I suspected this a long time ago when we first heard rumors of iTunes movie rentals. Although thousands of people are now thrilled that Apple has introduced iTunes movie rentals – they may not know that only the current iPods are supported by it. That means the iPod Touch, iPod Classic, iPod Nano (3G) and, of course, the iPhone. So even though you thought your fifth generation iPod video would last you to movie rentals – it won’t. At least now you’ll have a good reason to buy a new iPod, rather than most of us thinking “my iPod is out of date now”.
I suppose this could be a way for Apple to get the millions of iPod 5G owners to upgrade to a new one, although people outside the US need not worry yet. I’m not entirely sure why it is that the older iPods can’t support these movie rentals – surely a firmware update could give it compatibility. If there is no technical reason, then it’s just Apple wanting some more sales from the new iPods. To be honest, I wouldn’t want to watch a movie on a 5G iPod anyway. I used to have one that was fine for video podcasts and music videos no longer than 15 minutes. But the iPod Touch or iPhone’s widescreen is a far better experience in terms of video quality and size.
There is an online petition circulating to ask Apple to rectify this issue with a firmware update for older models at: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ipodrent/petition.html.
If technological barriers and (speculative) DRM issues are truly not impediments to older video iPods utilizing the iTunes movie rental service – and, indeed, inspection of the purchased and rental videos show that files & codecs are exactly the same — then Apple has no reason to exclude their many current customers for using the service as it was intended