Movie Rentals Come to the Android Market
On the same day that Google unveiled its new Cloud-based music service, it also advanced its Android Market further into iTunes territory: movie rentals.
In order to play movies from the new service, you need to have the new Movies App (coming to Honeycomb in Android 3.1 to Motorola Xooms, starting today, and to Android 2.2+ smartphones in the next few weeks) will be the optimal way to view the movies, said Google. Alternatively, you can use a web browser.
However, with the App, a user can use a feature called Pins. Pins allows users to automatically download a rental in the background on their Android device. They will later be able to watch the movie offline, rather than using the default streaming video method. Movies start as low as $1.99, but current movies, as usual, cost $3.99. Once rented, a user has 30 days to start viewing the movie, and 24 hours once they start playing it to complete viewing the movie. [It's the same rental period as offered on YouTube's just-launched video rental service and on iTunes.]
In order to play movies from the new service, you need to have the new Movies App (coming to Honeycomb in Android 3.1 to Motorola Xooms, starting today, and to Android 2.2+ smartphones in the next few weeks) will be the optimal way to view the movies, said Google. Alternatively, you can use a web browser.
However, with the App, a user can use a feature called Pins. Pins allows users to automatically download a rental in the background on their Android device. They will later be able to watch the movie offline, rather than using the default streaming video method. Movies start as low as $1.99, but current movies, as usual, cost $3.99. Once rented, a user has 30 days to start viewing the movie, and 24 hours once they start playing it to complete viewing the movie. [It's the same rental period as offered on YouTube's just-launched video rental service and on iTunes.]
