The MacWorld Expo keynote recently ended(for a blow by blow check out TechCrunch and for a complete video of the whole address check out Crunchgear).

The biggest announcements in my mind are that every major studio has signed up for iTunes Movie Rentals, that they will be have 1,000 films by the end of February, and its available today. The other is that the Apple TV will no longer have a computer requirement, have built in Rental support, Flickr support, and HD support. These updates will be a free update to existing Apple TVs and Apple is dropping the price of Apple TV to $229 from $299(some people are really excited about the Air, Apple’s new ultra-thin laptop, but thats not really my cup of tea).

With HD content being available on the Apple TV through the iTunes Movie Rental Store is this the death of the HD DVD/Blu-Ray battle with Apple as the winner? Does this also make Apple the winner of the online rental war as well?

I don’t think so, for the simple reason that even if you have a portable Apple TV, you will still want to buy certain movies and not just rent them, even with movies available for download in HD format the desirability of hard media is still there. If they make HD content available for full download and not just rent, there will still be a use for HD media in hard format to take places without Apple TV to see them.

On the online movie rental front, Netflix still has monthly fees, and while not on demand like Apple, do allow you to get as many movies as you can watch in a month(three at a time for the most popular plan) for ultimately a cheaper price if you are not in immediate desire for a specific movie right then(iTunes Movie Rentals will apparently be available instantly, 30 seconds on fast broadband).

You also only have 24 hours to watch the movie with iTunes Movie Rental unlike Netflix where you can have it forever as long as you keep paying the monthly fee.

Also, films on iTunes Movie Rental will not have new releases until 30 days after DVD release(presumably to not compete with the market of buying titles).

So Apple won’t be winning the rental war or the HD war, at least not with their current offering, although the Apple TV upgrades are promising. They need HD content on both the iTunes download store, and iTunes rental store and not just the iTunes rental store(the announcement says a dollar more for HD content in the rental store, but doesn’t mention pricing for HD format movies for buying) to make their winning the HD war possible.

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