Sorry, Steve

Steve Jobs made a few announcements yesterday, and as usual, probably every man woman and child on the planet has heard the news about new and improved iPods etc. Heck, you can even find a few hundred articles that talk about his decision to ditch the mock turtleneck.

Most of it was the expected better, faster, cheaper. The Nano I bought last month (on a special promo) is now smaller and has a clip. The youngest member of our household is hoping that the iPod Touch will be drop-shipped from the North Pole in late December. (Steve finally admits that the iPT is just an iPhone Lite). The AppleTV is no longer a hackable Unix-based stripped-down Mac, but (if rumors about its use of iPhone OS are to be believed) an iPT without a screen.

However, I think the new iTunes movie policy is crazy: no sales, $1 for renting a TV episode, and $5 for renting a movie. Maybe he’s just greedy or not serious; I don’t know.

Maybe it’s because the studios are fighting him and demanding ridiculous royalties; certainly the decision of CBS and NBC to boycott the effort suggests the studios are not cooperating, although the NBC recalcitrance (even pre-Comcast) is déjà vu all over again.

Movie rentals are a commodity. Right now I rent my movies for $1 from a kiosk at my grocery store. In other cases, I pay $0 to rent movies or TV episodes from the library, or $0 to watch TV episodes on a website.

Meanwhile, Netflix will gladly rent me movies and some downloadable content for $9/month. That includes downloads to a Wii, PS3, Xbox360, iPad or AppleTV.

Why would I want to pay $5 for a single movie rental? If the studios conspire to embargo movies from the discounters for 60 days — and somehow avoid antitrust scrutiny — then it might be possible to charge a premium for hot new releases. Otherwise, it’s hard to see how anyone — save perhaps rich Silicon Valley elites who have more dollars than sense — would pay more than $2-3 for a download that’s available in so many other ways for a heck of a lot cheaper.