iTunes Adds $0.99 Movie Rentals, But Needs More Movies

One movie a week will get the special 99-cent rental price; this week, it's "The Hours." That's the good news; the bad news is that there are still only about 370-odd movies for rent on iTunes and Apple TV.

The new rental special on iTunes is a pretty good deal, I'll admit; to my mind, 99 cents is just this side of "free," and the offer is a smart way for Apple to tempt users who have yet to try movie rentals on iTunes. Personally, I would have preferred, say, "Alien Vs. Predator" rather than the high-minded "The Hours," but hey—there's always next week.

What I'm more troubled about is the still-sparse selection of rentals on iTunes—and by extension, on the newly revitalized Apple TV. All along, I've been saying that the size of the movie catalog on iTunes will make or break Apple TV "Take 2," and Steve Jobs did his best to pump up our expectations on that front, promising more than 1,000 rental movies by the end of February.

Yet here we are, with just a week to go until March, and just 378 movies available for rent on iTunes (80 of those movies are available in HD). I'd be more encouraged if, say, a hundred movies were being added each week, but we've been stuck at the 350-360 level since the Apple TV update arrived a couple of weeks ago.

By way of comparison, competing video set-top box Vudu offers more than 5,000 movies (although only about 80 HD movies and just a handful of TV shows). I have a new Vudu box at home for testing side-by-side with my Apple TV, and as a movie fanatic, I've gotta say: 5,000 movies beats 378 any day of the week.

I've no doubt that iTunes will start growing its movie collection, but the question is by how much, and how soon. If Apple doesn't speed up its glacial pace of adding new movies to the catalog, I'll have a harder and harder time recommending the new Apple TV—new interface or no.

Related:
iTunes 7.6.1 lands along with 99-cent movie rental specials [Infinite Loop]