Apple Movie Junkie

I discovered something this weekend as I was watching the HD version of The Matrix Reloaded, something I had not seen published before. It’s possible to control titles rented from Apple TV with the Remote.app. All though the rented title does not show up under Movies, once you start playing the rented movie, controls for Play, Rewind, Fast Forward, and Rewind appear as if it was a purchased title.

On a side note, The Matrix Reloaded is one of the best encoded HD movies I’ve seen on the Apple TV. If your looking for a movie to show off to your friends, keep The Matrix Reloaded in mind.

Allow me to endulge in a little bit of 80′s nostalgia. One of my favorite 80′s cartoons is now available for purchase in the iTunes Store/Apple TV, Robotech: The Macross Saga. I think it’s fair to say that this cartoon series was one of the more influencial manga style cartoons to come out of the 80′s. I look forward to the 2nd and 3rd series of the Robotech trilogy. Now if this Apple announcment on the 9th would mean HD TV Shows I would be set!

A new season of various TV Shows are now available through the TV Show section of the iTunes Store and Apple TV.

Gossip Girl (New Season)
Prison Break (New Season)
One Tree Hill (New Season)

Because of the holiday weekend we’re a little behind on announcing this, but, Donnie Brasco is the $.99 movie of the week for 9-02-08.

Update: An Apple event is now scheduled for next Tuesday September the 9th.

First off, did all of you see that Comcast is now starting their 250gb a month Cap? If you have been a reader of this site, you may remember, I wrote about this a few month ago. At the time I felt the move was to hold off digital distribution, IP TV, and on demand services such as Apple TV. I still do, and some of the things I wrote about are also talked about on Twit (This week in tech) episode 158. Jim Louderback and Leo Laporte seem, both of whom have a heavy stake in online media, to share my sentiments. Both have far more experience in this area than I do, and I found the converstion very intresting you should take a listien.

Second, with the iPod revisions on the horizon (as early as next week according to some,) still no talk of the future of Apple TV. I am convinced that Apple will do more with the Apple TV in the next few months, but the question is when. While I still dont subscribe to the Apple TV as a TV bit, a new version or updated fetures set has to be coming along, right. I am starting to think that Apple will not add “DVR” fuction, but what about opening it up for something like Elgato Eye TV ?(Credit to this thread on Mac rumors for the idea). Now you could in theory get a tuner card, record to your MAC/PC, convert the video to a proper iTunes format, then use iTunes to catalog the recording. As I have said before the only way to make the Apple TV the iPod of the living room is to make it easy for everyone.

Below is the list of SD Rentals that have been added to iTunes as of 9-02-08.

Looks like iTunes is also trying to recover from the long Labor Day weekend by adding 7 New Releases to their inventory. X-Men: The Last Stand is one of those flicks along with man-child comedy, Grandma’s Boy.

SD Rentals New Releases
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