In this new age of technology, one of the very real battles appears to be the one to dominate the living room. While cable television providers are still holding on, more and more companies are coming out with devices that will allow users to “cut the cord” and watch streaming television rather than live shows. Some cable companies have managed to fight off this onslaught by actually teaming up with certain companies to bring their broadcasts to computers. Other companies, like Apple, are ramping up the fight by expanding into more and more homes, with the end result to attempt to choke off cable companies all together.
In its latest attempt to win the living room war, it appears that Apple TV is now allowing users in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia to purchase television episodes straight through their devices. In the past, the only way you could buy television episodes was through iTunes and then stream to the Apple TV device. It should be pointed out that Apple has not announced this change, but it came rather quietly through an over-the-air update and that the update's performance is spotty at best.
This may be a situation where Apple never intended for this update to be released yet, but was still tweaking it. Whether or not it takes a little while to get the update, it is apparent that Apple is taking the next step in making their streaming device just a little more popular.
While some of the individual episodes are free, just like on iTunes, most are priced at $2.49 and are the user's to keep as long as they want. These are not rentals but rather full-on purchases. The high-definition version of the episodes are apparently costing about $1 more. The reports that the purchasing is not actually working right now is a bit of a puzzle but it seems like we we can assume at the very least that Apple is looking to aggressively expand. There have been no comments on this nor any explanation of when they may expand the service further.
Edited by
Tammy Wolf