Due to fears about digital piracy, the film industry has taken a bold step, which seems to be doing very well and gaining ground among the masses. Hollywood, fearful of what has happened to the music industry due to piracy, and its providers, under intense pressure, have begun offering consumers the opportunity to purchase movie downloads.
At the moment, only two download services, Movielink and CinemaNow, offer these new services. The new online movie download purchase service is changing the traditional way of releasing movies. Both sites will have the movie downloads at the exact same time the DVDs are released. His will also see Hollywood studios compete with DVD retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster. Hollywood would now also be expanding its sources of income.
Some of the features that Movielink offers include movies from six of the seven biggest Hollywood movies, with titles like King Kong, Saw II, Brokeback Mountain, and the latest Harry Potter movies.
However, there are also restrictions related to this process. While Movielink will provide movies from all studios, CinemaNow will only have movies from Sony, MGM and Lionsgate studios. Movielink will not have Walt Disney (DIS) movies, while CinemaNow will not have Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount, Fox or Disney movies. Early CinemaNow offerings include Memoirs of a Geisha, Brokeback Mountain, Fun with Dick and Jane, etc.
Both movie sites debuted several hundred old movies. Unlike its current services, in which online buyers pay about $4 to rent new movies for up to a month, the movies will be sold at “home video-like” prices. That means each movie will cost around $20 to $30 for newer movies and $10 to $20 for older movies. Between the two sites, CinemaNow is emerging as the more aggressive site, offering some of its new movies for less than $20 as well to drive traffic to the site. He was also offering a two-for-one sale at the beginning of his website, where the second movie is only $4.95.
However, to avoid direct competition with retailers, downloaded movies are available with various restrictions. Both sites only allow downloaded movies to be stored on computers or game players like Xbox that have Microsoft software. Customers will not be able to burn or copy the downloaded movies to CD or DVD players. However, you can share the movies from one computer to another. Customers can also connect their PCs to their TVs to play the movie downloaded from their PCs on their TVs.
This new movie download shopping service is a major change for movie studios, one that is sure to go a long way in curbing piracy. However, many studios are concerned that movies may not be protected if they remain on computers for longer periods of time. However, the effectiveness of this service remains to be seen.