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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?
Apple TV junkies left out of new iTunes Extra special features
This week's Apple event didn't have anything new for HD snobs, but there was something for movie lovers. We're always talking about the remaining barriers to digital distribution and one of those walls started to crumble yesterday -- well almost. Until this week, when you bought a movie from iTunes you didn't get any extra features like you do when you buy the Blu-ray version, but the new iTunes Extra feature addresses just this problem. The devil is of course in the details and this time the big rip is that these Extras are only available in iTunes and not on the Apple TV. So once again the Apple TV gets forgotten, it's bad enough that the hardware hasn't been revised in over two years, but it is just wrong when computer users get new movie centric features like extras and the Apple TV faithful get nada.
