The topic of legal paid movie downloading has been a hot one around The Movie Blog for a long time now. I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of us generally like the CONCEPT of downloading movies for a quick fee instead of having to go out to the local Blockbuster to get it. However, 3 major sticking points have prevented many (including myself) from getting very excited about what we’re seeing offered:
1) Still too Expensive – Most places want upwards of $20 per movie. But even iTunes $14.99 is still a tad too much
2) No extra features – For the most part, when you get these online movies most of the time you get them sans features. I like my special features.
3) You can’t burn the movie to DVD – This is a HUGE one. If I pay $15 for a bloody movie I want to be able to pop the stupid thing in my DVD player and watch it on my Plasma TV damit!
Well now it looks like CinemaNow is going to break new frontiers and offer a solution to items #1, #2 and #3:
Online movie service CinemaNow on Tuesday said it will offer a version of Universal Picture’s “The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift” that customers can download onto a blank DVD the same day it is available in stores.
CinemaNow said the download of the “Fast and Furious” DVD will be available at CinemaNow for $9.99 and will include all the bonus features of the DVD sold in stores, CinemaNow said. In July, the company became the first online service to offer movies that could be downloaded, burned and played on standard DVD players. But the service was only for old titles in the studios’ libraries and not for new DVDs.
So a brand new release, at $9.99 with all the extra features that you can burn to DVD??? Ummm… I don’t know what to say. This is EXACTLY what we’ve been looking for. I do hope this experiment of theirs works out… but WHY ON EARTH DID THEY SELECT SUCH A JUNK MOVIE LIKE TOKYO DRIFT to test this strategy on?!?!?! I’d LOVE to try this service, but no way in hell am I paying $10 for Fast and the Furious Tokyo Farting Drift.
