Audio Video News

Would you like to rent a movie from Apple? The company is in "advanced talks" with studios over a new scheme that would offer 30-day download rentals for $2.99 via iTunes, according to the Financial Times.

Similar video-on-demand-like download-to-rent services are already offered by the likes of Amazon/TiVo Unbox and Movielink, though they haven't exactly boogied hard-copy rentals from Netflix and Blockbuster off the dance floor.

Presumably consumers have had time to forget their once fervent opposition to Divx, a time-limited hard-copy format that Circuit City championed, in vain, in the late '90s. (That Divx was no relation to the current DivX compressed video file format.) Thirty days is plenty of time to watch a movie rental (repeatedly) and downloads may be bumped (temporarily) to another device, such as an iPhone or iPod.

Though only Disney and Paramount currently sell movies through iTunes, "studios will be more enthusiastic about joining its video-on-demand service," said the FT, because "films downloaded to rent are unlikely to affect DVD sales."