Media Markt has launched a very interesting service on their website, together with partner In2Movies (JV between WarnerBros and Argavo from Bertelsmann). This is clearly a very strong and serious venture combining content creation and consumer sales distribution.

All one needs is to install the In2Movie software (includes DRM management) and then one can start to either rent or buy movies or TV series. I can well see how this works excellently for small screens on laptops or portable DVD players, but they say that it can also be viewed on your TV set.

Now the distribution is actually also done via a peer-to-peer network and not only via central servers.

When I read this I immediately had one thought: The Venice project and the Skype guys are also doing this. Furthermore, this seems to represent a threat for the upcoming iTV box from Apple and its video download service. Maybe Apple will, for the first time, lose against some even better/faster guys? Of course this service is only useable in Germany, Austria and Switzerland so far, so still lots of room for others to capture the RoW.