Apple rolled out iTunes movie rentals recently. They got a lot of initial criticism from their users on the length of time the movies would remain active on a users system. Many movie watchers said that a 24 hour movie viewing period was not enough time to watch a movie and keep up with a hectic schedule.
Apple answered the call of their customers with little fanfare, extending the rental time slightly. What has been happening to users who download rentals now is that the countdown screen will appear as usual, but it now offers the viewer a chance to finish the movie once they’ve hit play.

The drawback is that it currently only works on mobile devices. The counter starts once the movie is played, and pausing the movie pauses the counter. This means that you can finish the movie at your leisure. Unfortunately, you have to give up doing anything else: if you switch away from full screen viewing mode, you lose the rest of the movie. This seems like a flawed design to me - they should just flat out increase viewing time for a movie to three days, or 72 hours.

That would allow them to compete with the movie by mail services, which take about three days to rotate a movie. Frankly, I either rent a movie by mail so I can watch it at my leisure or go see them in the theater. I’ve liked watching on my laptop screen - too small. But if you do like watching on your Mac, Apple still hasn’t really addresses your needs with this one. I wonder if it is even a “fix”, or is it just a programming glitch someone found that they are now marketing?

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Entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 9:40 am under Apple TV, iTunes.  Print This Post

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