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Barnes and Noble’s Nook HD tablet has finally been given access to a video store, offering both rental and purchase of TV shows and movies. Sadly though, its prices are a little steeper than those offered by the Google Play store or iTunes.
On the Nook store, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix costs a princely £16.09 to buy in HD or £4.01 to rent. Google Play offers it to rent in HD for £3.49 (although has no option to buy) and iTunes lets you buy it for a wizard £10, saving you enough over the Nook to buy your movie snacks to boot.
The Nook’s selection is generally quite good, even including CNET UK’s favourite Miss Congeniality — although again, with the option to buy it in HD for £16.09, it’s much more expensive than iTunes’ £7.99. The selection is missing a few gems like The Princess Bride and Beavis and Butthead do America, but it’s far from poorly stocked.
TV shows are offered too, although they’re pretty difficult to find. Looking into the “Best of British TV” list showed numerous individual episodes of Doctor Who and BBC’s Planet Earth and Life documentaries, rather than grouping them by programme. Doctor Who episodes cost £2.86 each to buy, which isn’t much more than the £2.49 demanded by iTunes.
The Nook however works with the UltraViolet service. On certain supported DVDs and Blu-rays, you buy from physical stores, you’ll be given a code allowing you to download a free digital copy to your device to watch whenever you want. It’s a handy service if you want to save your movies for a long plane flight, but you’ll need to make sure your movies offer these codes.
The Nook HD is a reasonably attractive and fairly easy to use piece of kit, but initially launched without any access to video content. With the video store now open for business, the 7-inch slate becomes much more appealing to media addicts — albeit those with more capacious wallets than Android or iOS users.
Are you a Nook owner? What do you make of the video selection? Is it well stocked and do you think it’s fairly priced? Let me know all your thoughts in the comments below or over on our Facebook page.
