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Sonic Solutions, which operates the Roxio CinemaNow service, says they will start selling movies on USB thumb drives in the near future.
Only a few days ago, I speculated that Toshiba getting into the Blu-ray market might signal time for their ultimate plan of combining flash memory technology and movie distribution, which could see Blu-ray quality HD movies being sold and distributed via USB thumb drives.
The Sonic Solutions method will sell movies (not rent, so users get to keep their movies), and is already compatible with TiVo and LG Blu-ray players. Registering online allows up to 5 devices to play the single copy of the movie (so there is DRM). The prices are a bit high though, at $19.95 per movie.
The advantages of USB distribution is that with drives getting bigger all the time, it's not too difficult to imagine Blu-ray quality HD movies to be distributed this way - a dual layer Blu-ray disc is 50 GB, while some USB drives have already exceeded this at 64 GB (and rising). Downloads and streaming are still not able to deliver Blu-ray quality content using the average home's Internet connection. Another advantage is that USB drives are rewritable, so you can use the same drive to purchase movies again and again, assuming there is some place to copy the movies to. This would then allow download kiosks to be setup in shops, which then allows participating stores to have a huge catalogue of movies, as opposed to whatever they can fit onto their shelves.
It seems that the technology is here, but it will now take some marketing, and hopefully not too much DRM, to make all of this work.
More:
Only a few days ago, I speculated that Toshiba getting into the Blu-ray market might signal time for their ultimate plan of combining flash memory technology and movie distribution, which could see Blu-ray quality HD movies being sold and distributed via USB thumb drives.
The Sonic Solutions method will sell movies (not rent, so users get to keep their movies), and is already compatible with TiVo and LG Blu-ray players. Registering online allows up to 5 devices to play the single copy of the movie (so there is DRM). The prices are a bit high though, at $19.95 per movie.
The advantages of USB distribution is that with drives getting bigger all the time, it's not too difficult to imagine Blu-ray quality HD movies to be distributed this way - a dual layer Blu-ray disc is 50 GB, while some USB drives have already exceeded this at 64 GB (and rising). Downloads and streaming are still not able to deliver Blu-ray quality content using the average home's Internet connection. Another advantage is that USB drives are rewritable, so you can use the same drive to purchase movies again and again, assuming there is some place to copy the movies to. This would then allow download kiosks to be setup in shops, which then allows participating stores to have a huge catalogue of movies, as opposed to whatever they can fit onto their shelves.
It seems that the technology is here, but it will now take some marketing, and hopefully not too much DRM, to make all of this work.
More:
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