The week before WWDC apple announced that in canada and the UK they will be launching film rentals. This is a service that I as a person that lives in the UK have been waitting for, for some time now. Lets get down so of the fact before I reviews it, studios include 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM, Sony Pictures Television International and Lionsgate UK. To start there will be 1200 films available to purchase or rent. Films cost £6.99 for purchased library titles and £10.99 for new releases. Rentals start at £2.49 for library titles and £3.49 for new releases. HD titles start at £4.49 they are like the US only available of the Apple TV.
Quantity and Quality
lets start with the quantity, 1200 sounds like a lot of films but if you take any interest in the cinema then there really are not that many that I have not already watched, but it does make you think of those films you wanted to see but never saw because they were not on your top 5.
I have rented two films that are totality different so there is defiantly variety in there as well as classics like the Matrix. Now on to quality the films look surprisingly good for being compressed to about 1GB and a bit, they look slightly better and films ripped off handbrake to the iPod Touch setting, so that is not bad.
Time, Management and Movement
When films were launched in the US peoples initial complaint was about the 24 hours, to me this did not seem like a problem as I watch films in one go. Well they heard peoples complaints and have made that 24 in to 48 doubling our time period, I suspect we will see the US go to 48 soon. I was worried about not
knowing how long I have left but iTunes make sure you know by telling you every were it can, without being a pest. When you download a film a rented film tabs appears under your library , It allows you to see how long you have and gives a blurb about the film. You can move a film on to your iPod but this takes time not just because of the size of the file but iTunes needs to go to the net to do some kind of hoky poky. Once on your iPod your done and free to watch it and delete it when your done, interesting thing that I had not thought of is they let you delete you film before the time period is over. When your time period is over the film is automatically deleted from your library.
Conclusion
There is an increased price over the US but we see that all the time but you can’t forget we are also getting 48 hours compared to 24. The whole experience is very pleasant and it has got mw back into renting films, the only thing lacking is the number of films on but in time that should increase. Overall it is a brilliant piece of work and I would use it over any other film rental service because of its easy of use.
