DirecTV Puts Limit On PPV Movies

March 24, 2008 By Digital Trends Staff

DirecTV has changed tack to put a 24-hour limit on watching its pay-per-view films.

If you’re a DirecTV subscriber and you watch their pay-per-view moves, you’ll shortly notice a c change. A big change. The company offers the moves via digital video recorders, but from April 15, once you’ve downloaded the film you’ll only have 24 hours in which to watch it. Currently there’s no time limit. According to the company, the blame for the move lies with Hollywood. "Major movie studios have required that satellite and cable providers alike may no longer allow their customers to view these recordings for longer than 24 hours," DirecTV was quoted on Information Week. Currently DirecTV charges $3.99 for a movie, and no prince change has been announced. It brings the company more in line with other services. Under iTunes, for instance, a user has 30 days in which to watch a downloaded film, but only 24 hours from the time the movie has been started.

Showing 4 comments

Tom Luoma at 9:24am 22nd April 2008 Goodbye PPV -- hello NetFlix
Peter robbed paul at 9:06am 25th March 2008 Umm no thanks. This is why I like a physical copy of something I pay for, even if its a rental. I remember the old days of PPV, you could keep it on your DVR however you like. Now they want to limit that. Totally dumb and shows a lack of trust in consumers.
John at 6:57pm 24th March 2008 It pretty much stinks! That means I have to be able to watch that stupid movie in a four hour window from 6 pm - 10 pm at night, because I sleep and work the rest of the time! If that's the only time I have to watch, and it is, why would I rent or record onto my DVR? That was the best part of the DirecTV rentals - that you could rent and watch a lot later, like on the weekend. I never rented before when you only had 24 hours to watch the rental - before the DVR. I guess I am back to not renting from DirecTV anymore! These guys are being real jerks! But that's no surprise since Blockbuster owns and runs the movie rentals for DirecTV! Just trying to save their brick and mortar stores...
Larry at 10:17am 24th March 2008 So you pay the same price as you would for renting a movie at Blockbuster, and only have 24 hours to watch it? No-thanks guys...stop trying to rip off consumers. Netflix is the way to go.

Any idea how long you have to watch a PPV from Fios?