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Disney Joining Apple’s Movie Rental Service

By Rafat Ali - Sat 29 Dec 2007 01:14 AM PST

As was expected when the news of News Corp (NYSE: NWS). and its studio Twentieth Century Fox signing a movie rental deal came out earlier this week, Disney (NYSE: DIS) has also joined in the movie rental offering, which is supposed to be announced at the annual MacWorld conference on Jan. 14, reports Variety. Rentals are expected to cost between $2 and $5 for a 24-hour period, it says. Disney is the only major studio with full catalog within iTunes for now, while Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM have partial catalog deals, though all of these are download-to-own, not download-to-rent.

The story says other studios like Sony (NYSE: SNE), Universal and Warner Bros. are unlikely to participate for various competitive reasons.

Posted in: Companies, Apple, Disney, News Corp., Entertainment, Movies

Tags: twentieth century fox,

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From Paul Greatbatch Sat 29 Dec 2007 10:38 AM

It will all be for naught unless it downloads as HD. If you can’t match or surpass the quality of what you can pull down for free on a torrents site, you won’t have a lot of acceptance.

From D9 Sun 30 Dec 2007 07:42 AM

I doubt that will be the reason. “Stealing” is never going to be the solution for the general public, plus torrents are well beyond the technical expectations of most people. If it’s going to be that hard, they just as well get the DVD (which itself is not HD unless Blu-Ray or HD-DVD).

No, I think the tipping point will be the $2-5/day cost. Cost-wise thats equal to Blockbuster rentals but there you get to keep it at least a week. Netflix has the best time/rental solution. I think 24 hours only prevents people from renting multiple movies at a single time from iTunes. This will grow old quickly.