Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 3: iTunes Movie Rentals and AppleTV
It’s no accident that Apple’s initial stab at the video console experience was named “Front Row” and that the symbol of the red theater curtain was in heavy use in its marketing.
Extrapolated out to the AppleTV, the intent is to reproduce the movie-going experience as well as the movie-watching experience. Apple has no real interest in augmenting the theatrical distribution model. To the contrary, Apple is in the game of superseding it.
Through its iTunes software or AppleTV kiosk (its box office, if you will and I think you will), Apple wants to sell you the event of a movie, not just the sight and sound of the video. Apple wants you to buy a ticket, walk past the velvet rope (in your underwear, even), sit down, get cozy and take in a show.
Let’s go back to the other side of the analogy (the movie theater) and consider this: you want to partake in the event of a movie. You go online and find out which show you want to see, figure out what time AMC Theaters wants to show it to you, hand over your dollars, make your way to the theater, collect your ticket, get your snacks that pay for the upkeep of the theater, pick from an array of available seats, sit down (pants required) to a barrage of premovie Selling of Stuff, and then the event begins. Get up to go to the bathroom. We’ll tell you what you missed.
What’s that? You’re kind of tired and feel like taking a break from the movie, maybe to pick up later where you left off? Sure - you’ve had a long day. AMC Theaters understands. You just hold on to your ticket, go home, take a nap. When you come back, ask to speak to Dave the manager and I’m sure he’ll let you right back in the theater at the same point in the movie; you can even sit in the same seat. No extra charge, because you already paid good money for that ticket.
So you see where this breaks down - by limiting the amount of time to 24 hours within which you can experience the movie (up to 30 days from the purchase of the ticket, mind you), Apple is reversing the anti-theater trend, the time-shifting TiVoization of the movies that has been brought about by Netflix. If you remember the beginning of the video rental business model, it was rare to be rented a movie for more than a night. In 1990, if you went to the video store and rented Back to the Future II, chances are good that you watched it that night and returned it the next day. Netflix introduced the model of keep-it-til-you’re-done and in doing so, de-cinematized and removed the urgency of the experience of a movie. Blockbuster attempted to compete by following suit in its stores, allowing the customer to keep movies longer. In the process of all this, one can’t help but feel the movie-watching experience has been substantially devalued.
In forcing audiences back into time-limited events, Apple is bringing the value back to the movies. The 24-hour leash is a short one, but when they make the announcement in six months (speculation, obviously) that they are extending the time-limit to 48 or 72 hours, will customers be happy or angry? Well, I guess some customers were angry when Apple gave back $100 for early iPhone purchasers. There’s no pleasing some people.
But most importantly, when you sit down to your AppleTV and click Start on that time-limited movie-watching event, you’re going to sit there and watch it. And you just might have enjoyed the event so much that the next day you pick out another from the rapidly growing list of available titles, and you’ll watch that one, too. And soon enough, you realize that Apple has made the experience so painless, comfortable, familiar, and Appley that movies have begun to mean something different again.
Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 1: MacBook Air