iTunes Lags 89,000 Movies Behind Netflix
Apr 16th, 2008 | By James Lewin | Category: Digital Movie Store, Digital Video Downloads, iPods & Portable Media Players, Video 
I’m a big fan of Apple TV – but it’s going to be a hard sell unless Apple gets more studios on board and builds up a library of long-tail content. Apple TV & iTunes currently offer less than 1,000 movies – or about 89,900 less than Netflix:
The version of the iTunes Store reachable from your computer also remains well short of 1,000 movie rentals. When you navigate to the Movies page within the Store and click the All Movies link you’ll find 784 titles. This number includes all movies at the Store, both those that are for sale and those that are for rent. To see just rentals, choose Store -> Search to bring up the Store’s Power Search window, choose Movies from the Power Search pop-up menu, enable the Search Movies That Are Available For Rent option, and click the Search button. As of Tax Day 2008, the resulting number of rentals is 604.
Apple has solved the biggest user interface and functionality problems with Apple TV, but not the content problem. The device will have to offer access to more than your local video store if Apple wants it to compete.
[…] the other hand, as James Lewin put it the other day, the iTunes video side of the store is just rip-roaring along with the amount of […]
[…] At this point, the biggest hole in Apple’s iTunes Store offerings is movie selection. While Apple’s offerings are steadily increasing, they still are a tiny fraction of what’s available via NetFlix. […]