Apple is offering the users to buy an episode of any TV shows on iTunes and other digital download sources for as cheap as $.99. This is the cheapest offer in the market much lower than the price offered by the other players in this field. But this might just turn out to be nothing more than a rumor.
The prices range that are doing the rounds are almost as half when compared to the standard rates that are uniform across all the other digital download service providers. TV shows cost around $2 per episode, movies range generally from around $15 – $20, and movie rentals cost around $3; that’s the norm in the market. The TV shows can be rented just as the movies are rented; the rented film can be kept for thirty hours but had to be viewed within twenty four hours once the viewer has begun watching the film. Apple has just spoiled the users with a price range that will leave other companies to offer similar price cuts to stay in the market and fight the competition from Apple. The history has it that Apple has done good and out done all other companies in any of the areas that it has entered. The Apple TV set-top box will offer 99-cent TV episodes that can be streamed, not downloaded; coming in direct line of competition with Netfix, Hulu Plus and Amazon’s Video on Demand.
The biggest hurdle in front of Apple to make this plan see the light of the day is to get the content producers to agree to work in collaboration for the idea. At present all the television networks and specialty channels like NBC, ABC, Showtime and HBO sell individual episode downloads on iTunes for $1.99 to $2.99. And the fact remains that it is still unclear whether the sales of the iTunes are lucrative enough. Another advantage that Apple is bringing with this cheap rental service is to keep away the industry from pirates and pirated content.
Until some time earlier nobody had given any attention to the price of owing a movie that usually has to see just once. But now things make more sense, people argue that when the shows can be rented for a much lower price so why not go for them?