When Apple announced its movie rental program, customers noted with dismay that they only have 24 hours to finish watching the movie. Last week, DirectTV announced that they too have been forced by Hollywood studios to impose the same limitation, according to Information Week on Friday.

When Apple announced its Apple TV Take 2 and movie rental program, some Apple customers blamed Apple for restrictions on the movie viewing. Now, however, there is ample evidence that the Hollywood movie studios are placing these DRM restrictions on all rental services, including DirecTV after April 15th. Prior to that, the DirecTV viewer had an indefinite time to finish watching the movie.

The restriction is problematic because the downloaded video cannot be easily extracted from the Apple TV or a DirecTV DVR.

For a long time, a contrast was drawn between music, which people want to own, and movies, which people don’t mind renting. Just how this new restriction will change the equation is not yet clear. Hollywood has something to gain if people buy a $25 movie on Blu-ray because renting it for $3.99 is too big a hassle. Even so, most observers believe that Internet downloads are the future of movies. As a result of this new policy, however, customers are getting squeezed more and more from both sides of that equation.