Now CinemaNow too ...

After Monday's announcement by Movielink (read our last posting) that it would employ technology from Sonic Solutions to allow its customers to burn movie downloads to DVD starting from as yet unspecified date, its rival CinemaNow has come forward to declare that from today it starts selling downloads of popular films that can be burned to blank DVDs for use with home DVD players. Walt Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have already signed on to provide content. CinemaNow will also offer films from MGM Worldwide Digital Media, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Lionsgate and Sundance Channel.

CinemaNow’s DVD-burning technology employs Germany-based ACE’s fluxDVD technology. The company offers films starting at $8.99 each, and they’ll include all the features of a DVD purchased in a retail store, the company said, though once a copy is burned, its quality usually goes down a bit as compared to an official studio DVD. CinemaNow’s film downloads can be transferred to DVD only once, but customers will be able to repeatedly watch the movies on their computers.

DVD-burnable Movie Download

Movielink, a Santa Monica, California-based Web film service is signing up a deal with Sonic Solutions technology, which will allow the company to employ Sonic’s DVD-on-Demand software for burning digital copies of films downloaded from the Web to DVD, according to a joint statement from two companies.

Movielink is a joint venture of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers Studios. Movielink offers films for rent for as little as $1.99, and its users purchase movies for as much as $19.99 for newly released titles. Only a portion of Movielink's 1,500-title library will be available for download-to-burn until Movielink clears those rights with its studio investors. Movielink is the first major download service to offer download-to-burn DVD for use in personal computers, and many consumers have been waiting until those DVDs could also be played on standard DVD players linked to television sets.

Currently, film enthusiasts who purchase movies via the Internet can rent or buy from a handful of film download services, but that content can only be viewed on their computers or other handheld devices. In order to restrict piracy, top Hollywood studios demanded that movies be protected by strict Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which prevents movies from being copied to DVD. The problem with such a strategy was that many customers didn't like being forced to watch them only on their PCs. Now, Sonic Solutions is providing DVD-burning software that comes equipped with DRM protection, which would prevent the making of numerous copies.