Video rentals: Apple vs. Netflix?
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jan 3, 2008 at 2:04pm
It may be shaping up as a war between Apple and Netflix. It’s rumored that Apple will add video rentals to the iTunes Store soon. Meanwhile, Netflix and LG Electronics, a global consumer electronics company, are joining forces to develop a set-top box for consumers to stream movies and other programming from the Internet to HDTVs—bypassing the need to use a personal computer.
The collaboration is expected to deliver a new online home entertainment service via technology embedded in an LG networked player planned for the second half of 2008. With the availability of the networked LG product planned for later this year, Netflix subscribers can watch movies streamed from the Netflix web site on their large-screen home theater HDTVs, in addition to the current capability to watch movies instantly on their computers.
On top of catalog of more than 90,000 titles on DVD delivered through the mail, a growing selection of more than 6,000 familiar movies and TV episodes delivered instantly over the Internet to Netflix members’ personal computers or TVs will even more strongly position Netflix
in online movie rentals, which it pioneered in 1997, says founder, chairman and CEO Reed Hastings. “Netflix explored also offering its own Netflix-branded set-top boxes but we concluded that familiar consumer electronics devices from industry leaders like LG Electronics are a better
consumer solution for getting the Internet to the TV,” he adds.
The “Macsimum MWSF 2007 Coupon Book” is available for download. You can find it here and print it as a PDF. It has discounts, special offers and promotions in conjunction with the upcoming Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.
dave Says:
But to comment on various systems, it seems like Hollywood is trying to creep up on providing a system that has the MOST DRM, but not quite enough to totally annoy the general consumer. This method pretty much rules out letting Apple get much content, as they let the consumer have too many rights and won’t give the studios much room to gouge on pricing.
And, of course, the captcha is “pay"…
Posted on January 03, 2008
Scott Says:
Streaming HD content across the web is an issue. Fortunately delivery network providers have figured out how to stream it locally and keep the traffic on the same subnets. This avoids the download speed issues your eluding to. I suspect this won’t be the issue everyone thinks it will be. Time will tell.
Posted on January 15, 2008
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
dave Says:
Well, not a lot of people have enough bandwidth to actually stream HD live, without any breaks for 2 hours straight. And, in particular, between the hours of 6 PM and 12 midnight, I get the poorest download speeds because everybody else is also using the internet more from home. This sounds like a total non-starter, except if you happen to live in an area that has a very high-speed link between you and Netflix.
Posted on January 03, 2008