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Originally Posted by hdh607  |
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Too expensive - I can rent a "non-new release" from my video store for a week for 99 cents. Or rent a new release for $3.99 and get a "non-new release" for free - for the week. That's cheaper than iTunes and that is real. |
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I'm not disputing that, but iTunes also offers loss leaders -- that are free, actually -- as well as 99¢ rentals, so I'd say there's rough equivalency there, not to mention that (for me at least) a week doesn't mean much. I tend to rent things WHEN I want to watch them, rather than "plan" to watch things, so having the disc in my house for a week means there's a five-to-six-day window for me to lose or damage it.
Add in the intangibles -- no possibility of unavailability, the cost of gas to and from, the inconvenience and penalty of late returns, a wider* selection on iTunes, much wider "off the beaten path/out of print/speciality" selection, temporary sales and discounts, HD format with a wide selection and so forth -- as I say, I think iTunes beats video stores overall.
*I have a US account as well, so consequently I have a wider selection available to me than what is available strictly in the Canadian store. I hope this will change more over time.
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Purchase price is also more expensive |
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Agreed strongly. In fact, let's go to "ridiculous" given that you can't burn a physical copy. I know one should of course backup but not everyone does.
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The problem is, I don't know if its worthy of buying until I've watched it...and shelled out the rental fee. Then if it's worthy, I have to pay for buying on top of that. |
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I agree with this fully. Apple should find a way to get the studios to agree to a "if you buy it within (let's say) 24 hours, we discount the cost of the rental." I think that would really spur sales in this format.
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Movies and TV shows get to my computer in lots of ways. In some ways I appreciate the high quality of iTunes movies and tv shows, but i don't want to have to wait a few hours for it to download [and here come the connection speed comments...  ] |
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?? For anything other than the very slowest of connections, play starts within 30 seconds or so. I certainly don't mind waiting maybe five minutes to give it a bit of a buffer, but I've not experienced having to wait for the whole thing to download before playing it.
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To be clear, and I didn't know I could confuse you so easily chas_m, what I'm looking for is some kind of on online service to watch movies and tv shows online. is iTunes the only option people are using out there? |
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It was the "without downloading" thing that confused me.
To answer your question, no iTunes isn't the only option, but in Canada it's ALMOST the only option. I believe I read somewhere that Zip.ca and Netflix both have the ability to stream rented movies, and of course there's a lot of "free" TV content available from most of the Canadian network sites -- Comedy Network springs to mind as I often watch any episodes of "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" I've missed from there the next day.
To my knowledge, Canada doesn't have a service like Hulu in the states -- there was a short window where Hotspot Shield users up here could access Hulu, but that has closed as far as I know. You could pay some US proxy a fee with no guarantee that would work ... personally I didn't find Hulu to be worth the hassle, even as big of a "Family Guy" fan as I am ...
You might also want to check out internet video players like Livestation and Miro and Joost -- again I found them to be a bit of a hassle compared to iTunes, but they're free (ad supported).
Oh, here's a handy list of such resources via Mashable:
33 Ways to Watch Free TV Online
Not all will work in Canada of course, but its a good starting point.
PS. When you do finally get a (presumably HD) TV, you might want to look at an AppleTV. You sound like you'd be ideal customers for that product.
movies & TV shows over the net
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