AfterDawn: News

Amazon to offer movie download service?

Online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. is reportedly in talks with major Hollywood studios about selling their content as downloads online. Sources say the company wants to create a store to sell movies and TV shows for consumers to own, not just to rent. Last month, it was revealed Amazon was also in talks with major music labels to bring about a service which would aim take a bite out of the market which is currently dominated by Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes service.

Amazon's service would differ from that of MovieLink, as MovieLink is essentially a rental service but Amazon aims to sell content to consumers to own. No details on the possible cost of a major Hollywood movie or TV show were revealed. Amazon is reportedly close to reaching a deal with at least three major studios. The company's reputation, millions of consumers and other services could help make its store a huge success.



IMDB.com is owned by Amazon, and in February the site boasted more than 15 million unique users. Amazon would use this site to draw movie fans to the download store to buy the content.

Source:
Reuters

Written by: James Delahunty @ 11 Mar 2006 17:59

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• 9 comments

• Rikoshay

  I just hope that they supply movies that aren't as easily attainable with this.

  11.3.2006 18:11 #1

• baduday

  How can i download a free movies?

  11.3.2006 22:28 #2

• borhan9

  Sounds preety kewl... but it was already known that Amazon was linked to IMDB... so all i wish is i hope its easy to use...

  12.3.2006 00:44 #3

• Mik3h

  Depends if there is any DRM-type protection.
  
  -Mike

  12.3.2006 11:29 #4

• iccee

  There will ALWAYS be someone who will come up with a way to get around any kind of protection. The idea sounds like it could work for them, and then some hacker will crack their protection mode and there will be much rejoicing...
  
  yay... :-|

  13.3.2006 06:07 #5

• garmoon

  Read in the paper that Sony has all but given up on ARccOs copy protection. They are spending huge amounts and every week someone cracks the newest codes. Poor Sony.

  13.3.2006 12:12 #6

• gogochar

  When will they learn to stop the downloading of movies on today's argumenatively slow broadband speeds? They should just wait until we get speed of 45 GBps or something, Jesus!

  14.3.2006 16:36 #7

• WarForOil

  Yes all the major web based video retailers are jumping on this band wagon which i say is fine, but we all know what they will charge "way over th top" like i-tunes and all the others, the costs of downloads out weigh what they cost to buy in the shops.With movies which will be large files and anyone with 56k download speeds can forget about it for a start, if you are behind a nat protocol usually through a router your download speeds can grinde to a snail pace, again this will take forever.Again doesnt matter if the costs are low people will adapt to the idea, but if the past is anything to go by well the downloads will be grossly inflated for what will be an inferior product.

  15.3.2006 00:53 #8

• worstbaby

  paramount and universal. these two have enormous 1920's to 1970's library's that are virtually unavailable to the average movie buff. i would think they would do alot of business just by making that stuff available for downloads. they say there is not enough demand to justify dvd hard copies but i can assure them that buffs would buy this stuff like crazy on the web.

  17.3.2006 14:23 #9