Posted by
Michael on Wednesday, September 06, 2006 7:15:49 AM
Wall Street Journal has
an article today on upcoming efforts by Amazon.com and Apple to sell movies that you can download and then watch on an iPod (or your laptop).
Movies on the small screen are about to receive a big boost as two high-profile companies --
Apple Computer Inc. and
Amazon.com Inc. -- lift the curtain in the coming days on new movie-downloading services.
The services from the two companies are among the most
widely anticipated efforts yet to get consumers to buy or rent videos
over the Internet rather than trudging to the local Blockbuster store
for a DVD or waiting for a Netflix envelope to arrive in the mail. Most
legal movie downloading services haven't yet taken off. But within the
high-tech and entertainment industries, there's a belief Apple and
Amazon could help take the phenomenon mainstream thanks to their
technology, marketing and retailing know-how.
What I'm wondering is if this will be an effort to replace the rental market or the sales market of DVDs. It appears now that Apple is going only down the sales route, selling downloads for between $9.99-14.99, but the WSJ article mentions Amazon pursuing a rental service.
How would that work?
When you download a television show on iTunes, you have the episode permanently and can watch anytime, just as if you had bought a copy of it. I've not sure if it's possible for someone to "rent" a download.