...and the very short version of the story goes like this: iTunes 8 will allow you to easily stream your iTunes video purchases straight from Apple's servers, so you'll be able to play them anywhere and anytime, without using your precious hard drive space. This would have been great a few years ago, but back then, high-speed Internet wasn't as popular as today. On the other hand, today local storage is extremely cheap, so why bother streaming media?
Known as iTunes Replay, the upcoming service from Apple could be free... or not, because this is a side of the story yet covered in darkness. I don't know why would one complain about having to store iTunes purchases on a hard drive or DVDs, because that's the idea, as far as I know - you buy something, you keep it, you rent it, you return it. Well, that's just me, after all.
According to Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn, "We already know that no CDN [content delivery network] has unlimited capacity and can only handle so much traffic at any given time. If you are Apple, using more than one CDN is just smart business." Now, it remains to be seen what's the price of the whole deal for the end user. After all, even when you don't pay for something at first glance...there's still a day for payment, in the future, waiting... :|