It's great to see today that Apple have added the ability to rent or buy movies to the NZ iTunes Store.

This means that anyone with an Apple TV unit, anyone with an iPod/iPhone with TV-out or indeed anyone with a Mac, PC or laptop that they can either hook up to a TV or don't mind watching on the monitor now has an alternative to your local video hire.

New releases are priced at $24.99 to buy or $6.99 to rent.

Library releases are priced around $13 - $18 to buy or $4.99 to rent.

I feel these are very reasonable pricepoints and will be compelling to a lot of people.

Renting is very flexible - once you hit 'rent' you have 30 days in which to watch your rental, once you start watching it you have 48 hours to watch it as many times as you like on any platform you like - whether it be your Apple TV, your laptop, your Mac or your iPod, or all of them.

File sizes are around 1.3Gb per movie so could be challenging for NZ's broadband plans, but the appeal of being able to rent a movie any time and without having to take it back can't be overlooked.

Well done Apple -- will we be seeing TV content soon too?

Steve