Most consumers are well aware of legal music download services such as iTunes, Yahoo and Rhapsody, however when it comes to movie download services, not many are aware that there are actually a couple of services out there, including CinemaNow and Movielink. The legal movie download service CinemaNow, which currently leads the market has already announced deals with MGM, Sony Pictures and Lionsgate and has just partnered with Disney Co. to offer its movies through its service.
The latest Disney movies including "Glory Road", "Flightplan" and "Chicken Little" have already been made available through CinemaNow and Disney's upcoming movies "Eight Below" and "Annapolis" will be made available through the service the same day as their DVD releases. Pricing will be $20 for new releases and $10 for their other releases; however CinemaNow expects prices to drop once digital download sales become more common.
Unfortunately, the movies downloaded from CinemaNow do have copy protection restrictions in that they are crippled with Windows Media DRM. Consumers are able to play back movies on suitable portable media players, over a network and on up to three computers if transferred to DVD. Unfortunately, any movies transferred to DVD retain their DRM and cannot be viewed in DVD players.
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CinemaNow president Bruce Eisen said prices are likely to drop as digital formats become more prevalent. CinemaNow already shaves the cost to consumers with discounts and promotional pricing offers, he said. |
If one compares the songs sold on iTunes to CD singles, there is clearly a significant different in the pricing, however unlike a CD single, an iTunes song does not come with any fancy jewel case inlet, never mind the disc itself. However, with the pricing CinemaNow is charging for its Disney releases, there is no way I can see this competing against DVDs for a number of reasons:
First of all, the pricing is similar to a DVD, yet does not come with any discs or jewel case inlets. Next, consumers are restricted to watching their movie on a PC or WMV DRM compliant portable media player and cannot create a DVD from them that would be compliant with regular DVD players. When it comes to the content, the downloadable version likely leaves out most (if not all) the bonus content included on the DVD and the picture quality may not even be up to that of DVD considering the mixed reactions with the sound and video quality of the Windows Media codecs. Cconsumers cannot freely carry their movies about and risk losing their purchased movies if they do not take care to backup their movies or take care of their licenses. Finally, by the time the movie finally downloads, it would probably have been quicker to take a trip to the store to buy the movie, not to mention doing away with these limitations! :p CD Freaks content, please show appreciation by linking back if you copy.
In my opinion, for a movie download service to succeed, the service will need to over proper DVD burning with compatibility with existing DVD players and offer pricing cheaper than the DVD equivalent. For example, if iTunes charged the same price as the CD single for each song it sells, chances are that it will not be doing as well as they are now.
Feel free to discuss about movie download services on our forum in this section.
Source: Reuters
