« This is Love
BRAIN ASPLODES »

Video Rentals Coming Soon to iTunes?

Before installing any iTunes upgrade, I dump the strings from the old iTunes binary. Once the new version has installed, I diff the new version’s strings against the old’s, to see what shows up.

When I did this for the recent 7.5 upgrade, I found the following interesting (new) strings:


rental-content
rental-bag
rbsync
source-rental-info
dest-rental-info
getvodaccountselectionlist
GET VOD ACCOUNT SELECTION LIST
supportsRentals

It sure looks like video rentals (and video on demand, which I suspect VOD stands for) are coming to iTunes soon. If they did, I would sure get more use out of my Apple TV…

Tags: , , ,

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

8 Responses to “Video Rentals Coming Soon to iTunes?”

  1. Aaress Says:
    November 8th, 2007 at 6:44 pm

    Wow - thanks for posting your find. I know I’d certainly spend more in iTunes if they launch video rentals or VOD.

  2. Dacsiv Says:
    November 9th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

    Thanks, I too am glad to hear something more usefull is coming for my iTV ……

  3. Jesse Says:
    November 9th, 2007 at 4:14 pm

    Excellent news! I’ve been waiting for this for some time. I think it might be a major blow — in a while — to Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and Netflix: http://fishtrain.com/2007/09/23/itunes-movie-rentals-and-old-media/

  4. Jerod Santo Says:
    November 9th, 2007 at 5:06 pm

    Just wondering your process. Do you just use the UNIX ’strings’ command and redirect to a file?

  5. Evan DiBiase Says:
    November 9th, 2007 at 5:12 pm

    Jerod, that’s pretty much exactly what I do. The process runs something like this:

    $ strings /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes > ~/iTunes-old.txt

    …upgrade iTunes…

    $ strings /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes > ~/iTunes-new.txt
    $ diff ~/iTunes-old.txt ~/iTunes-new.txt | mate

    There’s usually not a whole lot that’s actually changed, so it’s pretty easy to look through.

  6. Matt Motherway Says:
    November 9th, 2007 at 5:43 pm

    At least 2 missing pieces to the puzzle:

    1. Content producers need to give Apple pricing control
    2. Apple TV needs to be updated; hopefully it’s just software

  7. Jerod Santo Says:
    November 9th, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    Evan-

    Yah thats what I figured, thanks for the insight.

  8. lastangelman Says:
    December 30th, 2007 at 2:50 am

    Goodbye, Blockbuster or Good Buy, Blockbuster?

    http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060216_000884.html

Leave a Reply