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Apple granted patent behind new iTunes extras features
Today, Apple was granted a patent covering the ability to sync movie extra features with particular times or locations in videos. This is the same technology Sony is quietly testing now in the iTunes store with The Other Guys, Salt, and Resident Evil: Afterlife in which movie buyers can enter search terms to see scenes in the movie where that term was used. Since the extra features are only available for iTunes content, like iTunes LP, Apple clearly hopes to woo bonus feature-loving consumers to purchase digital copies over Blu-rays or DVDs. Of course if this strategy is going to succeed, you'd think Cupertino would want to expand support for iTunes extras beyond the original Apple TV and the desktop to include the one million second generation Apple TVs sold and three million plus iPhone 4s out there. But hey, what do we know?
Sundance Channel making several programs available in the iTunes Store
The Sundance Channel just announced the immediate availability of several of its programs in the iTunes Store [iTS link]. Programs include "The Hill," "The First Amendment Project," and "The Staircase," and they are priced at $1.99 each. Sundance is also giving iTunes Store users a free sneak peek of Episode 1 of their upcoming six-part documentary series called "One Punk Under God," about Christian punk rockers, which will be downloadable from December 5-12, while the television debut is scheduled for December 13. Subsequent episodes will be for sale on iTunes the day after they air on television.[via iLounge]
First impression: buying a movie from the iTunes Store
First off let me say that I'm glad Apple finally changed the name of the store to something 'music neutral.' With that said, how is the movie buying experience on the iTunes Store? Pretty good. Thanks the the 'CoverFlow' implementation I was able to look through the 75 movies available and find one I was interested in (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I am a geek after all, plus it was only $9.99).Buying it was just like purchasing music from the iTunes Store, though the downloading took about an hour. However, I was able to start watching the movie after about 10 minutes. The video looks pretty darned terrific on my 20 inch iMac (thanks, Apple, for fixing the dog that was video playback in iTunes) and the sound is great.One thing to note, movies downloaded from the iTunes Store do have chapter markers, as pictured above. A more detailed picture of the chapter markers themselves after the jump.
