Apple Movie Junkie

This week’s 99 cent movie rentals on the Canadia iTunes store are:

• Beauty Shop
• Howie Mandel: The First Howie Mandel Special
• Young Guns

None of these movies are available in HD.

I’m batting .556 (almost 56% accuracy) when it comes to predicting Apple TV related news at Apple’s latest “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it” event and that’s a bad thing.

Wrong:  Apple TV will get a price drop and larger capacities.

Correct: Apple TV wont receive any CPU or BluRay updgrades.

Wrong: More studios and networks signing deals to release content on iTunes. Introduction of a Rhapsody-like subscription model for unlimited music.

Wrong: iTunes to support the ability to re-download previously purchased movies and TV shows.

Wrong: For my “one-last thing” I’ll go out on a limb and suggest announcement of an App Store for Apple TV.

Correct: Movies and TV shows from iTunes Store will still contain digital rights management (DRM).

Correct: Still unable to import my DVD collection so I can watch on Apple TV (maybe they’ll try to compromise with a lame DVD sharing feature from PC/Mac).

Correct: Still unable to stream content to Apple TV from my network attached storage (NAS) devices.

Correct: Still unable to play non H.264 content (like DivX/Xvid) on Apple TV.

I know my predictions were kinda lame and loaded for failure (or is that success?), however, this does underline the continued hobby status Apple has given to the Apple TV.  Not a peep… even the iPhone got some lovin’!

Throw us Apple TV Junkies a bone Apple.  The introduction of iTunes Extra for movies would have made the perfect transition to atleast drop mention of this feature coming to the Apple TV.  We’re being relegated to the back woods to die a slow pitiful death.

On Wednesday Apple introduced iTunes Extra for movies in the iTunes Movie Store. iTunes Extras for Movies are basically the equivalent of the extra content you might find on a DVD or Blu-ray disc. Up to this point movies purchased through the iTunes Store or the Apple TV did not come with extra content, a shortcoming which opponents of the iTunes Movie Store brought up as a negative when choosing between traditional media or iTunes digital downloads. Apple is initially offering only 14 titles with this extra content and 4 of them are pre-order. (Screen Shots Below)

One aspect of these iTunes Extra Movies which Apple TV users will notice right off the bat is that this Extra content is only viewable on a Mac or PC with iTunes 9 installed. Apple TV users seem to be left out of this initial launch. This hopefully means an update to the Apple TV in the near future which enables the play of this new content. The second catch to these iTunes Extras is that they are available only if you purchase the content, rentals do not contain the extras. For Iron Man, the size of the Extra content download was 687 MB, a fact which is also not listed on the movies iTunes page.
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