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

The capability to rent downloadable movies has been with us for several years now. The problem for lots of individuals has been twofold; the lack of widespread broadband Internet access, and the requirement to use a computer to view the movies. Even if the computer was successfully hooked to a TV (sometimes no mean feat in itself) for a bigger picture, there were all kinds of other issues affiliated with computer use that made this a less than satisfactory solution for the vast majority of 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 for example Verizon’s FIOS. As more households get broadband the requirement for renting movies via Internet download will increase even further.

The higher gains on the other hand, will come from the introduction of alternative methods of downloading movie rentals. To this end, a great many products and services have been 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, nevertheless they will be accessible to lots of people.

For folks that don’t have cable or for several reasons want another service, you can 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 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 that enables 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 internet, and retrieves movies from the iTUNEs library. As with most things from Apple Inc. it really is well designed and has an easy to use interface. It doesn’t stop at movies either. You may watch TV shows, music videos, and YouTube videos as well. It also allows A/V content through your computer to be viewed on your TV. There’s a 24hr window from the time for movie rentals, immediately after the films vanish, together with your rental fee. It’s like video on demand, but with a significantly larger library.

HD video for the Apple TV is delivered in 720p (You may watch them in 720p or 1080i). With Apple TV 2, the bitrate is about 1/8th that of Blu-Ray, so the video obviously is not as good, but it is not bad either, and you don’t have to get off your couch. An issue for some is that there is absolutely no type of video below component 480i. If you have a mature TV that will not have component inputs, you are Check Out earlymodernconversions.com of luck. Another issue is the FF and rewind performance. The film has to be rebuffered to do this so it does not work like your regular Blu-ray player or cable company’s video on demand.