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Thanks. This will certainly come in handy.

2 corrections to 99 cent movie site.
$0.99 movies are for each weekend, starting on Thurs, not Tues.
First $.99 movie was Breakfast at Tiffany’s, it was for weekend starting Feb 13th.
Thanks for what I hope will be a usefull service.
Mark

If you could also put the MPAA rating in there as well, it would make it a little more family friendly.  Thanks.

it would be nice to see the movies imdb and/or itunes store rating to see if it’s even worth clicking on the link

can you do this?

thanks for a great service!

Please add a iGoogle Home Page link to your feed so I can put it on my iGoogle page!!

http://www.google.com/webmasters/add.html

I second the rating request. Please add it in the description so I can quickly see if the movie is okay for the kids and not have to open iTunes to find out.  If you really wanna get crazy add an IMDB link in it as well.  Great service THANKS!

could we get an iPhone webclip?

http://vjarmy.com/archives/2008/01/howto_iphone_webclip_icons.php

@Mark: I had originally put Thursday, however the latest movie Changing Lanes was discounted on Tuesday this week.  I think I’ll take off the day of the week for now.

@Jason & Don: The MPAA rating is a good suggestion. I’ll add that.

@Dizzy: I’m pretty sure iGoogle uses the Google Reader RSS app, so you should be able to subscribe to the feed address which is: feed://feeds.feedburner.com/99rental

@Chris:  What’s an iPhone?  J/K. That’s a no brainer I’ll add that as well.

As Mark had mentioned, the first movie to become 99¢ was Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Looks like you overlooked that in your reply to him.

this site will be awesome for those who have apple TV it helps alot Thanxs Guy’z

@Mark & Mike: Added Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the archive.

Please get that RSS feed under control. Old entries keep showing up again.

Our apologies with the RSS feed.  Feedburner has been giving us some issues so we had to resync the feed completely.  It shouldn’t happen anymore.

Thanks for providing this service to the Apple community!  For the life of me I couldn’t find any way to actually find the rental special in iTunes.

Great website! It’s very professional and organized.
It’d be cool if you could include your own review of the movie and also the year the movie was created.
I really like this site!

Thank you!
-Colin

We’ve added MPAA ratings and a Webclip icon for iPhone users.  Thanks for the good feedback.

Both Soul Plane and Bandits are showing up on your website as “Available”, yet in iTunes they are both $2.99

Just FYI

@Aaron: We’ve noticed this too.  Soul Plane is definitely the next 99 cent movie and should reflect that some time today. iTunes isn’t consistent about what time the switch happens unfortunately, so we just set starting and expiring dates to Tuesday (hence the double availability). We think it’s more helpful than not to know what it’s going to be even if it’s a couple hours early. Thanks for mentioning it.

It seems you are still having RSS issues.  I just got ALL your posts delivered to my google reader… again.  buh-bye.

I apologize for the repeat RSS entries.  I’m wondering if the modifications to the original feed to include new content such as the MPAA rating is causing Feedburner to think they are all new entries.  If anybody is familiar with this type of RSS issue please enlighten me, I’m a bit lost on this one.

You guys should consider having an Twitter account to post the 99 cent movie.

TwitterFeed.com will automagically grab your RSS feed and post it.  And it’ll link back to your post.  (This only works if the URL is unique each week).

FriendFeed is another place (it’ll grab a twitter or RSS feed). 

Gary

Good idea, I created a Twitter account at http://twitter.com/99rental It should be updated within the hour with the latest movie.  Hope you’ll find it useful, please share with your friends on Twitter.

Glad you’re on twitter now!  I’m following you.

Cool, ask and ye shall receive!

Follow me too at twitter.com/garylapointe

great idea, hope this gets really popular—i’m going to stumble this later

Love the site, thanks for doing this for the community.

I’d love to see you include links to the movie of the week at both IMDB and RottenTomatoes so that we can click click to check out more about the movies.

Thanks

I just added a Mac OS X Dashboard Widget to 99rental.com
http://www.99rental.com/download

Hello. I like the layout and design of your site--very professional and Mac looking!

I just downloaded your widget and much prefer it over the similar “$0.99 Movie” widget.

For your next version, it would be great if you could make the widget collapsible and/or have a mini mode that would just show the picture and name of the film (perhaps the dates of availability too).

It would also be cool, though probably more involved, to have a coutdown until the movie “expires.” Perhaps this could be done in a “X days remaining” line of text, an “!” icon and/or something that would only appear after a certain amount of time.

Thanks for a nice widget,
Nathan

Thanks for the suggestion Nathan. I’ll keep that in mind if we decide to update the widget.

I came here to suggest the idea of a collapsible widget as well. Kind of like the Movies widget in Leopard--it just displays the poster in minimized mode, and when you click on it then it expands to show the full info.

Thanks for the site and the widget!

"Ghost World” is listed as this week’s $0.99 rental, but if you go to iTunes, it says the price is $2.99.

To complement the previous comment, it seems that “A fistful of dollars” is still at $0.99. This is strange.

This is very strange indeed, I’ve seen this happen before but only for a couple hours.  Perhaps someone at Apple forgot to flip the switch fully.  I’m sure it will straighten out by tomorrow.  Thanks for the heads up!

Well, things seem to be back in order, I just rented this week’s offer.

The pricing is decent. Would have preferred it just a little lower, but OK for the convenience. I’ll be anxious to give this a try. Perhaps, in time, no more trips to Blockbuster to find that movie I’m looking for.

House of Games is still listed at $2.99.  Also tried renting Fistful of Dollars three days during its 99 cent week and ran into errors in iTunes each time.  Others (Fish Called Wanda, Ghostworld, and Bandits) have all worked fine.

Noticed that your domain name isn’t Apple specific. As much as I love my AppleTV, they only have generally one movie per week and it is pretty easy to spot.

I have noticed that it seems Amazon has a few unboxed movies per “week” at 99 cents also. (I don’t know that they have a specific policy of “99 cent movie/week” like Apple does. But I keep finding them. (with a little work)) I haven’t bothered to check out other services.

Might be worth expanding the scope of the website to include any and all 99 cent rentals. That would drive a lot more traffic here and make the site a bit more useful (I can check the iTMS myself… checking many services becomes a chore), and more traffic means more eyeballs, which means a few simple ads (nothing overdone) could pay for the traffic and a little of your time. [Plus my 3% for suggesting the idea. ]

Just as an FYI:

Ronin
Walking Tall
The Good, The bad, and the Ugly
RoboCop

seem to be this “week’s” (or whatever period Amazon uses) films.

Add that to iTMS, and you have ~10hours of movies for US$4.95.

Thanks for the suggestion Geo.  I see the movies on Amazon for $0.99 to rent and I’ll keep an eye on it to see what pattern Amazon has for these special movies. 

It’s not a service I can use myself however as I have neither Tivo or Windows to watch it on.

Mag 7 is a $2.99 rental.  What gives? It’s 6-23-08.

Thanks for letting us know.  It’s hard to know exactly when Apple makes the change exactly. It appears they flipped the switch a little early this time.  The new movie has been added, it’s Robocop http://www.99rental.com/robocop

Hey there,

Great app! Excellent idea. I don’t suppose you’re able to do a UK version, are you? It seems the $0.99 movies on iTunes US aren’t discounted on iTunes UK.

I’m not even sure how to find out if they do a 99p UK rental…

@Antonio: I’m not aware of weekly 99p rentals in the UK iTunes store.  If they exist I would certainly consider tracking those as well.

Any chance you could have a .ics (ical) feed?

I’d love to dump it into my calendar.

@Sanjay: Having an iCal feed would be another great way to syndicate the movies, thanks for suggesting it.  I don’t think I’ll implement that right away but I’ll keep it in mind for the future.  If anyone knows a relatively painless way to take the RSS feed and convert it to an .ics feed, please chime in.

@Damien try this.

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried that script @Antonio and it worked but there are few reasons why it’s not right for 99rental.com

First, it creates a 3 hour event for the movie based on the time I added it to the site.  I think the function we need is an event lasting through the week it’s available. 

Second, you have to manually subscribe through iCal.  It would be better to just have a .ics file to click and automatically subscribe to.

Third, when you install the script on a public server, anyone can substitute their own RSS feed in there which is kinda scary as I don’t want to offer a RSS conversion service.

Please put the year of original release of the movie.

Your site and feed are great.  Very nice design.  I have an another idea for you:  create a site and feed that shows movies recently added to the iTunes store.  For some reason that’s beyond me Apple doesn’t want to do this.

Just found your site.
Looks like it could be a great tool.
But it appears that it hasn’t been updated in a while.
Do you guys update this site regularly?

Nathan, there is only one movie per week. Look for an update on Tuesdays.

fyi - with Camino the cover art for the movie of the week does not ever show up, only the shadow.

Randy, I just checked in Camino 1.6.1 and I don’t see the missing covers.

Great idea!  But when I link to the featured 99-cent video, there is no way to rent it for 99cents…

I’m in Canada - perhaps iTunes.ca doesn’t have this deal??

The deal is only available in iTunes for the US.

Hi,

Thanks for the page, really useful! They’ve just started this feature on iTunes UK as well - any chance of a Brit-centric version..?

New UK section added. You now track the £0.99 iTunes Film of the Week at http://www.99rental.com/uk

Thanks Ian for letting us know Apple started offering 99p films this week.

Brilliant - thanks very much Damien. I’m telling all my friends - get the message out!

As a follow up to Ian’s post, movie rentals is also out for Australia. (Yay!)

Matthew - I don’t see a $0.99 rental special yet in Australia, but if Apple does it we’ll add it to 99rental.com

Any chances you will add Canada? We get different movies that the US version.
This week it’s the usual suspects.

Let me second that, Canada now has the 0.99 rental. Can you add it to 99rental? Thanks.

Canada has been added, this week’s update is coming soon.

THANK YOU!!! for adding canada support!!

you are my new favorite person.

Thank you very much for keeping track of this!
Very much!
-Luc

Could I suggest you change the background colour? The white text on black background makes for an extremely difficult read and leaves the eyes blurry. I suggest if you want to give the “movie theatre” effect to use a lighter grey tone.

What’s happened to the 99p film in Britain? Are Apple no longer doing it?

@Rachel No film this week in Britain, at least not yet.  I’m not sure at this time if it’s been discontinued or if they’ve just fallen behind on it.  You’ll get an update when we know for sure.

This week’s rental is not posted and “Theater of Blood” expired yesterday.

Is there no new 99 cent rental for this week?

@Arielle: Much like last week in the UK, Apple is late releasing a special this week.  I wouldn’t say there isn’t going to be one as it could come later today or tomorrow.

You never realize how much you miss something until it’s gone.  Hurry up, Apple!

How come this week’s rental hasn’t been updated (Oct. 22)? Did Apple bag you? Thanks!

Did Apple stop altogether or just skip this week’s US release? Thanks

This site needs updating!  The current move is 2 weeks old.

It’s back… and this week’s movie is Panic Room. http://www.99rental.com/panic_room

Love your site… it’s been very helpful.

I noticed Apple has started doing “Under $5 Movies of the Week” for purchasing… it would be great if you could find a way to roll those titles into this site as well.

Link to the $5 movies…
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageBigSale_Movies

I love the site design, but the ads really detract from it. Maybe there is a way to place less intrusive ads on the site.

Please note BOTH The Mummy and The Mummy Returns are 99¢ in Canada this week...the site only lists The Mummy Returns, though you highlight all three offerings in the US.

Thanks for the otherwise great work!

Thanks Mark, it will be updated shortly, I’m having to change the design of the site to accommodate multiple movies.

Just wanted to inform you that Legally Blonde is still not expired as a 0.99$ rental as of 2008-12-31, 11:30 EST.

Thanks for making t so easy to locate these rentals.
I’d like to give you guys the “click” for those I choose; however, when I click “rent” it goes to [removed]
and it doesn’t forward from Safari to iTunes, so I have to go in to iTunes & rent it directly, denying you of your credit.
Thanks,
Larry Klein
MacBook Pro OS X (10.5)

Larry, I’m having trouble finding the link on the site/feed that’s not working.  I see the one you pasted doesn’t work, but which movie are you getting this link on?

It would be excellent if the widget could display or cycle all three 99cent rentals… Any chance of an update?

I don’t want you following me on Twitter. I use it for personal friends, and to follow “alert” services like yours. Please stop requesting to follow me. It’s annoying.

Hi there,

I’m assuming you are running some sort of script on Twitter (or you are very persistent!), but every time I decline your request to follow me on Twitter, you automatically request to follow me again.  I realize I could just ignore your request, neither accepting nor declining it, but I just thought I would let you know that these continuous requests are unwanted.

I enjoy following 99Rental on Twitter, so if there is a way to stop these constant requests, please let me know.  Thanks

Sorry for the pestering follow requests on Twitter, I started using a service called tweetbots which auto-follows anyone who follows @99rental.  Being that it’s a script that runs every 2 hours, what I’m guessing happens is that anyone with private updates that declines the follow from @99rental must get asked automatically every time it runs.

Thanks for letting me know, I’ve turned off the tweetbots service now and you shouldn’t be bothered again.

Alerting people to the .99 movie rental deals on iTunes is a great idea. I love how you’ve included the movie info also. Great work.

I like the idea and I keep up by RSS.  The one feature I miss is knowing what year the movie was released.  I often go to imdb to look up this information after reading the description.  If you would include the year or a link to IMDB in the RSS feed I would be a happy camper.

What happened to the list of previously offered movies?

Since the page was getting quite large taking the older movies off the home page allows the page to load much quicker.  Do you find keeping track of the older movies useful? I could possibly set up an archive page with all the past movies.

I too wondered where the past list was, but my reason was because (if I remember correctly), we’ve had a repeat or two recently…

I hope you’ll add the German 99 cent rentals, as well.

I would be very happy too, if you could add the german 99 cent rentals.

German 99ers FTW!