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More Speculation for Apple Rentals
January 9, 2008

If enough people say it, it begins to take on a life of its own. A confluence of unnamed sources and rumors are pointing to a big announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs that five major studios will provide 24-hour rentals on iTunes.

And it appears that he may have inked the deals in time to make headlines when he opens the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Bloomberg reported today that Jobs has cut a deal with Warner Bros. in addition to Paramount, Walt Disney Co., Lionsgate and Fox to offer $3.99 rentals on iTunes. Not expected to join the club is NBC Universal, which had a public nasty with Apple this fall and pulled all of its programming from the web store.

No one in Apple's camp or any of the studios has commented on the speculation.

The rental content would help boost sales of Apple products that are vertically integrated with iTunes -- the iPod and Apple TV, which uploads iTunes video content to the television. It will also give Macintosh users a legitimate means to rent movies online.  Other online movie services such as like CinemaNow, Amazon Unbox and Netflix only stream to a Windows-based PC because Apple will not license out it Fair Play DRM.

Jobs is also expected to announce an upgraded version of the Apple TV, which has sold poorly because of its limited content availability, the requirement to stream from a personal computer and audio problems.

Posted by Ned Randolph on January 9, 2008 | Comments (2)


January 9, 2008
In response to: More Speculation for Apple Rentals
BeatlzFan commented:

With Qflix and the new rules allowing CSS protected burning of DVD's, why wouldn't Apple include a burn to DVD feature in iTunes? Certainly would make watching movies on your living room TV easier!!




January 9, 2008
In response to: More Speculation for Apple Rentals
Gary commented:

Good point. If you rent it and then want to own it, burn it to a DVD with Qflix.





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