Gifting Movie Rentals And The Apple TV Community
We received an interesting email from site visitor Steve Gundrum recently asking us if we knew of the ability to gift movie rentals to other Apple TV users. In case anyone isn’t aware, it’s possible to gift items from the iTunes Store. You can gift anything from a single song to a purchasable movie. But nowhere to be found is the ability to gift a movie rental. I can’t imagine what the technical hurdles would be to make this possible. If you can gift a movie purchase, with all the DRM that comes along with that, why couldn’t you gift a rental which isn’t permanent after all.
This idea of gifting movie rentals got my mind thinking. Why hasn’t Apple put more resources toward building a community around not only the Apple TV but around the whole iTunes Store ecosystem. This is not an original idea. Microsoft does this to some extent with the Zune. As cheesy as a thought of “Joining The Social” might be to some, in this world of social networks, Microsoft seems to have jumped ahead on this. Really, you can look to Xbox Live as a model for this, and the upcoming New Xbox Experience.
As an Apple TV user I think I except the fact that I am part of a small but hopefully growing number. But, with that being the case, what’s stopping Apple from building a social network around it’s small but growing community. I mean to some extent I hope we are doing something like that here at ATVJ. But who wouldn’t want to jump onto their Apple TV and all of a sudden be a part of this digital media community. You could see things like, who the Apple TV users in your community are, find out what they are watching, what they might recommend, maybe catch a TV Show or movie together over this network, and maybe even gift a movie or two.
I know Steve Jobs and Apple still think of the Apple TV as a hobby, but some companies hobbies are other people’s digital life style. And it seems that both parties could benefit from that partnership!
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Comments
I’ve never heard of Last.fm under this rock I’ve been living in, but it does look interesting. Pandora.com is an internet radio I like to listen too. It’s pretty cool and free!
If you wish to gift a movie rental, then the most logical vehicle is the iTunes gift certificate. The reason why is that more than one option exists for checking a movie out of the iTunes library of content. There are too many variables… You can either rent directly from AppleTV in either HD (if available) or widescreen (SD). These rentals cannot be uploaded from the device and are of the highest video quality currently offered by Apple.
Adding to the mix, if you wish to have ultimate portability for your content, you can rent directly from the iTunes Store in a format that can be moved to any Apple iPhone iPod, or AppleTV. But in exchange for portability, you give up a bit on the size of the video frame (the amount of visual detail) that is universally compatible with the iPod line of devices. This is, IMO, the reason why Apple doesn’t offer gifting of movie content, in the same way that they offer gifting a movie purchase.
On the subject of an iTunes social networking mechanism, I’m curious to see the spectrum of ATVJ opinion on this… It seems like an idea well worthy of discussion. 
I would like to see Last.fm integration, or at the very least, something similar to it.