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Rhapsody has officially announced the DRM-free MP3 store today. According to Rhapsody it was because of the incompatibility to the iPod that hurt their market share. Before this announcement, Rhapsody was a purely subscription based company. You could stream all sorts of songs on your computer, but could never put them on a music player.

The new MP3 store has a normal pricing structure at /$.99 person, and an album being $9.99. They boast a 5 million song library which will all have MP3 files available to download. While this might just sound like another carbon copy of other music download services, Rhapsody offers full track previews instead of 30 second clips.

A patent application from Apple was made public today, which looks to be a patent for DVR.

Perusing through the patent, a couple of key ideas jump out. First, would be the ability to tune into live shows, and record, or rewind and pause on Apple TV. Another key element of the patent, would be the ability to hook up your iPod or iPhone. Once hooked up, Apple TV could detect the shows on your media device, and be able to select future recordings using that method. Once recorded, the shows then could be sent to your device for portable viewing.

As of now there has been no official announcement from Apple. But patents aren’t just made without reason, so this is something to definitely look forward to. Let’s just hope it comes sooner rather than later

BitTorrent has launched a new service that’s going to sell TV shows and movies in direct competition to iTunes - and like Walmart it appears they have opted for a Microsoft DRM solution and consequently excluded all Mac users (as well as any user outside the United States - although this is not due to DRM).

The following studios and networks have joined the service:

• 20th Century Fox
• Comedy Central
• Lionsgate Films
• MTV
• Paramount
• Spike
• Warner Bros.

You can rent movies at $2.99 and 3.99 as follows:

Usage Rights
You may watch this on one computer. You have 30 days from the transaction to download the file and 24 hours to watch it after you first click play

System Requirements
It looks like your system doesn’t meet the Minimum System Requirements. You can still purchase this title here, but please note that you may only watch it on a Windows XP computer meeting the requirements.

Windows XP, a BitTorrent Client, IE6+, and Windows Media Player 10+. View Full System Requirements.

Availability
This title is available only to residents of the United States.

I guess we have to wait for the rest of the studios to join iTunes and hopefully have all the media we want in one convenient place. In the meantime as a Mac user you can of course still use the normal BitTorrent service and application for other content available through the network.