Digital downloads Vs. movie rentals

Businessweek brought up the idea that services like netflix may be threatened by movie downloading services. A quick trip to Amazon.com's unboxed site shows that you can rent movies via download for .99 and the file will expire in 30 days and once started will expire after 24 hours. Very interesting. Now I had netflix last semester and I LOVED it. I paid $15 a month for the two-at-a-time unlimited plan. On top of that plan I had 15 hours of online movie viewing a month, pretty sweet I thought. On average I probably watched about 2 movies every 5 days or so ~12 movies/month. It looks like I could save money as well as having the convenience of not waiting for snail mail if I took advantage of amazon's rentals.

I'm sure I'm not alone. About 5 years ago movie rental businesses noticed that digital services like comcast's OnDemand and netflix were cutting into their physical store/disc profits. Now online movie rental sites like netflix are noticing a similar change for consumers to download movies rather than waiting for the mail to arrive. It makes sense I think, the way the internet is these days. The service amazon has is a good one, and young people I'm sure are into the DRM free files, as I've said before. Bottom line- with a few cables, next semester I'll turn my computer into a TiVo using Amazon's movie and TV downloads :)