AfterDawn: News

Road Runner to launch co-branded version of Movielink

Movielink, a joint online video rental venture owned by the major movie studios, and Road Runner, American broadband provider owned by AOL TimeWarner, announced today that they've signed a multiyear contract to promote Movielink to RR's customers.

Companies will create a co-branded version of Movielink that will be marketed to Road Runner's three million broadband subscribers. Companies didn't disclose financial terms of the deal.



Movielink is the first major online movie rental service backed by virtually all the major movie studios. Company offers a service where American brodband users can "rent" movies, download them to their PCs and watch them during a pre-defined time period (normally 24hrs) as many times as they want to.

Movielink has worked hard during the last couple of month, trying to create partnerships with various entertainment sites, broadband ISPs, etc. Its previous big achievement was unveiled just couple of days ago when Microsoft released its latest version of Windows XP Media Center that will include direct access to Movielink.

More information:

Movielink & Road Runner press release
Reuters
News.com

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 2 Oct 2003 15:07

• Previous article

• Symantec: Attacks via IM and P2P have quadrupled since January

• Next article

• MPEG LA gathers DRM technology portfolio

• 5 comments

• signal

  well i think that this is a cool idea, i support online video rentals. i like this idea, although i am a bit wonderous of the price, and what would happen if a person was to burn this video to a cd, would they be able to play it withought any kind of problems.
  

  unknown_signal

  2.10.2003 18:23 #1

• dRD

  Videos are protected by DRM system, i.e. they wont play from anywhere else other than from the HDD they were originally downloaded to, that's what I've understood. And they "expire" after 24hrs and even that the files are still there, they can't be watched.
  
  Something like Movielink with bit more flexibility (I _do_ want to watch the movies without PC being involved in the process at all) and clearly lower fee than Blockbuster has -- maybe $0.99 per 24hr watching period / $4.99 to "purchase" the digital version of movie for life -- and they might have a very, very good concept in their hands.
  

  Petteri Pyyny
  Webmaster
  http://AfterDawn.com/
  
  Please read our guides before posting questions! Guides are available here:
  http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/

  3.10.2003 01:36 #2

• Ghostdog

  In addition to what dRD pointed out, I´m also a bit worried about transfer speeds when downloading the movie.
  
  Picture this: You have everything planned out for a nice film-evening. Some drinks, chips and stuff like that. You have rented the video via Movielink - but wait! The transfer speed is so low that the movie won´t be ready until the next day.
  That could be a problem.

  3.10.2003 06:46 #3

• telemike

  $1.99 to watch
  $7.99 to buy
  
  Can these files be opened by TMPGenc or other encoder?

  3.10.2003 07:24 #4

• dRD

  telemike: Nope.
  

  Petteri Pyyny
  Webmaster
  http://AfterDawn.com/
  
  Please read our guides before posting questions! Guides are available here:
  http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/

  3.10.2003 07:50 #5