Feh! The new Apple TV software has been delayed until sometime in February.

Buried in an Apple press release about the release of the MacBook Air, which is on time, is the news “that the new Apple TV software update, which allows users to rent high definition movies directly from their widescreen TVs, is not quite finished. Apple now plans to make the free software download available to existing Apple TV customers in another week or two.”

Or, if you read farther down, it’s that the new release “will be available as a free automatic download to all Apple TV customers within two weeks.” Why?

Well, the official story is that the software’s not ready for prime-time. Unofficially the rumor mill has it that there are still some hitches in negotiations with some of the studios.

I fear the rumor mill may have it right. I mean come on, since we can already rent movies directly with iTunes, what could be that hard about getting the software inside the Apple TV to do the job? If it’s some hold ups with the movie studios, I still expect Apple to release movie rentals by Valentine’s Day.

Apple needs to make Apple TV rentals happen. There are some people, like myself, who were already happy with the Apple TV even without rentals. Most people, though, from all the Apple TV buzz out there, only really got excited about the device when Apple announced you could just rent movies while sitting in front of your television and your Apple TV.

So, I’m sure Apple will make movie rentals possible within the next two weeks. It just might not be as many movies or from all the studios after all.

Darn it.