Early this morning the first full length movie of was spotted on Apple's iTunes Music Store.
The iTunes link to High School Musical was accessible and offered a 1 hour 39 minute Disney Channel original TV movie. This 487MB file represents the first full length movie content that has appeared on iTunes. The movie was originally available for only $1.99 which was the same price as most iTunes Video content.
This content may have been posted prematurely, as the movie became inaccessible shortly after the original news item was posted. It has reappeared, but is now priced at $9.99.
Apple is widely expected to offer a iTunes Movie service in the coming weeks, but reports indicate that licensing negotiations are holding up the release. Reportedly Jobs wanted to keep a pay-to-own download model rather than a monthly subscription based model. The High School Musical movie is being sold with the traditional iTunes pay-to-own model at $9.99.
More evidence that this represents a conscious shift for Apple into movies comes from the url:
The url to the movie is:
http://phobos.apple.com/..../viewMovie?id=129860770
Older links are as follows:
http://phobos.apple.com/..../viewAlbum?id=xyz
http://phobos.apple.com/..../viewVideo?id=xyz
