Online movie service provider CinemaNow became the first company to
allow movies piped over the Internet to be securely burned onto a DVD.
The company’s “Burn to DVD” beta service, which beats rival Movielink to the
punch in circumventing the major copyright issues at hand, lets consumers
download movies from their PCs and burn them once onto a blank DVD for
viewing on a DVD player.
When the file is finished burning, the DVD can be played in almost any DVD
player with full remote control navigation and access to all of the special
features.
Consumers will now be able to purchase, download and burn over 100 movies
and videos from Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Lionsgate, MGM Worldwide
Digital Media, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home
Entertainment, EagleVision and Sundance Channel.
DVDs can be downloaded and burned starting at $8.99. Titles currently
available on a download-and-burn basis include “Charlie’s Angels: Full
Throttle,” “Scent of a Woman” and “Barbershop.”
CinemaNow expects to add more DVDs from content licensors in the coming
months.
The one-time download aspect of CinemaNow’s service is made possible by
secure online DVD distribution software fluxDVD, made by Germany’s ACE GmbH.
Preventing customers from making more than one copy of a movie is a major
hurdle service providers and content licensors had to get over.
Solving that challenge could open the floodgates to a lucrative opportunity,
offering consumers greater control over the content they purchase.
The beta service comes two days after rival Movielink said it
planned to get into the download-and-burn DVD game, although that movie-studio-steered company is about six months away from offering its first such
service.
Movielink, co-owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony
Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Studios, cleared
its own security issue by licensing a special software module from Sonic
Solutions that restricts the number of copies of movies consumers can make.
Such an offering will help service providers offer portable movies to
consumers without jeopardizing copyright laws, which has been a jittery
issue for movie studios’ digital film strategies.
