It's not the first time Soderbergh has experimented with different ways of releasing his films. His 2006 film Bubble was released simultaneously on HDNet Movies and to theaters, with a DVD release coming a mere 4 days later.

Traditionally, studios have been reluctant to dabble in simultaneous releases because they worry that people will skip the theaters to watch from the comfort of their own home. But as piracy and digital downloads become the norm, that choice isn't really in the studio's hands anymore. Yet people still go see movies in theaters for the experience, so why not make some cash via digital sales and rentals at the same time for people who wouldn't go to the theater in the first place?

It's an interesting experiment, one that may become more and more common in the future. I makes sense especially with independent films that are traditionally given limited releases to theaters. And movies staring porn stars, as it's awkward to jerk off in a movie theater.

[The Girlfriend Experience on Amazon; Fleshbot Review (NSFW)]

Movie debuts, television series premieres, action trilogies and Oscar-winning films pack Comcast's on-demand service

More Hot Hits Added Every Week to Entertain Viewers and Deliver More High-Definition Choices Available Anywhere, Any Time

Top VOD Titles Include: The Bourne Trilogy, Michael Clayton, the Rush Hour Trilogy, and Academy-Award Winners Ray, Traffic, The Pianist, The Queen, Rain Man, The Departed, Happy Feet

PHILADELPHIA, PA - February 4, 2008 - Comcast, the nation's leading provider of entertainment, information and communications, announced top new titles on its signature video on demand (VOD) service, most available in HD. The new lineup includes:

* Hollywood hits that are available the same day the films hit DVD;
* Hot television series premiering on VOD at least one week before airing on linear television channels;
* Two action-packed, blockbuster trilogies; and
* Special Academy Award-winning films for every movie buff.

The news follows Comcast's announcement of Project Infinity, its vision to deliver exponentially more content choice on TV, including more high-definition (HD), sports, movies, kids' programs and network TV shows, which the company introduced at the Consumer Electronics show on Jan 8th.

"Television viewing has changed and consumers have an insatiable appetite for personalized content delivered directly to their TVs. We're leading the charge and our customers love it" said Derek Harrar, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Video Services for Comcast. "With top titles like the Bourne and Rush Hour trilogies, we're giving our customers more movies, more shows and more HD than anyone else&mdashall available at the click of their remote control."

These new viewing choices are part of Comcast's video-on-demand lineup with more than 10,000 VOD selections available each month. Comcast customers now are selecting On Demand more than 100 times per second, with about 275 million views monthly; and since 2003, the company has seen viewership grow dramatically, surpassing six billion views.

Comcast's On Demand highlights are outlined below, along with links to details about each of them provided by Fancast.com, which Comcast also launched at CES. Fancast.com is the first online destination that enables users to watch, manage and find entertainment content wherever it is available - on Fancast, on television, online, on DVD or in theaters.

Hollywood blockbuster trilogies available On Demand include:

Bourne Trilogy
Available now, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/movies/The-Bourne-Identity/16910/main
http://www.fancast.com/movies/The-Bourne-Supremacy/10291/main
http://www.fancast.com/movies/The-Bourne-Ultimatum/94583/main

Rush Hour Trilogy
Available now, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/movies/Rush-Hour/11286/main
http://www.fancast.com/movies/Rush-Hour-2/8051/main
http://www.fancast.com/movies/Rush-Hour-3/96289/main

Feature films available On Demand the same day they're released on DVD, including:

Shoot Em Up
Available now, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/movies/Shoot-em-Up/91231/main

Mr. Woodcock
Available now, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/movies/Mr.-Woodcock/9015/main

Invasion
Available now, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/movies/The-Invasion/15476/main

The Brave One
Available 2/5, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/movies/The-Brave-One/15335/main

Rendition
Available 2/19, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/movies/Rendition/96130/main

No Reservations
Available 2/12, also in HDhttp://www.fancast.com/movies/No-Reservations/8030/main

Michael Clayton
Available 2/19, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/movies/Michael-Clayton/30659/main

Academy Award-winning favorites this month;
With more than 30 Academy Award-winning movies available On Demand in February, any movie buff can find what they're looking for, with titles like Ray*, The Pianist*, Traffic*, The Queen*, Dances with Wolves, Rain Man, The Departed and Gandhi—as well as family favorites like Happy Feet and Babe* for younger fans.
*These titles also are available in HD.

Premium and free television premieres available On Demand include:

The Tudors
First season available 2/18 to all Comcast Digital Cable customers, even if they don't subscribe to Showtime, also in HD; second season premiering in March, available to Showtime subscribers, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/tv/The-Tudors/95710/main

The Wire
Available now
http://www.fancast.com/tv/The-Wire-%28HBO%29/88049/main

Flavor of Love
Available 2/4, also in HD
http://www.fancast.com/tv/Flavor-of-Love/1706/main

Also available are the highly anticipated series, Whitest Kids U' Know and Pinks, all also in HD, and the movie Husband for Hire.

"It's all happening soon. Most of us are all sort of ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go — there's just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it's being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn't be too long. It's down to fine-tuning, but I'm pretty sure it'll be happening next year, 2008."

"You've got to get these things right," he explains. "You don't want to do something that's as cool as that and in three years time you think, 'Oh God, why did we do that?!"

What the guild's asking for with online or mobile distribution is 2.5 percent of the "distributors' gross revenue." Apparently this is tricky for distributors because it's difficult to tell what percentage of the online audience is new to a show or old hands simply shifting to a different medium—I'm guessing this is a problem for the issue at hand because producers don't want to pay writers twice for the same audience.

But, it seems unfair to only compensate writers for content explicitly purchased by viewers (like on iTunes), particularly as more and more content shifts online supported by ads, even if that ad revenue is nowhere near what is for broadcast for the time being. It's only going to get bigger, so they should get a hold of what they can, while they can, lest they feel screwed once again in a few years. [WSJ]

Movie content is provided by Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., and MGM, and will sit alongside free videos uploaded by users. Exceedingly lame, however, is that all of the studio movies are rentals only, imploding 30 days after you download one or a day after you start watching it.

New flicks go for $3.99, older ones for $2.99. TV show stuff is standard—$1.99 to buy (and keep). Since they're wrapped up in Windows Media Player DRM, you can guess where, how and on what they'll play (or not). Observation: Microsoft must be making a killing licensing their DRM to people, since most of the big digital movie distributors other than iTunes use it.

While overall I find these services to be ill-conceived, limiting and wholly unsatisfactory, if you do decide to buy crippled, overpriced content, a NYT test showed that thanks to BT's p2p setup, it took less time to download a movie than it did from Wal-Mart. Moreover, it seems to solve the issues that the Xbox 360 download service ran into on the first day.

The real question is: "Can BitTorrent compete against itself?" The BT network already offers a vastly superior catalog of content without restrictions (or cost), albeit not so legally. Something else to consider: since they're using your bandwidth to distribute content users pay for, why aren't purchases subsidized according to how much someone uploads?

Verdict: Call us when someone launches a store that offers content worth paying for. Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn't seem so keen on making that happen. – Matt Buchanan

Software Exploited by Pirates Goes to Work for Hollywood [NYT]

Jobs makes it obvious at the end that the letter was penned to head off mounting pressure from several countries in Europe, in particular Norway, to drop its FairPlay system and make iTunes tracks and the iPod interoperable with other players and services, respectively, or risk legal action. But what does the letter do besides that?

Most realistically, it was just a PR move designed to defuse and shift criticism to the record companies while making Jobs (and Apple) look fantastic—all while things stay the same. After all, the odds of the record companies dropping DRM is nil, and he knows it. But look at what he says about the current path: In the "current state of affairs in the industry, [the] customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices." Not exactly a vote of no confidence.

Jobs pretends that he thinks the only reason record companies want DRM is because they have an unfounded fear of piracy. But he knows better. The numbers he throws out—20 billion CD tracks to 2 billion iTunes tracks—show he does. DRM is designed to uphold the CD industry, where record companies control all of the cards and the profits. DRM makes digital music supplemental to, not a replacement of, the CD industry. So that means Steve really is fighting for us, right?

With iTunes, Jobs takes some of that control—as well as some of the profit. And this is when digital distribution is playing a far-second fiddle to CDs. We saw this control come into play when he manhandled the industry to keep tracks at 99 cents a pop—part of that manhandling came in the form of public sound bytes slamming the labels for being greedy.

It's possible he's trying to win the DRM argument (if he genuinely is) the same way: by proclaiming himself willing to help consumers, if only they'd pull him down off of the cross he's nailed to by DRM. Dropping FairPlay would be a minor loss for Apple, whose major source of profits is the iPod, not iTunes. As Jobs said, most of the music on iPods comes from other sources. And even if the tracks aren't wrapped up in DRM, who's to say Apple's going to unchain the iPod from the iTunes program altogether? If iTunes is selling the exact same non-DRM music another store is selling, why go to the other one when you have a perfectly good one integrated with your jukebox/iPod manager? If anything, this would solidify both the iPod and iTunes at the top because there's no need to buy CDs anymore to get DRM-free music.

Finally, as Cult of Mac points out, Jobs says nothing about DRM for video. He can't if he wants to distribute movies from anyone but Paramount or Disney. And the iPhone? A closed system. Apple's not opening anything up anytime soon. It was nice hearing the words from the man himself, but we know DRM is here to stay.

But for all the assumptions we're making, It is also completely possible that Steve is just sick and tired of the music industry, and wants to get his words out on the issue.– Matt Buchanan

iTunes [Gizmodo]

That said, here are some numbers. Movies come in two sizes: the larger "PC" size and the smaller portable one. They dodged the question about the resolution of movies (supposedly they're getting back to us and when they do, we'll let you know) but the PC version is "near DVD quality," which is to say it has a bit rate of around 1.3-1.6 Mbps. TV shows, on the other hand, are decidedly focused on being quick downloads, with a bit rate of 500-800 Kbps for the file.

All of the files are WMV for the time being, and are encrypted with Windows Media DRM. You can burn them for back up—they encourage customers to do so—but right now they're stuck on a single PC with the option to move them to up to "three compatible portable devices." They are working to the expand that, however. Moreover, only PCs (XP and higher) and only IE 6 and up. Firefox support is coming.

As we said earlier, they offer "3000 productions." This is "about evenly split" between movie and TV content, with each episode of a show counting as a single production in that number. No ABC, Fox, CBS or NBC yet, but they're working on it and "would like to be in business with everybody."

The way they got to be in business with "everybody" in the movie business, we should note, is by closely following the studios' set prices for movie downloads, which are designed not to cannibalize physical DVD sales. (Steve Jobs's refusal to cater to that price point, along with the fear of an iTunes monopoly, is why he as of yet, only has Paramount and Disney on board with iTunes.) Strongly emphasized throughout the interview was Wal-Mart's committal to ensuring a strong DVD market.

To that end, we found out how the discounts for consumers who buy both DVDs and digital movies works. Basically, when you buy the physical DVD, you will get a code allowing you to download the "portable" version of the movie for $1.97, the PC version for $2.97, and both for $3.97. (Much like they did with Superman Returns back in November.) This will be the major way the service is pushed and utilized, at least initially. Obviously, the service isn't intended to disrupt traditional means of movie watching.

Part of the non-disruptiveness is given Wal-Mart's view that "the business is new now," and they (along with everyone else) still "need to figure out how it works." So no big marketing campaign, at least for a while. It'll be featured on the site, and there will be some in-store promotion, but nothing big. It's still very much all about the physical Wal-Mart store, but expanding into "multi-channel and multi-format" distribution.

Lastly, while we're not thrilled with the current price points, it was clearly stated that the studio "sets the price," and Wal-Mart is pursuing and will continue to advocate for "a good price for the customer," which we interpret to mean lower prices.

If this service fails, the blame rests mostly on Hollywood's shoulders, since most of these terms were dictated by the studios. Middle America isn't the target for this service, at least for right now, largely due to its beta status, but also, we think, because of the unnecessary restrictions placed on it by the studios, making it too complicated for Wal-Mart's core customers. And that is a big mistake on the part of the "Big Six," one they may soon pay for. – Matt Buchanan

Wal-Mart First to Offer Digital Movies From All "Big Six" Studios [Gizmodo]

Movies will run from $12.88 to $19.88 on the day the DVD drops, while older flicks start at $7.50. All movies will have roughly the same price as the actual DVD at Wal-Mart stores, though. This is also the deal's biggest flaw in our view—why pay almost what you'd pay for the actual DVD? Intriguingly mentioned is the possibility of discounts for people who buy both DVDs and digital videos.

It will also have TV shows from Comedy Central, CW, FX, Logo, MTV and Nickelodeon—all Viacom networks, so maybe we'll see CBS in the mix? TV shows run a bit cheaper than iTunes, at $1.96 a pop. Altogether, it will offer "access to 3,000 productions," though there's no indication as to how that's divided between movies and TV shows.

Topping it off, Wal-Mart has recruited HP to design the store and ostensibly make it more user-friendly than its standard site. We tried getting in to scope it out, but right now it appears to walled off. This is a huge win for Wal-Mart, but it remains to be seen if the Wal-Mart name can drive the market to new heights (with lower prices to boot), or conversely, if it winds up driving people away. Either way, begun the download wars have. – Matt Buchanan

Store? (Roadblocked as of 3 a.m. EST)
Wal-Mart and Studios in Film Deal [NYT]

Like we didn't see this one coming. Sure, the Sundance Film Festival looks like a great place to see, be seen and let A,B,C and even D-list celebs grab lots of free swag, but let's face it, many of the movies shown at the indie festival aren't exactly huge moneymakers. So it's no surprise that the big talk at this year's Redford-fest is about distributing these films through digital means. So, yeah, people like Marvin Jarrett, director of a documentary of Good Charlotte called Fast Future Generation (god help us all), are going to be happy to send this film to your cell phone. In fact, Jarrett, as well as other directors such as Nick Cassavetes, were showing movies that could be downloaded on a T-mobile cell phone with a screen about 1.7 inches x 2.2 inches. Not bad, and I'm sure people will pay more to see an unknown film like this on the go than to sit through it at a movie theatre. Another big discussion was sending independent films straight to digital satellite and cable systems through a digital video-on-demand service.

Indie film market eyes digital future at Sundance [Reuters]