Wow! 50,000 movies per day!?!! That's roughly $7.5 million dollars per month, minimum (given avg cost per rented/bought movie is $5 - price leaning more to rents than buys).

Maybe that's not a big deal to some, but it sure seems like a lot of $$ for a venue that really only started getting serious a few months back.

My thoughts exactly - it's hard to believe 50,000 movies per day (that's 18 million per year). I wonder how many are rentals as opposed to sales.

just to clarify - Apple's website says that the five billion refers to tunes downloaded...

This was unclear to me in reading the above as all it references is the "five billion mark".

Now, is this the actual figure or the one Apple's PR department pulled out of it's a**. It's not the first time they've been prone to a bit of exaggeration. Didn't a figure of six million become ten million somethings a while back?

I still hit iTunes first, and I know Apple's bound by the record co.s, but if I can get 256 kbps @ Amazon, I do.

So how many Appletv has Apple sold?

Unless sales go through the roof, we probably will never know. Apple still just lumps their sales on their quarterly reports with 'ipod accessories', which isn't very promising, sales-wise.

I know I've started renting movies via AppleTV and haven't rented from Blockbuster for a while.

Apple says their movie library is at the 2000 mark. After browsing through, it's a decent selection but nowhere near what should be there. Apple should probably have 10,000 out there now.

Also, in AppleTV, they need to offer more older movies and provide an easy way to search these older films. Maybe break things down by "Recent Releases" (less than 1 year old), "This Decade", "Previous Decade", "Classic Archives".

My gauge of success for a movie store - physical or digital - is whether it carries titles like Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker or Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Once those are available, I know I'll be able to find just about anything else I'd like.

Feathers-

There is a big difference between fudging the number of songs available for download at the iTunes Store and reporting the number of units sold: Overstating the number of units sold could be seen as an attempt to manipulate the stock price which might catch the attention of the SEC. I rather doubt that Apple has any desire for ANY additional contact with the SEC other than what is required of any stock-issuing company.