News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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The wait is over for users of the Australian iTunes Store who've been looking longingly at the movie content available from the American counterpart of the Store. As of this morning, movies from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Sony Pictures Television International and Lionsgate are available for sale and rental.
The selection, available in both Australia and New Zealand, encompasses some 700 films at launch — a number expected to grow rapidly. New release titles can be expected to hit the Store at the same time as their DVD launch dates.
iTunes movies in Australia start at recommended retail price $9.99 "catalogue" title purchases (ie older releases), $17.99 for recent releases and $24.99 for new releases. iTunes Movie Rentals are $3.99 for library title rentals and $5.99 for new releases, and high definition (720p) versions are priced at just one dollar more. At launch there are 100 high-definition titles available.
Rental movies are valid for one month, for as many viewings as you want. The only condition is that once you start watching, you have 48 hours before the file is automatically deleted.
As with titles from the US Store, movies are able to be played on a computer, and Apple TV, or a compatible iPod/iPhone. They can, however, only exist on one device at a time. The availability of movie content will certainly make the Apple TV a more attractive purchase than it has been previously — now we just need the price to come down.
wrote on August 14, 2008 7:23 PM
Interesting. Good range showing up in iTunes but nothing coming up in AppleTV movies as yet, so you can get to the HD movies
wrote on August 17, 2008 8:06 PM
There would seem to be a glitch in that you have to change your default iTunes store and then back to the Australian one to get the movie options to show up. Odd but this is the current workaround. Worked a treat for me.
wrote on August 18, 2008 5:10 PM
Agreed with MJCP that we need to see cheaper appleTV. I have an old Mac Mini (G4 gen 1 - bought on the day of mini launch) that I want to convert to media center. But if appleTV is within an easy reach, I would leave the hassle and get that instead.
There’s no getting around the fact: Apple’s iPod line — last updated a year ago — was in dire need of a refresh heading into this month’s update.
Dan Frakes | Oct 21, 2007
When writing about the multimedia capabilities of the iPhone, I called it “the iPod that’s really a phone”. You could say that the iPod touch is the iPhone that’s really an iPod. After all, the touchscreen iPod shares much of the interface and design of the iPhone.
Christopher Breen | Oct 21, 2007
Apple sold 2.3 million Macs and 22.1 million iPods during the holiday shopping season, helping the company turn a $US1.58-billion profit during its fiscal first quarter. The Mac totals mark the third consecutive quarter that Apple has set a quarterly sales record for its desktops and laptops. The Mac totals mark the third consecutive quarter that Apple has set a quarterly sales record for its desktops and laptops. For the quarter ended December 31, Apple reported a profit of $US1.76 a share on revenue of $US9.6 billion.
Jim Dalrymple,Philips Michaels and Peter Cohen | Jan 23, 2008
The release of QuickTime 7.4 earlier this month had an unplanned side-effect for one of Apple’s biggest developers, Adobe. According to an Adobe product manager the QuickTime release breaks After Effects and Premiere. Apparently the issue is with QuickTime’s support of Digital Rights Management technology for downloaded movies in iTunes. QuickTime checks movies at regular intervals for DRM violations and since the Adobe products don’t write the headers until it renders the movies, this is seen as a violation.
Jim Dalrymple | Jan 27, 2008
