iTunes South Africa has started making movies available for rent and for sale to South African consumers, although no TV shows are available for viewing yet.
iTunes South Africa's soft launch of films to consumers follows a week after Apple's online music store started selling music in the country.
iTunes South Africa now joins pay-TV provider MultiChoice's DStv BoxOffice as a service where, over the internet, broadband limited South Africans can access video in the form of commercial films for a fee. SouthTel which promised a similar video-on-demand (VOD) service which the company said would start a year ago, has failed to commercially implement the service for South Africans and gave no new starting date.
iTunes Movies includes a selection of South African films such as Semi-Soet and Liefling which can be rent or bought.
As iTunes South Africa starts clearing rights for video-on-demand (VOD), it's expected that the movie selection will grow and that television shows - first library titles "box sets" and then newer shows and episodes will be added as has been Apple's modus operandi for iTunes in other countries.
iTunes South Africa makes movies available in either high definition (HD) or standard definition (SD) and can be rented for different prices on both, ranging between R30 (SD) to R40 (HD). Movies can also be bought. Users get 30 days to start watching a movie once rented on iTunes, as opposed to DStv BoxOffice's 48 hours, although DStv BoxOffice movies are R5 cheaper where the same movie is available on both VOD services.
