Rumors have been flying around that Steve Jobs will announce downloadable movie rentals via iTunes during his keynote speech tomorrow. The rumor pegs the price per download as being $3.99 per movie. That’s pretty close to what you’re going to pay for a new release at your local Blockbuster store. What does this mean for Netflix? It’s obvious that they’re a little worried about it, as they have announced unlimited streaming rentals for customers on their $16.99 a month plan starting today.

For me, this is a no-brainer. I’m currently a Netflix subscriber, and will be affected by this (not that I ever used the 17 hours per month that I was allotted before. Since I only pay around $17, that’s only a buck more than if I rented four movies from iTunes. Looking at my Netflix plan, I get 3 DVDs at a time, plus all of the streaming movies I want. Why would I switch?

I will point out that there are a couple of pitfalls to steaming movies from Netflix. First, you only have a selection of 6,000 titles, though that’s still not too bad. The quality of the movies aren’t the best, but not horrible. My biggest complaint is that I need to hook up a PC to my TV and then open up Internet Explorer (it doesn’t work with Firefox, another complaint) if I want to watch a movie on a decent-sized screen. In all, I think Apple is going to have a tough time taking a significant share of the market from Netflix. Then again, you never know what they have up their sleeve.

Source: TechCrunch