Best Buy is planning a movie downloading service in a partnership with Sonic Solutions, who have a system already in place called Roxio CinemaNow. The new system will be built into devices sold at stores including television sets, portable media players, computers, mobile phones, and other devices from a variety of manufacturers. Sonic Solution’s stock went up 16% after the news was announced. Although Best Buy bought the digital music service Napster about a year ago in order to compete with Apple, iTunes has remained dominant. CinemaNow is an online movie pioneer according to Reuters and have provided similar services to Dell, and movie rental company Blockbuster Inc. Comcast, NetFlix, and other companies have similar digital distribution methods.
In the modern day online pirating is rampant among many, but especially college students who know where to get music, movies, video games, and television shows online for free. Although the new BestBuy service won’t be in stores by the time this year’s holidays comes around it will be interesting to see the impact of media sales will be affected. Aside from pirating in and of itself, digital distribution is picking up speed and the introduction of integrated distribution in media devices will certainly effect college students. Generally lacking spending money, it would be interesting to see if high school and college-aged students will invest in services like this or get it for free.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2008/05/awin-for-digital-distribution-as-netflix-set-top-box-debuts.ars
1 Comment
November 5, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Sean: I think this is an interesting story, but to do a localization I think you are going to have to think harder about what will make it impactful. If the service isn’t going to be in place for the holidays, how do you make it relevant beyond saying it will happen and asking people what they think? I’m not saying the story isn’t there — I think you are just going to need to narrow the focus and find a peg.