Apple TV Preloaded Movies
From LoveToKnow Movies
Apple TV preloaded movies aren’t all that common thanks to the complexities of the copyright laws but retailers have found ways through them.
Copyright in a Nut Shell
Generally speaking, you can’t freely distribute or sell copyrighted material unless you own a license to do so or have the permission from those who do. Buying a movie or CD gives you a limited “single-use” copyright license meaning you can sell the original but can’t make a copy and then sell it (the copy has to be destroyed).
Companies that distribute media that is preloaded on items or as gift card purchases can because they pay the owning company a fee or percentage based on total sales. These downloads work the same as a “single-use” copyright or license.
What is the Apple TV
The Apple TV is a media device that receives digital information for the purpose of playback and storage. You do need high definition and widescreen in most cases as the information is transferred from the Apple TV to your television through the use of an HDMI cable. In a lot of ways the Apple TV can be compared to Tivo or a DVR box from a cable or satellite company.
The Apple TV can sync up with an iPod and download its content to its own hard drive and it can stream video as well as sound by functioning as a peer-to-peer network. The Apple TV redefines the term DVR as it combines digital recording with pay-per-view movies when you download movies and television shows to stream back later.
Nuts and Bolts of Apple TV Downloads
The inner working of the Apple TV revolves around the iTunes website store. Through your Apple TV you get to download movies immediately from the iTunes store catalog. Rental movies are $2.99 per film for standard versions and a dollar more for high definition movies. You can purchase a movie to rent and not download it for month. If the month passes without you watching the movie it goes back into the queue. Once you begin watching the movie you have twenty-four hours until it is automatically purged from your Apple TV’s hard drive. You can watch the movie as often as you like within that twenty-four hour period.
The cost of movie purchases ranges by the distribution company, if they are new releases and whether you want the standard version or high definition. On average, the cost is around $10.00 per movie.
The iTunes store has a lot of movies to choose from with some of the top downloads being:
- Iron Man
- Baby Mama
- The Love Guru
- Sex and the the City
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall
- and hundreds more…
Apple TV Preloaded Movies
Wal-Mart inked a deal with Paramount that gave them the ability to include over 3,000 film titles in their online download store. Apple’s affiliations only gave them 600 titles that they could offer a consumer. You will need an iTunes account so that the Apple TV can connect to the service that will enable you to download the movies you want.
The only thing that Apple could do was to make deals with the little guy. Independent film is much bigger now than it has been in years past. Many of independent filmmakers will provide content for little to no money as a way to promote their company, film and talent. As with the iPod, retailers are opening the Apple TV and putting movies on it, then reselling the unit. This is the case with Tech Superpowers when they teamed up with the IFF (Independent Film Festival) to offer the 5th Annual Limited Edition Apple TV which included seventeen independent feature films and shorts from the five years of the festival.
A Final Thought
With the Apple TV you can rent a movie for a night for $4.99 or, in most cases, buy the movie at around $9.99 and save it to the hard drive of the Apple TV. While the unit is intriguing, the cost is higher than a DVR system. You also need a high definition television set that is also widescreen (and a newer one that has HDMI inputs). This makes purchasing the Apple TV (and with that, the Apple TV preloaded movies) potentially pricey but saves you the trouble of going out to rent a movie.
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This page has been accessed 595 times. This page was last modified 04:08, 4 November 2008.
© 2006-2009 LoveToKnow Corp.
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