iTunes HD movies only available for rental, on AppleTV

A lot of people were really happy to hear Steve Jobs’ announcement at yesterday’s Macworld that you will be able to rent movies directly from iTunes. The movie rentals cost $2.99 for library rentals, and $3.99 for new releases. The piece that sealed the deal during the keynote was the fact that you would be able to get the HD versions of movies for only $1 more per rental.

Well Ars dug up a little more information from an Apple rep yesterday, and it turns out you will not be able to use the rent-to-own feature on HD movies. If you thought that was bad, to add insult to injury, the movies are only available for rental from your AppleTV. I don’t know if this is Apple’s way of making you buy an AppleTV, or just a safety precaution for customers who aren’t smart enough to realize they can’t get HD on their iPods, but it sucks.

I like high quality video, and if I could pay $1 more for HD, even if it was only on my computer, it would be a lot more worth it to me and I’d be more inclined to rent or purchase it. Apple made a few mistakes yesterday, it should be interesting to see how it all pans out.

Read [Ars]