In another major addition to an increasingly crowded market, AOL announced today that it is launching a movie download store. The company has secured rights to movies from 20th Century Fox, Universal and Sony, in addition to its own Warner Brothers home entertainment titles. The deals also include access to TV shows from the likes of Sony, though much of the TV stuff is older library stuff. Starsky and Hutch anyone?

The company's big differentiator between the older (but studio supported) offerings from Movielink and CinemaNow looks to be greater price flexibility. The store will be selling movies from $9.99 to $19.99, while the others such as CinemaNow all basically start at $20 for anything considered a new release.

Overall, this announcement is a pretty big deal. Still things look to get busier and more crowded over the rest of this year, as Apple, Amazon and others move into this market. Apple is busy negotiating for movie rights, and apparently things are hung up right now on the pricing of movies (Jobs may be learning that the movie industry learned from the music industry's deal with the proverbial devil). Should be a fun space to watch.