Online video service CinemaNow and Best Buy are planning to launch a movie download service this summer, according to a published report.
Variety, a film industry trade magazine, quoted unnamed sources in its report about how Best Buy is talking to CinemaNow, as well as other Web movie services, about offering film downloads.
The magazine noted that Best Buy is advertising job openings for digital-movie executive positions on such sites as PaidContent.org.
Why Best Buy would partner with CinemaNow is still unclear. The service was eclipsed by much more influential services, such as those of Apple's iTunes and Amazon.com, long ago. Variety reported that Best Buy had previous plans to open an online video store, but those apparently fell through. Representatives from Best Buy were not immediately available for comment. Spokesman for CinemaNow declined to comment.
The news comes as a swarm of services attempt to deliver films via the Web. Some, including Hulu and YouTube, offer films to the public free of charge and support their offerings through the sale of advertising. Netflix charges a subscription fee for users to view films, while Apple's iTunes charges for digital downloads.
In an effort to keep pace with rival Netflix, Blockbuster has announced a partnership to offer instant access to its video library through various home and portable devices.
The movie rental company has partnered with Sonic Solutions to offer more than 10,000 movies for rent and sale to a variety of PCs, cell phones, portable media players, Internet-connected televisions, and Blu-ray disc players. The collection of offerings will be a combination of titles from Blockbuster and CinemaNow, a movie downloading service that Sonic recently purchased.
"Blockbuster is a ubiquitous entertainment presence in the physical world. Through this alliance with Sonic, we plan to become a ubiquitous presence in the digital world as well," Jim Keyes, Blockbuster's CEO, said in a statement. "Our goal is to offer consumers the most digital content, the most accessibility, via the most devices, both in and out of home."
While Blockbuster already has an existing library of online titles, thanks to its earlier acquisition of MovieLink, the CinemaNow partnership could get Blockbuster content onto more third-party boxes, such as all of the LG Blu-ray players and home theater systems announced at last week's CES
The partnership is Blockbuster's latest attempt to match Netflix, which has expanded past its DVD-by-mail service to offer movie streaming on Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console, Blu-ray players, and TiVo digital video recorders. In November, Blockbuster introduced the MediaPoint player, a set-top box that--like Netflix's Roku--offers on-demand content to a consumer's TV.
Blockbuster plans initially to sell videos or rent them on a pay-per-view basis, but the movie rental chain said it is considering offering a subscription plan for unlimited access to Blockbuster's digital library.
Netflix already provides a free Web-streaming service to customers who are signed up for a monthly subscription that costs at least $8.99.
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