Apple Unveils Movie Rentals Service

SAN FRANCISCO, January 15: At the MacWorld Conference and
Expo today, Apple unveiled its new movie-rental service, granting access to a
catalogue of titles from all the major movie studios for viewing on computers,
iPods and iPhones and widescreen TVs via the new Apple TV.

Deals have been signed with 20th Century Fox, Disney, Warner
Bros., Paramount, Universal, Sony Pictures, MGM and Lionsgate, among others.

Users can rent movies and watch them on their Macs or PCs,
iPods, iPhones and widescreen TVs via the Apple TV device. iTunes Movie Rentals
launches today and will offer over 1,000 titles by the end of February,
including over 100 titles in HD. iTunes Movie Rentals are priced at $2.99 for
library titles and $3.99 for new releases, and high definition versions are
just one dollar more with library titles at $3.99 and new releases at $4.99.
Customers have up to 30 days to start a film, and once a movie has been
started, the rental lasts for 24 hours.

“iTunes Movie Rentals instantly brings great movies from all
the major studios directly to your iPod, iPhone, TV or computer—without
having to drive to the video store or wait for DVDs to arrive in the mail,”
said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Movie lovers can now discover and enjoy movies
as simply and easily as music lovers discover and enjoy music today on iTunes.”

With iTunes Movie Rentals and Apple TV, users can click a
button on their remote to rent movies. Apple will provide the new Apple TV
software free of charge to existing Apple TV owners when it releases the new
Apple TV priced at $229 in about two weeks. Once a movie is rented, it starts
downloading from the iTunes Store directly to Apple TV, and users with a fast
Internet connection can start viewing the movie in seconds. With Apple TV,
users can also view photos from their computers, Flickr and .Mac Web Galleries
on their widescreen TV. Apple TV users can now browse the iTunes Store podcast
directory of over 125,000 video and audio podcasts, view over 50 million originally
created videos from YouTube or choose from a selection of 6 million songs, over
600 TV shows and 10,000 music videos to purchase.

—By Mansha Daswani