For those of you interested, Amazon has unveiled a video download service for movies and television shows and they're offering a $1.99 instant rebate for your first download.

Since most of the television shows are offered for download for $1.99 that means your first download is free.

Click here to cash in.

I've been downloading television shows via iTunes for a while now. I don't have cable, so that's how I watch TV. I've also been downloading movies through services like Movielink and Cinema Now for a while and I like it (except for the fact that those services require me to use IE instead of Fire Fox).

The movie downloads for all of these services (Amazon included) is from $1.99 to $3.99 depending on how new the films are. To me, that's worth it. I'm terrible about remembering to return movies on time, so downloading them for a 24 hour viewing period and then deleting them back off my computer works perfectly for me.

Of course, it also means I have to watch the movies on my computer, but that hasn't been too big of a deal with my laptop. My woman and I just snuggle on the couch with the laptop on the coffee table. Works nice.

Itunes, used in tandem with a video iPod, will allow you to view what you download on a television (after hooking your iPod to it), so that's a better solution. But Apple doesn't sell video downloads through iTunes yet, though I hear there's plans in the works for that.

This is the future of entertainment, as far as I'm concerned. I much prefer paying for and downloading the few movies/shows I want to watch than paying $50/months for 200 channels most of which I will never watch.