AfterDawn: News

Apple adds HD movies to iTunes

Apple has announced the addition of HD quality movies to its popular iTunes platform this week, giving users a chance to rent or purchase the movies in a much higher bitrate than current standard definition versions.

HD rentals were formerly only available to Apple TV owners but is now available to all Mac and PC users that have an iTunes account.



An new release HD movie rental will cost $4.99 and older catalog titles will cost $3.99 USD. The standard definition counterpart runs $1 cheaper. If you prefer to purchase the movie, the HD film will cost $19.99 USD, a discount from a physical Blu-ray film for the most part, but a steep premium from SD purchases.

Apple notes that over 250 million TV episodes have been purchased from the iTunes store along with 33 million movies.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Mar 2009 17:43

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• 5 comments

• wrules

  $19.99 USD for a digital copy, i'm not sure it's worth it to buy but might look into renting them. How big will these files be though?

  20.3.2009 17:51 #1

• dragnandy

  yay, high quality videos from itunes. now lets see some high quality songs!

  20.3.2009 18:01 #2

• atomicxl

  $20 for a digital download seems a bit expensive. I think the sweet spot will be like $9.99-$14.99. At $20 you're talking the same price as a Blu-Ray or like 5 bucks less. But you get no case, no disc and probably no bonus features.

  20.3.2009 18:50 #3

• Hunt720

  Originally posted by atomicxl: $20 for a digital download seems a bit expensive. I think the sweet spot will be like $9.99-$14.99. At $20 you're talking the same price as a Blu-Ray or like 5 bucks less. But you get no case, no disc and probably no bonus features.
  But it comes with FREE DRM!!!

  20.3.2009 21:37 #4

• bomber991

  It's not like there's a supply/demand dilema here, so they should just sell HD movies only to begin with. Or you should have the option to go HD with no extra cost.
  
  Yeah yeah, there's more bandwidth used by getting the HD version, but whatever, it's not enough for them to charge extra for it.

  20.3.2009 22:52 #5