According to Apple’s January 15th Apple Premieres iTunes Movie Rentals With All Major Film Studios press release:
iTunes Movie Rentals launches today and will offer over 1,000 titles by the end of February, including over 100 titles in stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound which users can rent directly from their widescreen TV using Apple TV.
As it’s the last day of this long February, let’s see how that’s going.
On my Apple TV I examined the All HD area and found that Apple’s close to the promise of 100 HD movies. The total as of the morning of February 29th is 91 HD movies. Note, however, that not all are offered with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound.
Choose All Movies on your Apple TV and you’ll find 351 titles for rent.
Dash to the iTunes Store from your Mac or PC and you’ll see that you can rent 378 titles if you use the All Rentals link. Use iTunes’ Power Search feature, however, and 399 titles appear. When you select iTunes’ All Movies link, 770 titles appear, the combined total of movies for rent and for sale.
Unless you’re willing to count different versions of the same movie separately—standard def, HD, available on Apple TV, available through iTunes application—it appears that, unless there’s a substantial influx of new titles in the next few hours, Apple has missed the over-1,000 titles mark.
Happy as I am with the selection of movies I can currently rent from my Apple TV or computer, I’m hoping that, similar to the iPhone SDK, Apple’s other February promise becomes reality in early March.