If you’ve ever ordered anything from Amazon, and I know I have, you know that the waiting really is the hardest part.

I sat on pins and needles for three whole days waiting for a copy of Fallout 3: Game of the Year I ordered on Black Friday to arrive, and when it got here, man, was it good.  It’s eating my free time and I’m still not through Mothership Zeta yet.  Don’t even ASK me about The Pitt and Point Lookout.

But anyway, if you’re a home theater buff, you’re going to be extra happy about this development.  If you buy enough DVDs on Amazon–a “select number” is about all they’d say–you’ll be given the ability to download a copy for you to watch while you wait.

Now, this isn’t going to be serious competition to Netflix.  Amazon’s “Disc + Demand” is limited to about .1 percent of its total inventory (three hundred titles out of over three hundred thousand available), so it’s not like people will be throwing over Netflix tomorrow.  But for people who buy a disc for others, they can get a download themselves, so that’s good in its way.  And who knows where it might go from here?