More Choices for Movie Downloads

I was in an all day meeting yesterday, went home, didn't read the internet or listen to the radio. I watched a rented movie, blogged about Hulu for the fourth time straight, going on and on about how they had 10 movies for free from two studios.

Boy, did I miss the news yesterday! This morning I found out that Steve Jobs announced Tuesday that iTunes would have 1000 movies available by the end of February from all major movie studios. I don't know how limited that selection was in the past--a post from TechCrunch from 2006 seems to indicate the only major studio they had was Disney. Downloads will cost $2.99, with more recent releases priced at $3.99 and high-def at $4.99. Depending on your connection speed and the distance to your nearest video store, it could compete with Blockbuster for price and convenience.

But is this revolutionary? I just checked Amazon Unbox, which offers identical pricing, similar download speeds, and they seem to have 4235 movies. While I don't know how many of those are from major studios, I think Apple may be playing catch-up in this regard, for once.