A few minutes ago I rented the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room from Amazon's Unbox video download store. Until today, every video I've rented from Unbox has had the same restrictions: You have 30 days to watch the movie, and once you hit play you have 24 hours to finish it. After the expiration of either limit, the movie disappears from your hard drive (in my case my TiVo).

Today, however, I received a slightly different confirmation message. "Once you have pressed play for the first time, you will have 168 hours to watch that video." That's 7 days, quite a step up from what I'd seen in the past. David Pogue would be pleased.

Apparently the 24 hour deadline still holds for most major studio content on Unbox, but quite a few documentary and independent films now give the renter a week long rental. Let's hope this expands to more movies in the coming months and that Amazon can strike similar deals with the big studios.