11/03, 5:45pm
Best Buy deal to give online movies as bonus
Best Buy today struck a deal with Roxio to create a unique online and DVD hybrid movie service for the big-box retailer. The unnamed project hopes to give users buy once, play anywhere privileges: those who buy a DVD in-store will then have access to a CinemaNow-based portal for watching movies both on computers as well as on smartphones and Internet-aware Blu-ray players. Many of the movies will be new releases instead of reprints or old titles.
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09/08, 10:15am
Netgear Digital Entertainer Live
Netgear is adding to its line of set-top boxes with a low-end device that supports 720p HD but lacks a hard drive and built-in wireless. The Digital Entertainer Live relies mostly on its Ethernet-based online access and has built-in support for YouTube, pay-per-view movies from CinemaNow and live internet TV through VuNow. Resembling one of Netgear's internet routers, the small device has both the 100Mbps network link as well as two USB ports for external storage, one HDMI output for digital and one RCA for analog sources. An optional USB adapter brings 802.11n Wi-Fi for those that want it later.
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08/26, 9:20am
Film Fresh DivX Movies
Young movie store Film Fresh today launched itself as the first US-based movie store to provide downloads from larger studios in DivX form. Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony and Warner have all agreed to include both recent and classic titles on the store and as a result have created one of the first few truly cross-platform movie services. Although the videos are still copy-protected, the choice of DivX lets them play on Macs as well as any other device with an official DivX certification, including Blu-ray and DVD players, consoles like the PS3, and even the TVs themselves.
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06/26, 12:40pm
Sonic, Zip movie downloads
Canadian rent-by-mail DVD service Zip.ca said today that it's in talks with Sonic Solutions, the owner of the Roxio CinemaNow movie download service, to bring the first large-scale movie download service in Canada. The partnership will allow PC and portable multimedia device users to download TV shows and movies, making it somewhat akin to the streaming feature Netflix offers its US customers; it's not clear if Zip would shadow this format.
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06/25, 10:55am
Wii to get CinemaNow
Sonic Solutions, the company behind Roxio, on Thursday announced its streaming movie service CinemaNow will be made available for the Nintendo Wii. Sonic will partner with Fujisoft to bring the former's content to the game console via the latter's video-on-demand Everyone's Theater Wii service. While the announcement only covers Japan, its successful integration potentially leads to the service arriving in other countries as well. CinemaNow offers more than 1,500 streaming movies, short films, and concerts to buy or rent.
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04/17, 9:15am
Best Buy Movie Store Rumor
If accurate, a rumor floated today will see Best Buy leap into its own online movie store. Entertainment magazine Variety claims to have heard from movie studio executives that the retailer is talking to CinemaNow and "other online movie services" to establish a link between itself and one of these services. While what's involved is uncertain, Best Buy is likely to arrange for a cut of the revenues for each movie viewed and may promote hardware with that movie service's features built-in.
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04/07, 9:05am
Blockbuster may Exit
Blockbuster yesterday submitted a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that reveals the company doesn't believe it can continue business. The video store is no longer certain that it can remain a "going concern" and may have to stop operations and close its doors if its financial situation doesn't improve in the near future. The warning comes in spite of a $250 million refinancing loan having been put in place just last week; Blockbuster now says there is "no assurance" that it can meet the requirements of the transaction before it's completed on May 11th.
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01/14, 2:45pm
Blockbuster, Sonic team up
Blockbuster and Sonic Solutions on Wednesday announced a multi-year agreement that will have the former deliver its library of digital movies and shows to home and portable electronics devices with Internet connectivity and Sonic software. The companies will also merge their digital libraries – including Sonic's recently purchased CinemaNow – and offer them under the Blockbuster brand, to create one of the largest VOD services on the market.
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01/08, 8:25pm
LG NetCast Blu-ray players
At its CES press conference on Wednesday, LG unveiled a pair of Blu-ray players with a world-first NetCast entertaintment Access, featuring access to streaming HD movies from Netflix, the CinemaNow library and YouTube videos. While both can bring the videos to users’ living rooms, only the BD390 sports 7.1-channel audio support, Wi-Fi connectivity and 1GB of built-in memory. Either can access online Blu-ray features such as BD Live and BonusView content and users can connect their thumb flash and external drives via USB connections for playback of MPEG4, JPEG, MO3 and WMA formats.
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12/31, 12:35pm
LG adds CinemaNow, Y.Tube
LG has announced the addition of two new entertainment options to its network-enabled Blu-ray players, CinemaNow and YouTube. CinemaNow offers some 14,000 movies, TV shows and other videos, and should join YouTube on LG players in the first half of 2009. LG’s only instant-streaming entertainment option is currently Netflix, which provides over 12,000 movies and TV shows, a portion of which are available in HD.
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11/20, 12:15am
Sonic to buy CinemaNow
Sonic Solutions on Wednesday announced it would acquire CinemaNow, a digital video distribution service with over 6000 Hollywood Movies, moving one step further in growing its Qflix service. The move will reportedly blend CinemaNow into the Qflix business group, and adopting the title of Premium Content Group. Sonic is hoping the further concentration of the two services will boost placement of CinemaNow and Qflix drives.
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10/23, 3:05pm
Dell offers music bundles
Dell on Thursday announced it will partner with Universal Music Group to offer buyers of certain Dell computer systems pre-loaded music bundles to help them start their music collections. Each bundle will contain 50 or 100 DRM-free tracks that can be played on any digital media player or burned to a CD. The bundles start at $25 and so cost about half the price of current digital audio track. The content will be instantly accessible when buyers power up their Dell computers for the first time, saved in the widely used MP3 format and so not trapped to any one program or portable music player.
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10/14, 4:40pm
Pioneer, Qflix DVD burners
Pioneer has teamed up with Qflix to allow users to create DVDs from downloaded content from the video download site, the electronics company announced on Tuesday. The two Pioneer drives, the internal DVR-2920Q and external DVR-X162Q, feature Qflix DVD Download & Burn technology that allow users to save the downloaded movies and TV show collections from CinemaNow on a format that is easy to store, find and play. Like the Dell drives with Qflix technology introduced last month, the Pioneer burners will require special blank discs in order to create movies.
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09/15, 12:40pm
Dell intros Qflix drives
Dell announced on Monday it has partnered up with Sonic Solutions to make Qflix DVD drives that, together with software and special DVDs, will allow users to legally record downloaded movies to DVDs with formatting and DRM that works both on other PCs and in home theaters. The downloads will come from the CinemaNow service, though how many and which DVD titles or TV shows will be made compatible with Qflix is not known. The limit is a requirement to purchase DVDs from Roxio, which also supplies the software for the drive, to make the process possible.
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