Rent a Movie Online at iTunes, Not Wal-Mart

The world of online movie rentals took a step back when retail giant, Wal-Mart, stopped renting movies online. Just as quickly as it took one step backward, the online movie rental business is taking two steps forward with the introduction of movie rentals from Apple's iTunes stores.

Wal-Mart's video downloading service was a failed experiment into the world of movies on demand. The retail giant closed their video download store on December 21.

Any movies that were purchased can still be played on the computer that downloaded them. But that's all that can be done with them. They can't be transferred to another device or burned onto a DVD disk. They can only be watched on the computer

Wal-Mart specifically said that the movies they offered for sale were not compatible with portable devices like the Apple iPod, the Play Station Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), or Microsoft's Zune. This factor alone was likely a huge contributor to their failed attempts to sell movies for download.

By contrast, it's being reported that Apple will introduce movie rentals sometime in January 2008. Apple already sells movies online. Renting them could prove to be a match made in heaven.

Millions of people around the world own an Apple iPod. Nearly all of the iPods have the ability to play movies in addition to playing music.

Consumers can already import photos to their iPods and thousands of people already buy movies from iTunes.

The next obvious step is allowing consumers to rent movies from Apple's iTunes store.

Watching a movie on a little one or two inch screen may not be your idea of entertainment, but the convenience is sure to be a hit with millions of people worldwide. People who ride the subway or the bus will be able to have their own entertainment while commuting.

Instead of finding kids disagreeing about what movie to watch while on a road trip, rent several movies for your kids to watch (and hear) while on a road trip or at home. They can do this from the backseat of your car, or even while they're sitting in your living room.

Since its introduction in 2003, iTunes has revolutionized the music industry. While sales of cd's have fallen, sales of songs by iTunes has skyrocketed. As of December 2007, it's been reported that Apple has sold over 3 billion songs, accounting for over 70 percent of music sales online.

As Apple moves into the movie rental business, they will likely find it just as successful as their music ventures have been.

Sources:
https://mediadownloads.walmart.com//mmce/jsp/tvDetails.jsp?id=prod290003
http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-1017706/iTunes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/biztech/12/28/apple.movies.ap/index.html