iSwitchd

Have you ever wanted to rent a movie without going out to the video store? Apple makes it possible through iTunes in the US since a couple months, and launched the service in Canada 2 weeks ago. So you guessed it, I had to give it a try.

In the past few months, I’ve been watching a lot more movies than usual. My visits to the cinema have increased, however I never rent movies. I’m just too lazy for that, even though there’s a vide store across the street. So when I heard Apple opened a movie renting service in iTunes, I got pretty much interested.

To rent a movie in iTunes, you first need an account on the iTunes Store. Once you have an account, just browse the library, then click Rent Movie on the one you want to see, type you password and the download starts. When the file is on your computer, you have 1 month to watch it. Once you started watching it, you have 48 hours to finish it (you can also watch the movie as many times as you want during that period). Then the file is removed from the hard drive.

So as you can see it’s easy to use. The video quality is good, at least good enough for me, I’m not an expert. I don’t have any HD setup, but if you want to rent a movie in HD, you can only do it from an AppleTV, not from a computer. I know some people are complaining about this.
I don’t really bother about HD (yet), but I was disappointed by one little thing: I couldn’t see the movie in Front Row. I really like using Front Row, and rented movies just don’t appear there. To watch a movie you’ve rented , you have to start it from iTunes.

The library is pretty good, with over 1200 movies. The most recent ones can only be bought. Prices compete well with video stores. I won’t detail them, because it depends on the country you are. As far as I know, movies in iTunes are only available in the US, Canada and UK.

Some of my friends obviously asked me if you can make copies of those movies. The file is encoded in MP4, and you could have guessed it includes some protections. I only tried playing it in VLC and Quicktime, both failed, saying it needs an authorization. I won’t bother looking much further, it’s a waste of time and I feel better being on the good side of the law.

Overall, I really enjoyed the experience, and I’ll surely rent more movies in the future. It’s very convenient, it works well, and the library has a good variety of movies. I recommend it.

PS: The movie I rented is ‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’, a good ol’ 70’s gangster movie.