Movie rental downloads are the wave of the future. It isn’t rocket science. People want convenience and hate to waste time and gas driving to their local video store. From the film studio’s perspective, the shift to downloadable content cannot come soon enough. The switch to downloadable movies will free movie them from all the costs related to the production, storage, distribution and packaging of physical media. They can still sell the films for a healthy amount, but show increased profits.

The capability to rent downloadable movies has been with us for a few years now. The problem for many people has been twofold; the lack of widespread broadband Internet access, as well as the requirement to utilize a computer to view the movies. Even when the computer was successfully hooked to a TV (sometimes no mean feat in itself) for a larger picture, there were all kinds of other issues related to computer use that made this a less than satisfactory solution for nearly all movie renters.

The passage of time has largely solved the broadband issue. An April, 2008 report from research firm Scarborough Research revealed broadband penetration is up over 300% since 2002. Nationally, 49% of households have broadband Internet access, and that number continues to improve with the continued rollout of services such as Verizon’s FIOS. As more households get broadband the demand for renting movies via Internet download shall increase even further.

The greater gains however, will come from the introduction of alternative methods of downloading movie rentals. To this end, various services happen to be introduced or are planned for market introduction. Most cable companies offer some sort of video on demand rental service. The quality and selection of these offerings vary, but they are available to many people.

For individuals that don’t have cable or for several reasons want another service, you will find other options available. TiVO has partnered with Amazon.com to offer the ability to rent movies from the Amazon Unboxed service. That collaboration has a whole lot going for it. TiVO has a universally praised user interface, offers HD capability from off air or cable services, and integrates the Amazon Unboxed service seamlessly into their interface to make things extremely easy for consumers.

AppleTV is a piece of hardware which allows people to download movies from the Apple iTunes Store for viewing on their own TV. It’s a small, set top box like unit that connects to the web, and retrieves movies from the iTUNEs library. As with most things from Apple Inc. it’s well designed and has a very easy to use interface. It doesn’t stop at movies either. You can watch TV shows, music videos, and YouTube videos also. It also allows A/V content from your computer to be viewed on your TV. There is a 24hr window from the time for movie rentals, and after that the films vanish, along with your rental fee. It’s like video on demand, but with a much larger library.

HD video for the Apple TV is delivered in 720p (You can watch them in 720p or 1080i). With Apple TV 2, the bitrate is approximately 1/8th that of Blu-Ray, so the video obviously isn’t as good, but it is not bad either, and also you aren’t required to get off your couch. A problem for some is that there isn’t any form of video below component 480i. Should you have an older TV that doesn’t have component inputs, you are out of luck. Another issue is the FF and rewind performance. The movie has to be rebuffered to do this so it doesn’t work like your regular Blu-ray player or cable company’s video on demand.