IP Democracy: CinemaNow Breaks One More Online Movie Barrier

Online movie service CinemaNow is announcing today that it has broken through one barrier that is holding up the online sale of movies: it will sell for $9.99 a downloadable version of “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” that can be burned on a DVD viewable on any player at the same time it’s selling it in retail outlets via DVD.

CinemaNow CEO Curt Marvis thinks this will be a catalyst to the wider release of movies on the Internet. Not only is the film viewable on standard DVD players, and hence watchable on TV and not restricted to PC viewing as has been the case, but customers can get the film without a trip to the store.

An earlier barrier broken by CinemaNow, allowing customers to burn movies to DVDs that can be viewed on ordinary players, is apparently paying off. Marvis says that CinemaNow’s roughly 100 download-to-burn titles that can be watched on TVs are downloaded at a rate five times higher than the computer-only films. (Plug here: Over at IP Media Monitor, we’re hosting an audio event on October 4 on movies-over-the-web featuring execs from AOL and Movielink, with more speakers to come.)

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on September 26, 2006 7:17 AM to IP Democracy