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Apple and Fox Set to Announce Movie Rental Deal
mudimba writes "Apple and Twentieth Century Fox are about to announce a deal that will allow users to rent Fox movies over iTunes. The deal will allow people to download movies that will only play for a limited amount of time. 'Pali Research analyst Stacey Widlitz said the deal follows a trend of Hollywood studios selling directly to consumers and cutting out the middleman. "It's just a sign the studios feel ... that another distribution channel is where they are choosing to go, and incrementally it hurts Blockbuster and Netflix," Widlitz said.'"
You do know that your macbook pro has digital optical audio which will send dts surround don't you?
the Macbook pro had DVI out, but for audio, i have to use a USB to composite (red/white) cable. So even if the media is Dolby5.1, the laptop sends it to my stereo in.. 2channel stereo.
What are you talking about? Every Macbook/Macbook Pro has audio OPTICAL OUT. It'll do 6.1 DTS.
Don't blame the hardware if the problem is that you don't know how to use it.
Just a point on the Amazon service. I've used it with my Tivo, and the prices are really good. Actually, I just opened another tab to check the current prices, and ended up renting Transformers for $0.99 and Waitress for $1.99. Most of the rental* prices are around that. The really nice thing about Amazon's downloads is that it's just the movie. While this means no special features, it means no previews and no annoying menus getting between you and the movie.
*And yes, I said rental. Semantic arguments are teh lame.
The movies already available on iTunes are in the 1-2GB range, similar to DVD quality (slightly lower res than progressive DVDs, but a more efficient video codec (H.264 vs MPEG-2)), and will play immediately after the download starts. So as long as your bandwidth is faster than the bitrate of the video file (limited to 1.5Mb/s for the iPod, which is only a fraction of the bandwidth of cable internet), you can start watching the movie immediately.
As for getting it to the TV, that's what the Apple TV is for. Unfortunately, the Apple TV currently doesn't support streaming movies directly from the iTunes store. This seems exactly like the sort of thing Apple would update for a rental service like this.