the real news from macworld was the studio lineup for itunes rentals
January 16, 2008while the macbook air, the iphone software update, and also the new itunes movie rental service get a lot of press, the one big surprise for me was the lineup of movie studios apple was able to attract to the new service. this even after failing more or less at selling movies via itunes. this means that studios are either
- desperate to sell movies online and are trying everything since nothing really works so far
- don’t really mind that apple tv has been a failure so far
- and/or are seeing something in apple tv that i don’t see
i don’t think the last two bullets are the reason, i think it is the first point … studios are desperate. with broadband becoming the norm in internet connection, the studios don’t want to end up like the music industry and they are just giving anything that provides protected movie distribution a try. and since with rentals users are not locked in to a platform as they are more or less on the music side (since you loose all your itunes purchased music if you switch from itunes to one of the other non apple services) the studios are in a much better position here (plus they don’t have a real napster yet).
