Best Buy partnering with CinemaNow to stream first-run DVDs to 'all web-connected devices sold'
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Nov 3rd 2009 4:11AM
posted Nov 3rd 2009 4:11AM
Can you live without physical media? Are you ready to buy into owning a license without any physical property to show for your purchase? We hope so 'cause that's the future. Today Best Buy will announce confirmation of its rumored partnership with CinemaNow in a deal that will stream first-run DVDs directly to consumers. Better yet, according to an AP report, the software required to access CinemaNow's video library "will be included on all the Web-connected devices sold in Best Buy's more than 1,000 U.S. stores." If taken literally then wow, just wow... that's a lot of devices. However, since Best Buy sells Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, and there's no way that Apple's going to let a retailer tamper with its devices, we think the AP's wording is a bit ambitious.The idea here is simple: pay once for a DVD then eventually be able to play it on any device be it a television, Blu-ray player, PC, smartphone or some other connected device. The new Best Buy-branded service will launch "early next year" according to Chris Homeister (yes, that's his real surname), as Best Buy gets "into this business in a big way." Remember, Best Buy already announced a streaming Netflix deal and partnerships with TiVo and Napster that will be launching early next year as well. And we've already seen Sonic Solutions, CinemaNow's owner since last year, bunging its 1080p-capable CinemaNow service into every connected-device imaginable -- even 3D content for 3D Vision-ready displays. The whole concept sounds very much like Disney's Keychest which already sounded very much like the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (or DECE) consortium. Hopefully Best Buy will clear up the details later today when this gets really official. The future is now -- too bad US broadband is so yesterday.
Update: It's official. The agreement will allow customers to "buy or rent" from CinemaNow's library of content on "connected consumer electronics" sold through Best Buy retail stores or BestBuy.com. New titles will "often" (note the qualification) be made available day and date of the DVD release. The service will also leverage digital copies to bridge the physical and digital stream worlds. See the full press release for all the detail.
Best Buy Co., Inc (NYSE:BBY) and Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ:SNIC) today announced a strategic relationship that will result in a new Best Buy customer offering in its growing line-up of digital entertainment products. The new on-demand movie and entertainment service will be powered by Sonic's Roxio CinemaNow™ and will allow consumers to have access to buy or rent a vast library of premium content.
To power this offering, Best Buy has entered into a multi-year agreement in which Best Buy plans to license and deploy Sonic's Roxio CinemaNow™ technology and services platform to make on-demand digital content delivery a standard feature on connected consumer electronics devices sold throughout U.S. Best Buy retail stores and BestBuy.com. Under the terms of the agreement, Best Buy acquired warrants enabling it to purchase shares of Sonic Solutions common stock.
Best Buy, one of the largest consumer electronics retailers in the world, has a strong track record of bringing innovative technologies to a broad audience through its consumer-focused marketing, education, and Geek Squad services. To foster the consumer appetite for obtaining on-demand premium content electronically, Best Buy intends to embed the Roxio CinemaNow technology on a wide array of devices - web-connected television sets, portable media players, PCs, Blu-ray Disc players, set-top boxes, and mobile phones - from a variety of manufacturers. Best Buy expects to undertake a marketing program to educate consumers about the increased convenience, flexibility, and choice digital content delivery affords.
With the new Best Buy service, consumers will have access to buy or rent an extensive library of premium content including new movies, TV shows, independent films, and older catalog movies, which they will be able to access on devices in the broad ecosystem. It is anticipated that new titles will often be available on the same day they become available on DVDs in retail outlets. Together with their Studio partners, Best Buy and Sonic plan to also collaborate on new service and content offerings, including those that leverage digital copies to bridge physical disc sales and electronic sell through.
"Best Buy is in a great position to expand the market for on-demand home entertainment," said Thomas Gewecke, president, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. "The combination of Sonic's platform with Best Buy's expertise in selling consumer electronics, video content and technical services creates an opportunity for a wide variety of exciting new consumer offerings."
"Our relationship with Sonic Solutions allows Best Buy to quickly establish a strong position in the digital delivery of video entertainment," said Brian Dunn, CEO of Best Buy. "It also enables us to make deeper and more meaningful connections with our customers and expand our relationships with content owners and hardware vendors to create compelling new home entertainment solutions."
"With Best Buy's ability to drive in-store promotion and education, consumers will come to quickly understand and appreciate the convenience, flexibility, and control that digitally-delivered video entertainment affords them," said Dave Habiger, president and CEO, Sonic Solutions. "With Best Buy's focus, we expect on-demand entertainment to quickly grow into a mass market activity, with digital sell-through and rental becoming a significant new revenue stream for content owners."
Roxio CinemaNow includes Hollywood-approved digital rights management, encoding and adaptive delivery technologies, and secure device-optimized playback of premium entertainment. Roxio CinemaNow's cloud-based media services power devices which consumers can use to seamlessly enjoy video entertainment anytime and anywhere across the broadest range of devices. The Roxio CinemaNow ecosystem includes PCs, connected TVs, set top DVRs, Blu-ray Disc and mobile media players from leading manufacturers such as Archos, Dell, HP, LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, Pioneer and TiVo and is powering internet movie delivery for Blockbuster.
To power this offering, Best Buy has entered into a multi-year agreement in which Best Buy plans to license and deploy Sonic's Roxio CinemaNow™ technology and services platform to make on-demand digital content delivery a standard feature on connected consumer electronics devices sold throughout U.S. Best Buy retail stores and BestBuy.com. Under the terms of the agreement, Best Buy acquired warrants enabling it to purchase shares of Sonic Solutions common stock.
Best Buy, one of the largest consumer electronics retailers in the world, has a strong track record of bringing innovative technologies to a broad audience through its consumer-focused marketing, education, and Geek Squad services. To foster the consumer appetite for obtaining on-demand premium content electronically, Best Buy intends to embed the Roxio CinemaNow technology on a wide array of devices - web-connected television sets, portable media players, PCs, Blu-ray Disc players, set-top boxes, and mobile phones - from a variety of manufacturers. Best Buy expects to undertake a marketing program to educate consumers about the increased convenience, flexibility, and choice digital content delivery affords.
With the new Best Buy service, consumers will have access to buy or rent an extensive library of premium content including new movies, TV shows, independent films, and older catalog movies, which they will be able to access on devices in the broad ecosystem. It is anticipated that new titles will often be available on the same day they become available on DVDs in retail outlets. Together with their Studio partners, Best Buy and Sonic plan to also collaborate on new service and content offerings, including those that leverage digital copies to bridge physical disc sales and electronic sell through.
"Best Buy is in a great position to expand the market for on-demand home entertainment," said Thomas Gewecke, president, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. "The combination of Sonic's platform with Best Buy's expertise in selling consumer electronics, video content and technical services creates an opportunity for a wide variety of exciting new consumer offerings."
"Our relationship with Sonic Solutions allows Best Buy to quickly establish a strong position in the digital delivery of video entertainment," said Brian Dunn, CEO of Best Buy. "It also enables us to make deeper and more meaningful connections with our customers and expand our relationships with content owners and hardware vendors to create compelling new home entertainment solutions."
"With Best Buy's ability to drive in-store promotion and education, consumers will come to quickly understand and appreciate the convenience, flexibility, and control that digitally-delivered video entertainment affords them," said Dave Habiger, president and CEO, Sonic Solutions. "With Best Buy's focus, we expect on-demand entertainment to quickly grow into a mass market activity, with digital sell-through and rental becoming a significant new revenue stream for content owners."
Roxio CinemaNow includes Hollywood-approved digital rights management, encoding and adaptive delivery technologies, and secure device-optimized playback of premium entertainment. Roxio CinemaNow's cloud-based media services power devices which consumers can use to seamlessly enjoy video entertainment anytime and anywhere across the broadest range of devices. The Roxio CinemaNow ecosystem includes PCs, connected TVs, set top DVRs, Blu-ray Disc and mobile media players from leading manufacturers such as Archos, Dell, HP, LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, Pioneer and TiVo and is powering internet movie delivery for Blockbuster.
Read -- AP report
Read -- New York Times
I think there could be a way to stream rented movies to an iPhone without the need for an app, by using a secure Web interface and the newly-supported HTTP video streaming on the device.
This sounds like a pretty ambitious attempt It will be interesting to see if BB can pull it off. My guess is no but im just saying.
~Mitchell
So will this be available through a PS3? It sounds like it would be, and if it is, I'll have a real tough choice betwen Netflix and this new option.
All you can stream for ~ $9/month
or
Rent @ $5/each.
That is a tough choice?
I'm unable to take advantage of this or any download service because my speed is too slow (~1.5 Mbps).
Obama needs to give me faster speed because it's a Constitutional right! All those rich people must pay!!
Bandwidth caps and throttling will take care of this threat to Cable VOD revenues.
Yay, poor quality over-compressed video everywhere.
In theory, this is a decent idea. And it is just another step in the inevitable fall of physical media. But my biggest concern with this type of offering is this: what happens to my license to access the media when the company offering it goes out of business, or shuts down the service? Do I just lose the dozens of movies that I've bought from them? It has to come with some kind of certificate of ownership that I can submit to the original rights holder (you know, the MPAA members) to get my copy of the movie if the service ever goes under. Otherwise, no sale.
And, yeah, there is that whole bandwidth problem. I'm sure the ISPs are going to want to either throttle this, or find a way to tack on a surcharge.
This reminds me of Circuit City's "DivX" player experiment. For anyone who does not remember, Circuit City spent something like $200 million to produce DVDs and players that would play a DVD based on a pay per play model, or, if you were willing to cough up a premium, the DVD would be "unlocked" giving you unlimited plays. That experiment was a complete failure, and I would not be surprised if that was the beginning of the end for Circuit City Perhaps this spells the beginning of the same fate for BB. We have a couple of BBs in our area, but I prefer to shop at my local AV dealer instead - who, incidentally, will match or beat BB's prices.
I have my doubts that this will actually fly, especially with ISPs still threatening to charge customers based on bandwidth used, and I am skeptical that physical media will actually disappear. Perhaps it will, but there is still a large number of people out there who prefer physical media to virtual media.
What I really think is driving this model is an attempt to avoid piracy. Well, I doubt this will achieve that. Rather pirates will probably see this as a new challenge that will eventually be conquered.
I wonder if this is something that will be included on the BB branded Tivo.
It all sounds great, for rentals that is, i will never "buy" a movie like this. Seriously Thomas, are you ready to let Hollywood and Bestbuy sell you a peice of paper that says you have permission to watch this (one)movie whenever you want? Just so you don't have to swich a disc?? Wow, just wow... Not to mention they will still sell you something physically(paper), ontop of which you will still need a web enable player at the T.V. your watching. In most cases this will be a BD player. Again, WOW!! just wow....
No one remembers the MovieBeam experiment Best Buy tried a few years ago? No one?
red: sure, current movie DD services suck because they do limit you on what you can and can not do with your movie.If they truly make one which is buy once use anywhere, then it will be superior solution to physical media.
to all those mentioning piece of paper - let me ask you this, what happens when your dvd goes bad and unusable? You sure wish you had that piece of paper then eh?
DD, done right, is great future for all of us.
I have had some commercial DVD's for 10 years, watched them 100 times, and they still work the same as day one. Pressed DVD's and BD's are not even close to the same thing as a burnt DVD. The idea that you will only have to buy a DD once(when the studios get the acts together 10 years from now, the record compaines still haven't) is laughable. Once you start buying movies that are stored on their server; they have you by the short and curlies. All it takes is them saying that either your upgrade all your movies to this new server that they are going to for a small fee of $100+, or you will lose your movie collection. I guess those slips of paper will be good to dry your tears with though eh?
IF one of my favorite movies were to ever stop working I would have no trouble going out and replacing it. I WISH some of my older DVD's would quit working so the wife would let me upgrade them to BD ;). However, if it was only on DD, no way I'm buying another copy. It's that simple.
A side note, ppl have been telling me for years that this was CD last year and to move to DL music. CD are still here and will be for sometime. Infact I just picked up Nirvana: Live at Reading DVD+CD($21) and the Foo Fighters Greatest hits CD+DVD combo($18). I want to see you find the 25 tracks on Live at Reading, the Concert that goes with it. Sixteen Foo fighters songs, and all the videos for those songs on DD for $39. At $.99 a song, your already at $41. Then you have to store all of it, yay!! But hey. Each to their own. I think I'm going to go listen to the Buddy Holy greates hits LP.
Buddy Holly, sorry if there are any fans I offended.
I agree with Red . . . Physical Media will be here to stay; I don't see JOHN Q SIXPACK (and not the good kind) rocking the world wide web for their HULKAMANIA tales of yore!