2 days to watch rented movies from iTunes is not long enough

I’m a movie buff: I go to a lot of movies, and I rent a lot of movies. I’ve rented several dozen from Apple since they introduced rentals on the iTunes Store, a few years ago now. It’s mostly been a good consumer experience, for sure an improvement on walking a couple blocks to ye olde DVD shoppe, like an animal, just to see what’s available. Remember when you couldn’t get a new release if you weren’t quick enough? Because other people had already rented them? So weird!

And returns! Ugh! Having to take them back…what a nightmare!

So I wouldn’t turn back the clock, no way. But I have enough experience with the content delivery model to now say, with great feeling, two days to watch a rented film is not long enough. It’s ridiculous.

There are just too many scenarios where I get interrupted or want to postpone the second half of the film for more than 48 hours. Sometimes I need 49. It’s been a routine hassle.

Fortunately, the Canadian Netflix catalogue has finally gotten rich enough that I’m renting from Apple much less now: just the occasional new release that I didn’t care enough about to catch in the theatre, but don’t want to wait to see if it turns up on Netflix in 1-20 months.