Movie Studios to Blame for Lack of iTunes Movie Rentals?

[Mr. Mayor]

<img src="http://www.mactropolis.com/images/blog/itunesmovierentalsnow.jpg" alt="Movie Studios to Blame for Lack of iTunes Movie Rentals?" align="right" height="120" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="160" />When the Steve announced the iTunes Movie Rentals service at MacWorld, he promised that it would offer at least 1,000 movie rentals by the end of February... and, within those 1,000 rentals, at least 100 of them would be HD rentals. Well, February has come and gone, and those goals were not met.

Using the Apple TV to count HD rentals, MacWorld's Christopher Breen found a total of 91 HD titles (100 was the target). Another disappointing fact is that not all of these 91 HD titles feature Dolby Digital 5.1... a feature Apple had also promised.

For the total number of rentals available, things get worse. The Apple TV movies section reported a total of 351 movies for rent according to Christopher. 378 were available in the 'all movies' section, and only 399 when using 'power search'. Looks like they have a very long way to go to meet the targets they set out and promised back in January at MacWorld!

One can only suspect that the studios are to blame for the delays on new titles and releases. Licensing issues with the studios could be a problem, and I would not be surprised if one or more studios are delaying the process. No matter which way you slice it, Apple might have mis-judged how compliant and easy it would be to work with the studios on this one. Once all the 'kinks' are worked out I'm sure we'll see the number of movie rentals skyrocket.. but until then... Apple is left with an over promised, and under delivered iTunes Movie Rental Store.
<p align="right">[via <a href="http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/04/movie-studios-could-be-behind-missing-itunes-rentals" target="_blank">arstechnica</a>]</p>

[soundstripe]

It seems as if both movie and music studios/labels are going out of their way to screw Apple on the distribution front. I think they hate Apple for forcing them kicking and screaming into the electronic distribution age.

Very sad. The Apple TV became my dream device the day they announced on-demand movie rentals. I guess the world isn't ready.

[jassoalf]

yeah, the movie studios still have some bad ideas.

[quitecontrary1977@hotmail]

hey i'd rent mac movies! its all te same to me!

[roalgumo7]

On another post I said that I don't know why do they have problems putting up movies, but I guess they have to get authorization from each movie owner or something?