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Apple Launches iTunes video rental store but will it change the market's perception of online rentals?

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So it looks like Apple has launched a rental store for iTunes, which, given their timing, is excellent.  Right around the same time that all of the major studios have come on board to offer digital downloads, Apple came in answering people's concerns that content they wanted would not be available.  There will now be many competitors in the video rental market and I'm sure that Apple's entrance could raise some awareness for online rentals!  Apple still has a few bugs to work out, but I'm sure that it will make for a very strong compete against Xbox Live, Amazon unbox, Netflix streaming/download, MovieLink, and Vudu.  If Apple gets into the market, it may gain appeal to other markets when people understand how convenient online rentals via download / streaming is.

The most exciting thing about Apple's movie rental launch is that it means that Apple has implemented / added support for rental scenarios in their DRM system.  I wonder how they're doing it... Anyways, what this could also mean is that subscription could potentially arrive on iTunes.  It would be pretty exciting for the iTunes customers to be able to access content as all you can eat rather than a la carte.  Another potential outcome from iTunes streaming (yes, this is getting into pretty speculative pontification) is that content providers may open up more content to subscription which would be good for all of the subscription services.

At any rate, things have been very heads down for us lately with the completion of the latest phase in the development of the next version of Windows.  Hopefully, I'll be able to find more time to making more consistent posts.

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