February 21, 2008
When is 30 days not 30 days?
Posted Feb. 21, ’08, 9:17 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | iTunes » iTunes Store
When Steve Jobs announced movie rentals on iTunes back in January, one of my major complaints was the time lag: movie rentals wouldn’t be available until 30 days after the DVD release, presumably to prevent cannibalization of DVD sales and rentals.
But, as MacRumors points out, it seems like that might not be the case across the board. For example, the DVD of the Oscar-nominated Michael Clayton was released earlier this week. And—heyo—there’s the iTunes rental, all ready for your delicious consumption. Is this going to be standard practice, or perhaps a one-off? My first thought was perhaps it was a special case to get the film into as many hands as possible prior to the Academy Awards, but a quick look shows that it’s not alone. Jodie Foster vehicle The Brave One was released on DVD just over two weeks ago; it too is available for rent on iTunes. Romantic comedy No Reservations and art house film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (I’m not typing that title more than once) are in the same boat.
One interesting connection: all the above titles are released by Warner Bros., suggesting that perhaps there’s some wiggle room for Apple on a studio-by-studio basis. That’s good news: while the 30 day release lag doesn’t effect library titles, it does make people less likely to download highly anticipated movies if they can go out to the video store and rent them immediately.
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Perhaps they meant 30 days after the dvd was released anywhere - and not 30 days from when iTunes puts it on sale. Both those movies have been out on dvd before they were available on iTunes.
@Tim I don't quite understand your comment. As I said, Jobs originally said that movies would be available for rent on iTunes 30 days after their release on DVD. All the films I mention in the post are on iTunes now, despite the fact that they've all come out on DVD less than 30 days ago.