iTunes adds movies for iPhone

OH lord. Here it is fast approaching deadline for writing the Doubleclick column and we're unprofessionally running late.

We have been watching it not on the telly but on an iPhone, turned sideways to make use of the wide screen. The picture is bright and crisp, the sound - through earphones - pretty good. Quite amazing on a device as small and light as the iPhone.

Apple Australia sprang something of a surprise last week when it announced full-length movies would finally be available for purchase or rental Down Under via its iTunes online music store, and that they could be transferred to some iPods and iPhones as well as watched on PCs or TVs. These deals hadn't been expected for some time, due to the glacial pace of copyright negotiations.

Aussies will pay $9.99 to buy oldies such as Red October, $17.99 for recent releases and $24.99 for new releases such as 27 Dresses or Cloverfield. Rentals cost $3.99 for the oldies or $5.99 for newer releases. There are about 100 titles in high-definition and they cost $1 more in each case.

New releases in iTunes-talk means titles launched on the same day as the DVDs in video stores. That usually happens a couple of months after the last big-city cinema run.

Aussie renters have up to 30 days to watch their movie. Once you start watching you have just 48 hours before it disappears forever.

Downloading a movie to your Mac or Windows PC is quick and easy: fire up iTunes, click on Movies and make a selection from what's on offer.

A single click and your credit card is hit. Within seconds, if you have a broadband connection, you're able to start watching your movie - on your PC, or if you have an Apple TV gadget, on your living room telly.

Another single click will send it to an iPod or iPhone for viewing on the bus going home, or maybe on a plane. It took us just four minutes to transfer Red October.

Alas, only the most recent iPod models can deal with rental movies. They won't play, for instance on last year's fifth-generation Video iPod. That's infuriating for folk who lashed out hundreds of dollars for this model in the belief it would be a great portable device for watching movies.

It seems the older models lack a chip needed to deal with the copy-protected format used for the iTunes rental movies, so that's that.

A big question a lot of iTunes users have been asking is: if I download movies from the iTunes store, can I burn them to a DVD?

The answer is no - not if you want to stay within the law. You'd have to first overcome the digital rights management (DRM) software still being attached to these movies.

There is software available on the internet that promises to do this, but it's not easy to use, and tinkering with the DRM is technically illegal.

This is another infuriating situation imposed by Hollywood, which is running behind the music industry's thinking. The recording studios have largely abandoned DRM. If you buy a song or an album on iTunes, for instance, you can legally burn it onto a CD as often as you like.

The Hollywood movie distributors should take the same line.

THREE weeks ago Doubleclick had a bit of a rant about the extraordinary high charges and tiny download limits imposed by Telstra on iPhone users. Some scored as little as 5MB before being hit with extra charges of up to $1000 a gigabyte.

We're glad to say the Big T has now responded with more generous download allowances via its extra-cost browsing packs. Customers with $10 packs will now score 150MB of data - up from 20MB; and $29 mobile data packs will now include 300MB - up from 80MB. Excess data charges have also been reduced in some cases.

dfrith@gmail.com