Movie rental downloads will be the wave of the future. It is not 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 them from all the costs connected with the production, storage, distribution and packaging of physical media. They may 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, as well as the requirement to employ 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 have been all kinds of other issues affiliated with 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 increase with the continued rollout of services such as Verizon’s FIOS. As more households get broadband the demand for renting movies via Internet download will increase even further.

The higher gains however, will come from the introduction of alternative methods of downloading movie rentals. To this end, a great many goods and 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 lots of people.

For individuals that don’t have cable or for various reasons want another service, there are actually additional options available. TiVO has partnered with Amazon.com to offer the ability to rent watching full movies online from the Amazon Unboxed service. That collaboration has a great deal 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 TV. It’s really a small, set top box like unit that connects to the internet, and retrieves movies from the iTUNEs library. In most things from Apple Inc. it really is well designed and it has an 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 through 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, in addition to your rental fee. It’s like video on demand, but with a lot 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 you don’t have to get off your couch. An issue for some is that there isn’t any type of video below component 480i. Should you have a mature TV that does not have component inputs, you’re out of luck. Another issue will be the FF and rewind performance. The movie must be rebuffered to do this so it does not work like your regular Blu-ray player or cable company’s video on demand.