The UK television channel Channel 4, is set to offer movie downloads to rival recent announcements from Apple and BSkyB. The films will be under the FilmFour arm of the television station and marks the continuing move towards the Internet of a movie delivery channel.

From Guardian Unlimited Business, Rod Henwood the Channel 4 Business Director talked of what this will entail.

Allied to the relaunch of the TV channel as a free-to-air service available in 18m homes next month, the on-demand operation would offer a vast library of films and take on both Sky and rival services planned by online DVD rental operations such as LoveFilm. "It can aggregate the movies on the FilmFour channel [and in the] longer term all movies,"...

...The company's television extension includes "catch up" programming - opportunities to see recent shows from Channel 4, E4 and More 4 - and paid-for downloads from the archive. Consumer prices will cover renting as well as buying programmes.

There seem to be big moves within Channel 4 and in particular FilmFour, its quite large film arm. First it plans to air free from the end of this month, then services such as video-on-demand and this planned download service will follow.

More details as they come, as yet there's no word on if you can cut these downloads to DVD, watch them on other players, or cost. Still, at least they are starting to realise that the audience wants this service.