Can’t Rent Movies for Older IPod Models ?

Apple’s new iTunes Movie Rental service cannot be played on 5G iPods, despite the fact that the devices can play other type of video. Wired.com have a theory about this which they’re trying to get Apple to confirm or deny; in the meantime, here it is …

“When Microsoft first told me about its plan to launch subscription DRM (then called “Janus”) that is capable of expiring content on devices, Microsoft staff at the meeting explained that the linchpin of the system is a “secure digital clock” inside certain supported portable media players, which cannot be altered by software, and which the DRM system uses to determine whether a user still has the rights to play a file. (Did the user pay their monthly subscription fee? Has a movie expired?)

I have long maintained that Apple would have a hard time launching a music subscription service, not only because Steve Jobs thinks they’re the wrong approach, but also because legacy iPod models, lacking a secure digital clock, would be incapable of playing subscription files. If Apple wanted to launch a music subscription, it would have to release new devices with such hardware included.

That appears to be exactly what has happened here with iTunes Movie Rentals. Jobs has said for years that renting movies makes sense whereas renting music doesn’t. When it came time to launch a movie rental service, Apple had to start including secure digital clocks in the latest round of devices. Connected devices like the iPhone have other ways of checking content permissions, but for such a service to work with iPods, the rental system would require something resembling Microsoft’s solution, with a secure digital clock, unless there’s something I’m missing (granted, I’m a tech journalist, not an engineer). My theory is that only the latest iPods have the clock, which is why previous models can’t support movie rentals.

Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about this sort of thing, but I have a question in with a contact there, and am hoping they’ll confirm my theory.”