At my local Smith's right down the street, I can rent pretty much anything I want to see for a buck. "Convenience" ain't worth a premium of $2.99 on top of that.

From the rumors I have read, you have 24 hours to watch the movie from the moment you begin to watch it. So you could wait as long as you want to start it, but once you do, your on the clock.

Personally, I agree, 24 hours isn't enough time, unless it's a "stay at home date," or the type of film that I would take the phone off the hook and brook no interruption until I am done, there is too much possibility of time getting away from me.

I just tried it ... sort of. It's through Tivo.

My Tivo account works with Amazon's Unboxed video service; I rented "Spiderman III" for $2.99, got it sent to my Tivo box via my computer, and had 30 days in which I could start watching it. After I pushed Play on my remote I got 24 hours to watch it as often as I liked. (In this case, one time for me, twice for my kids.) The plot was overstuffed, but other than that the process was painless.

I suspect Apple's system will be the same.

$3.99 to watch a movie on a teeny screen (does anyone really expect Apple TV to go anywhere?), over a limited timeframe. I can see why someone might occasionally watch a movie on ones laptop, but on an iPhone? I have an above-average monitor on my home PC, but comparing it to my 50" plama-- shoot, even to the old tube TV that it replaced-- is like putting my home stereo up against an old casette-deck boom box!

Compare this new service to the ease and- as Farhad rightfully pointed out- low cost of Netflix, and lock it in competition with the growth of on-demand movies in HD, ported to a device actually designed for a quality viewing experience.

But, the Apple Kool-aid crowd will drink it up because Steve Jobs says its good.

that Apple's movie rental plan might suck? You're a journalist, right?

movies are not like music. there never have been and never will be movie jukeboxes. The two models for movie consumers are 1) movie people. This group has a fairly large collection of movies, some of which are watched frequently, others only every once in a while. They watch a lot of movies overall, both from their relatively large home library or through some sort of rental/premium channel setup and 2)casual movie consumers. These people own 10 dvds, rent ten or less a month, which they watch almost exclusively on the weekends. Sure, the itunes thing would hold some appeal to them, but driving to blockbuster is as easy as figuring out how to transfer to TV, etc. Besides, they are picking up a pizza and soda anyway.

I can't resist taking a swipe at the "teeny screen" argument. You don't need an Apple TV or any other specialized streaming device to watch downloaded content on your television.

My home theatre PC is a windows XP machine sitting inside my TV stand. Without any special hardware, it will happily send a DVI (or VGA) signal to my HDTV, which, as far as it is concerned, is just another monitor. I've been using it happily for years, and it is hardly an uncommon setup.

Plug in a nice USB remote receiver if you feel like it, or just get a wireless keyboard and mouse. You're good to go.

Can we please stop pretending that downloadable rentals are about watching movies at your desk on a teeny screen? Whenever I see someone assuming that, I wonder what decade they are living in.

And when are you and the rest of the media going to get a clue and realize that the terms aren't because of Apple, or in the case of Xbox 360, Microsoft (that's right, it's not their fault either - deal with it).

These are the terms the studios demand, and they're not going to give in any time soon.

I don't know what's more idiotic: the terms the studios are demanding, or the reaction of the "press" toward the middlemen trying to offer the service.

... the Netflix Watch Instantly feature has been great. Free a certain number of hours per month per plan. I have already devoured the first season of Heroes and am now into Season 2.

What Farhad is saying, I think, is that the old walk-into-Blockbuster-esque model is not going to fly here. He's right; they've got to get more creative.

My cable bill isn't metered neither is my BlockBuster subscription. One rate, use it as much or as little as you please. If I watch 8 movies a month I'm ahead of the game. If I never turn on the TV then that's $50 down the drain to Time Warner for nothing.

Metering is just another form of screwing you over. Sorry but flat rate pricing is the way to go.

"Does anyone really expect Apple TV to go anywhere?"

Well, yes. More generally, if some vendor -- whether it's Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or what-have-you -- gets their model right for online rentals, then I think a set top box which works with that service will succeed. Might be Apple TV. Might be the Netflix/LG Electronics pre-announced thing. Might be TiVo+Amazon.

Right now none of them seem worth a second look for me compared to getting plastic discs from Netflix, but that can't last forever. The entertainment industry is remarkably good at shooting themselves in the foot, but nobody bats 1,000.

For $25 a month, I can rent four DVDs at a time from Netflix and watch as many on-demand movies as I want. The only drawbacks are Netflix streaming only works on Windows systems running IE 7, and the range of streaming films is limited to about 6,000 titles. However, using Parallels, I can still stream movies on my wide-screen Mac, which came in really handy during my recent bout with the flu. Netflix appears to be steadily growing its collection of streaming content, which users can watch whenever they want, as often as they want. Seems to me this is a much cheaper and more convenient option than Apple's proposed plan. OK, it's still streaming content and not downloaded content, so bandwidth hiccups do occur, although Netflix's streaming software automatically adjusts for changes to the viewer's Internet connection. But I'd rather pay a flat rate for the freedom to watch whatever, whenever than an inflated fee for every time-limited download.