Review: Renting an iTunes movie
Dec. 5th, 2011 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73You may remember a little over a month ago I tried out Android's movie store and player and came to the conclusion that watching a movie on a laptop would probably work better. For our recent trip to Boston I decided to give Apple's Itunes movie rental service a go.
Renting movies from Apple is nominally the same as renting from Android: you search for a movie, you pay your $3, and you have a month in which to watch your film, with the now-standard caveat that once you start watching, the film will disappear from your library in 24 hours. Apple's library of films, being older, is (unsurprisingly) larger that Android's; Apple had Edward Scissorhands while Android did not, for example. The experience of examining movies for rental is also better on Apple's side: on the page displaying a film you're considering, there's Rotten Tomatoes' score for the film, complete with links to the reviews. Android's store is currently limited reviews posted by users, which are limited always in length, frequently in content, and often in number. It's great to have easy access to real reviews right there on the movie page.
Renting the movie worked exactly like buying any other content on iTunes. After the purchase was complete, I had a new category over in my sidebar called Rentals. It listed the movie I had rented and a timer ticking down how much time I had in which to start watching.
Watching the movie on the plan on my laptop was a much nicer experience than on my phone. It was easy to expand the view to fullscreen, and reasonably comfortable to have two people watching it. A 1 hour 45 minute film ate almost exactly 40% of my battery, which left me with sufficient charge to play a game or do some work.
Conclusion: iTunes wins over the Android Market, hands down.
Renting movies from Apple is nominally the same as renting from Android: you search for a movie, you pay your $3, and you have a month in which to watch your film, with the now-standard caveat that once you start watching, the film will disappear from your library in 24 hours. Apple's library of films, being older, is (unsurprisingly) larger that Android's; Apple had Edward Scissorhands while Android did not, for example. The experience of examining movies for rental is also better on Apple's side: on the page displaying a film you're considering, there's Rotten Tomatoes' score for the film, complete with links to the reviews. Android's store is currently limited reviews posted by users, which are limited always in length, frequently in content, and often in number. It's great to have easy access to real reviews right there on the movie page.
Renting the movie worked exactly like buying any other content on iTunes. After the purchase was complete, I had a new category over in my sidebar called Rentals. It listed the movie I had rented and a timer ticking down how much time I had in which to start watching.
Watching the movie on the plan on my laptop was a much nicer experience than on my phone. It was easy to expand the view to fullscreen, and reasonably comfortable to have two people watching it. A 1 hour 45 minute film ate almost exactly 40% of my battery, which left me with sufficient charge to play a game or do some work.
Conclusion: iTunes wins over the Android Market, hands down.
