Warners to go "day-and-date" with movie downloads

That means no more 30-day wait for new releases from Warner Brothers to arrive on your favorite movie download service, including iTunes. Will the other movie studios follow suit? Update: Apple just announced that the other big studios will also go day-and-date on iTunes—for only for purchase, not as rentals.

According to the New York Times' tech blog, the CEO of Time Warner revealed during a recent conference call that Warners will now release new movies as rentable digital downloads and through video-on-demand services on the same day that they hit DVD shelves.

In the past, movie studios had resisted the day-and-date approach with digital downloads and on-demand because they feared it might eat into DVD sales.

But after some testing, Warners found that while DVD rentals dipped 3 to 5 percent (a pretty modest dip), DVD sales actually "increased," according to the Bits blog.

Well, good for Warners—but better for us. Personally, I love the conveniance of digital movie downloads (especially the HD variety), and if given the choice, I'd rather download than rent from Netflix—which I did in the case of "Michael Clayton," a Warners movie that got a day-and-date rental release a couple of months ago. But for "I Am Legend," another Warners release—but one that didn't come out on iTunes until 30 days after the DVD—I went the Netflix way and will probably skip the download.

Let's hope that the other studios see the light and do likewise. And then there's the next step, as the Bits blog points out—getting rid of (or at least tweaking) the 24-hour viewing window.

What do you think—would you be more likely to download rather than Netflix/Blockbuster your movies if new releases went day-and-date?

Update: So Apple just announced that serveral of the other big studios—including Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Sony—will go day-and-date for purchase on iTunes, although apparently not for rental. It's a step in the right direction, but frankly, I'd rather rent movies on iTunes, not buy them (for $10 to $15 a pop, in fuzzy SD). That "Michael Clayton" day-and-date release I mentioned above was a rental, not for purchase. 

Related:
Warner Brothers To Rent Movies Online Sooner [The New York Times]