It's interesting that Japan get a clock (no Australia, which is a bigger market). Just last week Japan got the ability to purchase & rent movies, and that this announcement comes so soon after is probably not a coincidence. So something with the store, and something to do with movies.
Making this big a deal of an announcement, so close to the holiday season, makes me think that it's also something that is intended to give people a reason to buy Apple hardware.
Side note: Back when AppleTV2 was unveiled, Jobs said that you would be able to rent movies "day and date" with DVD releases. That hasn't been true to this point - embarrassingly Iron Man 2 which he demonstrated on stage wasn't available for rental until the DVD had been out for some time.
So I'm going to go with better movie rentals - earlier availability (perhaps much earlier, for a premium), possibly bundled movies, possibly the removal of the stupid contractual stuff where some movies become unrentable due to TV deals and hampers the library.
I'm sure Apple would love to give lots of families a reason to buy themselves an Apple TV's for Christmas this year, particularly with Boxee/Google now pushing into that market.