for rentals and the studios DON'T want to rent anymore TV shows.

I think as we approach 2012 indeed the world is indeed turning upside down.

TV shows are the Number ONE massively pirated (or if you will, "shared") material on the Internet. 99c enabled HD TV rentals, and gave many of us, including outside the US, access to quality (sure, it's not Blu Ray but it's good enough), legal HD material that downloaded on-demand fast, reliably and it was easy to find on iTunes Store.

Even so, after legally renting from the iTunes Store, if you connect your Mac or iPad or iPhone through a VGA connection to a bigger screen, you'll get the wondrous and beautiful "This display is not blah blah blah" ie. HDCP. Who in the world is going to pirate videos through a VGA connection? They just rip it directly of a TV feed, DVD or Blu Ray. The TV and Movie studios are stuck in VHS land.

If you haven't seen this, it's a pretty good documentary on copyright and piracy, and the new models in "emerging" markets taking place. It's almost 5 years old, but you can see how all the trends they talk about has really only become more and more prevalent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez1rYlVoges

Good luck to the TV and Movie studios. Let them continue to bleed cash and produce worse and worse movies and more rubbish TV, further devaluing the very house of cards they are trying to protect.

Currently where I am Game Of Thrones just started on our legal, paid satellite TV. But I downloaded the torrent. Why? Because I have access to the whole season on demand, no playing this stupid scheduling game on a show that's already late to arrive in my country. Also - no censorship. The way it would be censored on my legal, paid satellite TV here I think I would miss out on a fifth of each episode. As for the series itself, I watched about five episodes of Game Of Thrones, it's not bad, but I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of stuff in the book. So I'm not even sure if I'm going to continue watching it.

Hulu and all that is great but the market in US and Europe is fast evaporating, and everyone is looking to Asia Pacific for more revenue. Hulu is still very geographically restricted in a borderless Internet-connected world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez1rYlVoges has an interview with a guy that puts it quite well, and I paraphrase:

"The TV and movie industry puts a fence around the OECD countries, and tries to milk them with an outdated business model, simply branding everyone outside this fence as pirates"

Well, the pirates are all over the world, and are definitely inside the fence. Given better and better broadband within OECD countries as well, the volume of piracy, and more importantly, the higher prevalence of high-level seeders of torrents, makes OECD countries a highly significant hotbed of piracy.

What TV content owners also don't recognise is that sharing TV shows are generally less likely to be seen as a moral issue, since it is considered that it is broadcast for free all around the world... Even paid TV content eventually makes it to free-to-air in many countries around the world, so it is also seen as "free". To many, it's just a matter of timing. And for people with cable or satellite TV, any doubt of its legitimacy is even further removed, since you know the show has either started playing on your paid TV or will come soon enough.

So people view it as "I'm already paying for it one way or another, either in the past, now, or in the future".

As above, the statement from Fox "content ownership is a more attractive long-term value proposition" is BS.

Microsoft have a "virtual cable" service for the Xbox in Australia and a limited service in the UK.

In both instances the content is provided by companies partially owned by Fox.

There is something else going on here.

Yup, what's going on are these content owners and controllers, as you hint, dicking around while their business models collapse on them.

Sure, they've got all sorts of ideas and plans and it will be interesting to see what emerges.

However I don't see the benefit of pulling 99c rentals from iTunes without any Apple-related alternatives being offered.

Some days I think part of Steve's illnesses are due to the stress of dealing with all these content idiots. 99c HD TV rentals was a big push and it certainly had at least some traction and offered a lot of convenience for iOS and Mac users (less likely PC users, I think).

Steve has spent most of the past decade negotiating literally constantly with content providers, leveraging his Disney position as much as possible, offering many olive branches and a massively growing user base to these content owners. And yet the content owners continue to dick around. Luckily some things have "stuck" such as music sales and movie rentals and purchases.

Firefly, the full statement you refer to is "After carefully considering the results of the rental trial, it became clear that content ownership is a more attractive long-term value proposition both for iTunes customers and for [Fox's] business. To further enhance the value of ownership, we are working with Apple to make content available within their new cloud-based service."

Indeed BS. How is content ownership ONLY "more attractive" as a "long-term" "value proposition" for a customer. How is owning content I don't want to own a "value proposition". Of course I want the choice to rent or own.

"Rental trial" ... I think this "trial" was too successful and maybe people weren't buying enough shows because they were renting what they needed to see. Maybe Fox saw their DVD box-set sales dropping like a rock and somehow equated it to this "Rental trial".

As for "enhancing the value of ownership through cloud services", this is also BS. Cloud service value can come through either rentals or purchases. In fact, 99c rentals was already a form of a cloud service! It's all just playing with words!

My problem with the 99¢ TV show rentals was the insipid 24-hour watching period. More than once my personal life got in the way before I could watch the end of a show I started watching the day before. A 48-hour watching period would've worked a lot better for me.

Combined with the drastic reduction in Netflix streaming content (and subsequent 60% price hike), I'm just not seeing the utility of my ATV2 anymore.

That could very well be the case.

What Fox are actually saying is something along the lines of "We at Fox have discovered that per-show rentals offer too much value to the customer. This is against our business model so we've decided to remove this ability from Apple's iTunes Store".

As far as alternatives go some time in the next month or so we'll be able to stream all purchased TV content to any iDevice (that will be twice as expensive as rentals though) and I wouldn't be surprised Apple put a "virtual cable" service in place as well (again, not as convenient as per-show rentals, but it's still an alternative).

Hands down, one of the best TV shows in the history of, well, television.

+1
Given that there are no manufacturing costs or distribution costs as with DVDs, in fact the per-episode cost should be even lower than a pro-rata price of buying the DVD. If a 20-episode DVD costs $20, you should be able to buy programs via iTunes for between 50 and 80 cents.

[Aside - let us pause and mourn the 'cent' symbol, no longer to be found on keyboards.]

Ludicrous overstatement. We've been using only ATV2 for 3+ months, virtually all streaming Netflix, and are generally very pleased. My only beef is when shows are less than complete - e.g. Hot in Cleveland, only season 1 is posted. But we've watched Tudors, ST:Voyager, Mad Men, etc. - hardly "a few titles for kids" and "washed-up shows".

Agree with your discussion on why a person would rent TV episodes - we've done the same for the same reasons.

Have to disagree about purchasing DVDs, though. In our last 2 x-country moves we shed a lot of DVDs and music CDs that we haven't accessed in years - and it feels great not to have shelf after shelf full of discs that do nothing but gather dust. I can't imagine going back to purchasing physical copies of show after show; there are very few shows that I like so much that I'd feel a need to own the DVD so I could watch any time I want. For instance, the last discs we bought were the complete Stargate: Atlantis, because we were impatient with SyFy. That was 2 years ago, and despite having watched them once then (and loved it), I've got virtually no inclination to watch them again.

What a jerkish comment. If they're an American company that wants to succeed, they'll focus on the rest of the world -- such as the booming growth in China -- and that happens to be exactly what Apple's doing.

Any U.S. company that focuses only on the U.S. is doomed, and will soon be eclipsed by competitors who know better.

Mourn? Aren't you a bit late?



It's been gone from keyboards since the ASCII character set was developed in the '60s.

Having fond memories of our old Royal typewriter, are we?

Try this:

¢ = Option + 4

Other useful currency symbols:

¥ = Option + y
£ = Option + 3
€ = Option + Shift + 2