Katie Marsal
A new rumor, complete with supposed screenshots, maintains that Apple is on the verge of allowing movie and TV show downloads directly from an iPhone or iPod touch.
Rather than take the visitor to a website, however, tapping one of the ads is said to switch to the mobile iTunes client and shows what appears to be a work-in-progress video section of Apple's mobile store. Viewers can browse genres and see featured items, but tapping the actual videos themselves produces a notice that the content is "not available." Promos for episodes and movies are missing.
The section was reportedly in a rough enough state when viewed that a navigation bar used to filter by music videos, movies and TV shows wasn't there at one point in the day and appeared the next. It's possible that Apple was building the portal in a live environment, the report suggests.
A video store would signal a loosening of the restrictions surrounding video downloads on the iPhone. Since adding the podcast section to the iTunes Store, Apple has allowed downloading video podcasts whenever one of its handheld devices is connected through Wi-Fi but has never permitted paid video downloads, in part because of the lengthy wait to download hundreds of megabytes of content.
While the authenticity of the rumor hasn't been corroborated outside of the seemingly real screenshots taken to show the new store portal's existence, its appearance comes just as Apple is poised to introduce 802.11n WiFi to its handhelds. The wireless standard is about four times faster than the 802.11g the iPhone and iPod touch use today and would significantly shorten the time spent waiting for downloads that would otherwise be interminable with fast-enough Internet connections or less-than-ideal WiFi reception.
The blogger's friend didn't make any assertions as to whether or not videos would work over 3G, though carrier concerns about overloading the network would most likely keep paid content restricted to WiFi in the same way that video podcasts are restricted today.
The testing would also come just a few weeks before Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Oliver Haslam
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Sponsored Content
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
67 Comments
When does the name of this place get changed to iphoneinsider.com?
A new rumor, complete with supposed screenshots, maintains that Apple is on the verge of allowing movie and TV show downloads directly from an iPhone or iPod touch. ...
Sounds cool, but unless the carriers get on board with it, it won't be of much use.
I got bit by this just this morning. My computer is down so I had to use direct download from the iPhone to get today's podcasts (which are handled the same way as these movies and shows would be.) Since I only had a half hour before I left for work, I got within seconds of finishing the download but had to leave anyway, and since the carriers don't allow podcast downloads over 3G, I couldn't finish the download until 40 minutes later when I got to work. Needless to say this ruins the whole point of being to download movies and podcasts on the fly.
Maybe things will change with the new contracts, but if they don't, these kinds of features won't be of much use.
Sounds cool, but unless the carriers get on board with it, it won't be of much use.
I got bit by this just this morning. My computer is down so I had to use direct download from the iPhone to get today's podcasts (which are handled the same way as these movies and shows would be.) Since I only had a half hour before I left for work, I got within seconds of finishing the download but had to leave anyway, and since the carriers don't allow podcast downloads over 3G, I couldn't finish the download until 40 minutes later when I got to work. Needless to say this ruins the whole point of being to download movies and podcasts on the fly.
Maybe things will change with the new contracts, but if they don't, these kinds of features won't be of much use.
I think the article is implying that this will be WiFi only.
I look forward to serving our new iTunes downloading overlords ... oops, for a sec I thought I was back on Slashdot...
"ts appearance comes just as Apple is poised to introduce 802.11n WiFi to its handhelds. The wireless standard is about four times faster than the 802.11g the iPhone and iPod touch use today and would significantly shorten the time spent waiting for downloads"
Who actually has an internet connection as fast as 802.11b? 20Mbit services are not all that common yet and I certainly can't imagine any home user's internet would be limited by a 802.11g wifi connection. On the iPod/iPhone the speed of loading a page seems to me to be more limited by the processor not the speed of connection. 802.11n is only useful on the iPod/iPhone if you have an existing home file/sharing network and don't want to have g devices on it too.