It always seems to be the way that here in the UK, we get all the good stuff after the US. Yes we do better than most places, but it still riles us Brits, and rightly so. Apple’s iTunes movie rental is a case in point. Having been available over the pond for what seems like forever, we finally got to play around with it (legitimately at least!) on Wednesday. I said then that I would be the-iBlog guinea pig, so here’s my findings thus far, complete with pictures no less ! More after the jump !
The whole experience kicks off when you fire up the iTunes store, and hit the ‘Movies’ link. Once there everything looks very familiar. Thanks to the way everything looks and works the same as the music service, you’ll have no problems navigating around the selection of movies. The selection is decent enough that pretty much everyone should be able to find something to their tastes. I settled for Hitman, if only because it was the first movie I spotted.
The purchasing of your movie, in this case a rental, is done just as you’d expect. It’s all a little too easy ! I can see many drunken evenings culminating in the rental of some random film on iTunes!
There’s a handy preview button should you want to give the movie the once over before putting your hand in your e-wallet too.
The next step involves a little patience, and a lot of bandwidth. I have a fairly stable ADSL connection and the download came in at 1.06GB. It would appear Apple do have the infrastructure to cope with high speed video downloads, with my connection running at its full speed throughout the download. Again, this all happens exactly as it would if you were purchasing a song or album. So far so good !
After your download completes you have 30 days to watch the content. Once I started watching the movie, iTunes informed me I would have 48 hours to finish ( I thought it was 24?). Personally I don’t have a problem with this approach, though I know many will.
This however, is where things start to turn a little sour.
Before I tell you why, let me explain something. I’m a bit anal about picture quality. When I bought my 40in Samsung LCD screen, I spend hours (yes, really!) adjusting the image settings for my Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. In this day and age, I expect my video to be HD, and to look good.
So having said that, here’s my problem. It would appear that in order to watch your downloaded movies in HD, you need to invest in an Apple TV box. My question is thus: why? Many people these days have their machines set up as media centres. The Mac Mini for example is an excellent media machine. With this in mind, why can’t Mac Mini users (for example) watch HD content via iTunes? Unless I’m missing something, that my friends, is a disgrace.
So my download is SD. And not particularly good SD at that.
I don’t currently have a way to watch iTunes DRM content on my Samsung screen. It seems that Medialink can’t see it, so I’m stuck with my computer’s monitor. This may not do the picture quality justice, but on the other hand, how good is it really going to look 40in big?!
I’d be interested to hear how people with Apple TV boxes get on – if you have one, be sure to let us know your findings please !
iPhone – movies on the go !
Out of curiosity I uploaded Hitman to my iPhone to see what would happen. iTines gives you a slightly different interface for this, but all still pretty much self explanatory. You do however need to have an internet connection when you sync, presumably for some kind of DRM activation.
Once synced, the movie is playable as normal. When you select the video option inside ‘iPod’ you are also told how long you have left to watch your movie, which is a nice touch. The quality is obviously better due to the much smaller screen, but certainly not stellar.
In conclusion….
So after all that, what do I think? It’s a very good idea, and very well executed. I don’t like being forced to buy an Apple TV unit to get HD content though, and watching on the iPhone just does not appeal to me. If I commuted to work however, I can see that it could have a use.
Until I can get HD content, and I can stream it using Medialink to my PS3 like all my other video and music, it gets a thumbs down from me. Shame really, I was really hoping to like it !
Loading ...