Tsutaya downloads rental offer

Japanese co. to offer movies on Activila site

By MARK SCHILLING

TOKYO -- Tsutaya, operator of Japan's largest video and CD rental chain, will offer download-to-rent movies and television content on Tsutaya TV, a section of the Activila Internet site, on Friday.

 Tsutaya TV will offer "Transformers" and other new pics to users on demand via broadband Internet. It plans to expand its offering to 200 titles by mid-June and to 2,000 by 2009. Viewers will pay an average of $7 per pic. 

Activila also beams foreign dramas, including "Heroes," "24 Hours," "Hornblower," "Sherlock Holmes" and "CSI," as well as a wealth of toons, docus, music and other programming, both foreign and domestic.  

A big selling point of the service will be its high-def images, viewable on Activila-dedicated 40-inch TV sets.