2008 brought movie rentals to the iTunes Store.

A concern that remains unaddressed is the miserly rental time. Although you can wait to play a rented movie for up to 30 days, once you start playing the movie you have just 24-hours to complete watching it. Fortunately, there’s a for extending playback of your rented movies. (Essentially, pausing your movie and not touching the Apple TV again until you’re ready to resume playback.)

Into the stream

Although the Apple TV didn’t take off in 2008, neither did any other set-top box. What did take off, however, was the notion of streaming content to the living room. Apple was certainly in there pitching, but so too was Roku with its and . And on the Web, drew interest as a way to stream content from Hulu, SHOUTcast, The WB, MTVMusic, and NetFlix (computer only, no Apple TV support).

Subscriptions slipping