Starz Entertainment Group is launching an internet movie download service called Vongo today with Microsoft and Sony, two companies with superb recent track records on DRM success and computing security. Snip from Reuters item:
Vongo is not the first movie download service — CinemaNow Inc. and the Hollywood studios-backed Movielink have been around for about five years.
But it is one of the first to offer a rotating slate of feature films, which currently play on its cable channel, on PCs and portable media devices for a monthly fee.
Collectively, these services remain a tiny portion of all movie viewing and it remains to be seen whether media consumers will take to watching feature-length programming on tiny portable screens, one media analyst said. "This is more of an amoeba that needs to grow," Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group, said.
But much rides on the success of the service. Vongo, which will rely on Microsoft's Windows Media technology to provide copyright management and the ability to let customers watch movies on portable media devices, will also play a role in the evolution of Microsoft's portable media software technology.
Link.
Reader comment: Hal says,
"This is more of an amoeba that needs to grow" Yeah right. You know what happens when amoebas grow, don't you? Dysentery.
