AfterDawn: News

Starz to make movies available on Unbox and XBL

Starz Media has announced that it will be expanding its online distribution by allowing Amazon's Unbox and Xbox Live to offer its movies and other digital content for sale.

Over 400 titles will be available through Unbox, said Starz, which includes Film Roman, Anchor Bay Entertainment and Manga Entertainment.



Some of the more popular titles to be available will be anime hits like "Ghost in the Shell", "Ninja Scroll" and "Blood: The Last Vampire" as well as horror classic "The Evil Dead" and "The Hills Have Eyes."

Over the past few months, Starz has signed a few large content deals to distribute via Azureus’ Vuze service, BitTorrent, Guba, IGN’s Direct2Drive, Netflix and Starz’s own Vongo.

“These deals represent our company’s commitment to expansion in the growing digital media world,” said Marc DeBevoise, Starz Media’s senior VP of business development and strategy.

Source:
VideoBusiness

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 23 Sep 2007 19:07

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• 4 comments

• ugc

  I don't fully understand those download services. Maybe someone here could ed-u-ma-cate me.
  
  When you download a movie, you have just bought it right? How to you keep it for future use? Do you have to play it thru THEIR player or equipment? I know it has to be DRM infested.
  
  And how is the quality? It can't be as good as a DVD, or it would take a week to get, and that would be on a fast network. Dial up may take a few months to get.
  
  Do you use a service like this and do you like it?

  24.9.2007 09:02 #1

• xhardc0re

  well they rather rent everything out or lease it, so they retain full control.

  25.9.2007 17:34 #2

• borhan9

  Just another agreement between two companies.

  28.9.2007 17:15 #3

• Askar

  On XBL you are really only renting the movies. You have to view it within 15 days of downloading and once you press play you can watch it for one day. You can keep it on your hard drive if you want but would have to pay to watch it again after the one day. As for quality, it is great. Full HD on some, 480P on all. In my experience, an HD movie takes about an hour to download on my cable internet connection, although you can usually start watching it while it continues to download. Usually the play option comes up after about 5% is downloaded. I have only downloaded 720P widescreen movies myself but I assume that the 480P movies would take considerable less time.

  5.10.2007 07:30 #4