[Thank The Cheese]

The AppleTV's rentals is a great step in digital downloads. In the long term I do think it is the future, however it is simply too expensive.

People always forget about the download limit when buying online content, I guess because until now most people have never run up against the limit. Apple and Microsoft are both rolling out HD movie download rental services, which is great, but if you break it down the price suddenly isn't very good, at least here in australia.


1 x movie rental from iTunes = $4 USD

If I'm on a $60 a month plan for 20GB downloads (pretty standard for Australia), that = $3 per gig

iTunes HD movies are 4GB, therefore the bandwidth cost for 4GB rental = $12

So therefore 1x24 hour movie rental would really cost $16


Even if movies were offered for free, it would still be too expensive. Until Apple can somehow fix this issue it simply can't work in much of the world. perhaps cutting a deal with ISPs so that movies don't count towards limit would work, though this strikes me as unfair to other similar services.