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Walt Disney has finally sided with one of two leading movie download sites. Beginning June 6, the studio will be releasing its films through CinemaNow on the same day they come out on DVD in stores. The first release in the deal will be Glory Road. CinemaNow movies cost $20 each for new releases and $10 for older titles and they can be transferred to up to three other devices, such as portable players. Disney says they went with CinemaNow because of this slight leniency with copying the downloads because parents like to transfer movies to players in their vehicles for their children's backseat enjoyment.

In April, a competing download site called Movielink signed with a number of studios -- Universal, Sony, Warner Bros., MGM, and Paramount. At the same time, CinemaNow only worked deals with Sony, MGM and LionsGate. Disney's partnership with CinemaNow is not exclusive, though, and they could very well sign with Movielink in the future.

Now that studios are getting with the program, I'd like to meet somebody who has actually used either Movielink or CinemaNow, because I just can't believe they are worth the money right now. Since you can't burn the movies to DVDs and show them on your TV, and the quality probably isn't good enough anyway, there really seems little incentive for the consumer. Then again, I still think buying movies is a waste while there's rental sites available. But at least buying movies can result in impressive libraries or collections, which is important to other people, if not to me. Downloading movies can still only be important to people who do it illegally.

You know that big announcement that Apple's Steve Jobs is scheduled to make this afternoon? Our friend C.K. Sample over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog is speculating that the new big roll out has nothing to do with the new Mac tablet or iPod Video, or any other new hardware gadget caught in the web of hopeful rumor. C.K. says, "The announcement is going to be all about movies coming to the iTMS."

He's got three bits of evidence. First, iTunes used New Music Tuesday to debut a batch of Oscar nominated short films in the Music Store; second, the people who usually get tipped off when Apple debuts new hardware (like Kevin Rose of Digg) seem to have no such edge this week; and lastly, there's this article from CNN Money, by Owen Thomas of Business 2.0. Thomas sites Jobs' buddy-buddy relationship with Disney, the sucess of the iTunes TV show business, and the relatively short-notice nature of these procedings, as reasons to believe that "Apple might go Hollywood".

What do you think about this? The TUAW readers, as usual, take C.K.'s provocation and run with it, and I think the very first two comments on the post are on to something. "Oscars are this week also, a perfect time to roll out some advertisements," writes Ryan Meyers. "I really hope this happens, been waiting for this forever. Instant-cinema." Not everyone is so excited: LD writes: "Would be a shame if it's just movies. I don't want to watch movies on an iPod and without a "media center" type of solution I can't really watch on my 50" plasma, not to mention the quality is crap from iTMS." As C.K. points out, Ryan Block from our big brother Engadget was one of the select members of the press invited down to the Cupertino event. It all leads me to believe that Jobs might not just be rolling out new content – he might also have a new kind of hardware for us to play it on.

The announcement goes down around 10 AM PST/1 PM EST. We'll be watching Engadget and TUAW's live coverage with bated breath.