iTunes Movie Rentals

My wife and I tried the new iTunes movie rental service a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty easy with the only wrinkle being how long it took to download. We chose to rent Rescue Dawn, a good movie about a POW in Laos during the Vietnam War.

To get to this page open up iTunes and click on "Movies" under the iTunes store heading. Next, click on "All Rentals" under the Categories heading. Click on the "P-T" button and browse the few more pages you need to to get th the Rs. You can also type in "Rescue Dawn" in the iTunes search box but that way is only for wussies that take the easy way out. Once you get to this page, click the "rent movie" button and your downloading those precious bytes of movie goodness!


New Releases are $3.99 and older movies are $2.99. In addition iTunes offers a movie of the week for $0.99 starting on Thursday and running through Sunday. I think this week's movie of the week is Bandits. My recommendation for those wanting to try the new rental service is to wait for a $0.99 movie that looks interesting and purchase. That way if you don't like it your only out one GW.

Rescue Dawn took about 3 hours to download wirelessly onto my laptop so you'll have to do a little planning on the weekends. I'm not into starting movies at midnight anymore. No you're old! Anyway, once you have downloaded the movie you have 30 days to start watching it, and 24 hours to finish the movie once it has been started. These movies are in standard definition. In order to get HD rentals you need an Apple TV. The price of rentals are more but you get it in oh so beautemous HD.

Just like everything else on iTunes, the rental store is geared towards ipods/iphones. The only way to watch these rentals is on your computer, on a video ipod/iphone, on your tv if you have Apple TV or a way to hook up your computer to your tv.

In the End:

* I liked the semi-immediacy of browsing for a movie on the iTunes store and starting to download it.
* I didn't like the fact that it took 3 hours to download.
* I liked the quality of the downloaded movie.
* I didn't like the limited selection. (The selection will only get better in time. And I guess the selection was large enough to include an R-rated cartoon called Lil' Pimp.)
* I didn't like how limited my viewing options were once the movie was downloaded.

Johny's Recommendation:

Unless you find yourself watching tons of movies on your ipod, I would stick with Netflix/Blockbuster's 2 DVDs out at a time for $13.99 rather than renting from iTunes. You don't have the immediacy factor of the iTunes rentals (Well actually with Netflix you do now with some movies) but the selection and the price are way better, and the content is coming out of that box in your living room that I like to call your tv.