Apple misses goal of 1,000 rentable movies on AppleTV

By Ed Oswald | Published March 6, 2008, 2:08 PM

Adobe is not the only target of Steve Jobs' ire -- it appears movie studios are as well. The Apple CEO made clear in comments earlier this week he's unimpressed with progress in making videos available through iTunes.

While an exact count of the number of rentable movies has yet to be assessed, current estimates peg it at about 400 to 500. This is less than half the promised amount when Apple first announced its rental initiative at Macworld last January.

At that time, the company said it expected to have 1,000 titles by the end of February. At the shareholder meeting on Tuesday -- the same one where Jobs unloaded on Adobe -- he told investors he's "not happy" about it.

Rights holders seem to be the problem here: It's taking longer than expected to get the approval needed to make them available through iTunes. However, the company's goal of 100 high-definition movies was much closer -- 98 titles were available as of Thursday.

Vudu, which could be seen as a major competitor to AppleTV through its set-top movie download box, has about 5,000 titles currently available. Its price of $295 is slightly higher than that of AppleTV, which retails for $229.

Comments

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Cox InDemand service blows Apple away. I'm hoping Apple catches up with some real content. Everything so far is age-old crap from the interior section of Blockbuster. We need some competition for Cox though. At least here.

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Is this available over at the Australian iTunes yet? I've been looking for it but can't seem to find it. Want to give it a go.

Any suggestions for similar services maybe?

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I can't find it on Russian iTunes yet either!! But the Fake Russian iTunes has 2M movies in HD!!

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Wouldn't you be upset too. If your competitor has 5000 movies and the studios won't even supply you with a 1000. I know I wouldn't be happy about that.

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slightly higher is an understatement... that's about 40% higher...

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lol
That's just funny. Is this guy also king of other companies? Slave driver mentality and a megolomaniac.

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Obviously forgot to take his zoloft this morning!

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