AfterDawn: Tech news

Movie studios form a joint VOD venture

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 17 Aug 2001 1:25

In surprising announcement yesterday, five out of seven major movie studios announced that they have formed a joint on-demand movie service that will launch within 6 months or so. Service is meant for broadband PC users, who can download a movie to their computers and watch it after paying a fee. Pricing is going to be competitive with pay-per-view services, around $3 - $5 for a movie.
Movie studios involved with the service are MGM, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios (owned by Vivendi), Paramount (owned by Viacom) and Warner Bros (owned by AOL TimeWarner). Only two major studios left out are Disney and 20th Century Fox (owned by News Corp) -- Disney has told to press that it will launch a similiar service through its Movies.com web site later this year.

Technology behind the service was developed by Sony during last 2 years in a project dubbed as Moviefly. Some analysts are guessing that this new joint venture might get in serious trouble from lawmakers -- European Commission and U.S. government are currently investigating similiar music services, Pressplay and Musicnet trying to decide do they limit competition. It would also be interesting to know how studios are going to limit the access for the service so that users outside the U.S. wont have the access to these movies (in many cases the movies are released on DVD in States when they arrive to theatres in Europe).

Previous Next  
Comments have been disabled for this article.

Latest news

Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets (06 Jun 2023 9:19)
Roomba Combo j7+ is the very first Roomba model to combine robot vacuum with mopping features. And Roomba Combo j7+ does all that with a very clever trick, which tackles the problem with mopping and carpets. But is it any good? We found out.
Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations (02 May 2023 3:38)
Neato Robotics has ceased its operations. American robot vacuum pioneer founded in 2005 has finally called it quits and company will cease its operations and sales. Only a skeleton crew will remain who will keep the servers running until 2028.
5 user comments
How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp (20 Mar 2023 1:25)
The world's most popular messaging platform, Meta-owned WhatsApp has enabled sending messages to yourself. While at first, this might seem like an odd feature, it can be very useful in a lot of situations. ....
18 user comments
How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller (11 Feb 2023 1:04)
Google shut down its streaming game service Stadia late last month and this means that some people have Stadia controllers lying around that seem to be of no use. That is fortunately not the ....
2 user comments
Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account (26 Jan 2023 2:14)
Sharing a Netflix account with a person in a different location is possible and indeed very common, although the company doesn't necessarily enjoy this behavior from their customers. However, ....

News archive