Streaming and Digital Rentals Should Include Special Features

If you rent a digital movie from a service like Apple TV, you won’t get any extra features as you would when purchasing it outright. That’s not how physical rentals worked in the past, and I don’t think that’s how digital rentals should work today.

Physical Rentals Include Special Features

You might think that the DVDs and Blu-rays you could rent from stores like Blockbuster were no different from the version you could buy for yourself, but a rental Blu-ray or DVD is made and distributed separately from the retail version. Which is to say that moviemakers could easily have stripped special features and extra content from physical rental movies if they wanted to. For the most part, however, you’d get exactly the same content on a rental disc than the retail version had. There are however exceptions, as with anything, especially if the retail disc version had the bonus features on a whole separate disc. In which case a single-disc rental would obviosuly not include that content.

Digital Versions Lock Special Features Behind a Paywall

While more often than not, I got to see the special features for a movie when renting it, that’s not the case for digital rentals. When I rent a movie from iTunes Movies (or Apple TV, which is basically the same thing), then there are no “iTunes Extras.” You can only get those by buying the movie outright. As someone who prefers to collect the physical versions of movies that I want to watch more than once, this is rather annoying. Since, more often than not, the digital purchase costs the same or even more than the Blu-ray or DVD would, without the assurance that my movie will evaporate the first time there’s a hiccup in some distant data center.

Instead, it seems that these special features are being pay-walled so that cinephiles who would most like to see them will pay the full price for an open-ended license. However, I only decide if I want to commit to owning a movie after watching it for the first time, and letting me see the special features factors into that decision. So, if I were the type of person who buys digital in addition to renting, including the extras with the rental would make me more likely to pay the full price for ownership rather than less.

Streaming Platforms Sometimes Include Special Features Now

While streaming subscription networks offered nothing but the actual show or movie for a long time, there are now examples of extra features being included with the streaming shows themselves. These include making-of and other featurettes, or classic trailers. It’s not the same as the physical versions of these programs, nor all that widespread, but it’s good to see it becoming more commonplace.

After all, cinephiles and fans of good TV shows are the core audience who’ll keep paying for their subscriptions, and most likely for the best-quality tiers at that. Extra features are exactly the sort of thing we like, and the content already exists. Sure, most of these extras have now made their way onto YouTube, where for some reason they never seem to get taken down, but if I’m forking over the cash for digital streaming convenience, the least they can do is offer the complete package of content.

At Least Let Us Rent Special Features Too!

I fully admit that I’m not privy to any sort of insider information about why streaming providers and digital movie storefronts make the decisions they do, or what licensing loopholes and snafus might complicate letting us rental plebians see the extra features. However, I would be willing to pay an extra buck or two when renting to have that privilege, if it really is something they just can’t include in the rental price as is. Would you?