Movielink.com and CinemaNow.com both revealed today that they will now offer movies for download (to own or rent) simultaneously with their DVD release to stores. Reuters story here. The price point is a head-scratcher, though: $20-$30 for the ‘own the file’ of current DVD releases. With DVDs themselves selling for less than that, and the fact that with DRM in place users will not be able to burn these downloads to removable media, the value here is seriously undercut, IMHO. Unless you happen to have a spiffy Windows MCE or Viiv setup where you can watch these on your TV screen, $30 for a movie I can only watch on my 20" LCD in the home office (or perhaps on my Powerbook Tablet PC (no Mac support, sigh) is not a great value. I’d much rather get the disc from Netflix or pick it up at BestBuy and watch it with the wife in 50 inches of glorious color. And given the price point of full-length television shows currently selling on the iTunes store ($1.99), I would like to think that given Apple’s history with negotiating their music deals for the ITMS will allow them to cut a better deal on behalf of the consumer – and that their product strategy includes a simpler way of providing hardware that let’s us see these downloadable movies in HD-quality on our living room sets. A guy can hope, right?