If people notice, I guess. The DivX format movies will be available to download (and own) from Film Fresh for about $10 to $15. They'll also be "high-quality", though I haven't been able to get complete video or DRM specs yet. See the quote below for what's been said so far: [DivX]

Consumers have the freedom to transfer their DivX movies via DVDs, USB drives, SD memory cards, and portable hard drives, or streamed over a home network for playback on other registered DivX Certified devices they own-all on supported products from top consumer electronics brands such as LG, Philips and Toshiba.

Nobody's overly excited about Best Buy rebranding an existing service and building it into their website, because, well, it's just not very exciting. That said, it is interesting to see one of the biggest sellers of physical media, i.e. DVDs, throwing their considerable weight behind digital distribution. Those aforementioned "select devices?" Probably just be a few LG web-connected Blu-ray players, and maybe a new marketing pitch for the Xbox, which already supports it.

Sonic Provides Broader Access to Digital Hollywood Hits
Roxio CinemaNow, Available on LG Blu-ray Disc Players, Launching Soon at BestBuy.com

Novato, CA (June 5, 2009) - Consumers will soon have more ways to conveniently access premium digital video content, including new releases from major Hollywood studios often on the same day the DVD is available in stores.

On the heels of the announcement that its Roxio CinemaNow® service is live on Blu-ray Disc players from LG Electronics - providing consumers instant access to digital entertainment in the living room - Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC), today revealed that Roxio CinemaNow will be available on select devices at Best Buy and instantly accessible through Bestbuy.com. These latest initiatives are part of a broader strategy to increase awareness for Roxio CinemaNow, build a compelling digital entertainment ecosystem and expand its reach onto a broad range of home and mobile electronics.

"The exposure Roxio CinemaNow gains through leading CE device manufacturers like LG and top retailers like Best Buy will help educate millions of consumers about the convenience and flexibility of digitally delivered video entertainment," said Dave Habiger, president and CEO, Sonic Solutions. "Consumers will be captivated once they discover just how easy it is to stream their favorite movies to their CE device or PC."

Roxio CinemaNow offers a broad selection of regularly updated premium content, including new releases from major Hollywood studios for rent or purchase. As well as providing access to Hollywood hits, Roxio CinemaNow offers a rapidly expanding ecosystem of compatible devices that provides consumers a more flexible digital entertainment experience through extended multi-device access and playback capabilities. Sonic's device ecosystem, powered by its new Roxio CinemaNow SDK (software development kit), is helping streamline the integration of turnkey premium entertainment delivery, management and sell-through services in next-generation digital home devices including portable media players, Blu-ray Disc players, set-top boxes, mobile phones, Web-connected television sets and PCs equipped with Roxio Venue™ software.

Sonic is at the forefront of digital video distribution, offering high-quality Hollywood movies, TV shows and music videos to consumers across multiple platforms. Sonic has relationships with more than 250 content providers and a content portfolio of over 14,000 titles that include new releases from major Hollywood studios and entertainment from independent distributors as well as broadcast and cable television networks.

About Sonic Solutions
Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC) is powering the digital media ecosystem through its complete range of Hollywood to Home™ applications, services, and technologies. Sonic's Roxio® products enable consumers to easily manage and enjoy personal digital media content as well as premium Hollywood entertainment on a broad range of connected devices. A wide array of leading technology firms, professionals, and developers rely on Sonic to bring innovative digital media functionality to next-generation devices and platforms. Sonic Solutions is headquartered in Marin County, California.

No wonder though, the bit rate averages around 9Mbps and spikes to 20Mbps during action scenes, which totally blows away the competition. Still, that giant flood of data takes a while to squeeze through our tiny broadband pipes, so one downside is that the movie needs a bit of lead time before it's ready to be watched, though you can start the download process remotely from a computer, so it can be ready when you get home from work.

Right now, there's only 65 movies in HDX, though every new movie released will be available in HDX. And while six bucks is pricey for a rental, it's almost worth just to push Vudu to keep breaking new ground in video downloads. Pogue says that it's coming to Best Buy this week, and if you buy one from there before Dec. 31, you get your first $200 of movies for free. [NYT]

This actually jibes with what we heard a few months ago—that Vudu was looking at offering two tiers of HD movies, though there's no guarantee that this is anything more than market research. That's a long time to wait for a quality (and likely, price) bump that your average Joe probably wouldn't be able to tell distinguish from their standard HD stuff. [Engadget]

A few weeks back, I wrote up a piece on Vudu's high-definition video falling short of my expectations. Today I bring you a more thorough report of the three most compelling set-top boxes and their video-download capabilities. Apple TV, Vudu and Xbox 360 all have a lot going for them, but by looking at them side-by-side, you can see how their makers are all taking different paths to get to the ultimate desired end. Dive into the chart, then have a look at the screengrabs from three movies, to really get a feel for the progress, or lack of progress, in the world of HD downloads.

Just so you know, in addition to skipping everything that requires an actual PC (including HP's MediaSmart receivers), I omitted TiVo from the running for now, for two reasons: 1) the Amazon Unbox on TiVo doesn't yet offer HD movie downloads; and 2) TiVo itself is a subscription service, whereas these systems don't charge a monthly fee for the privilege of renting movies.You can see how frustrating it is to pick a winner when you look at the three systems on paper. Fortunately, things clear up a bit when you compare stills I shot at the same time, on the same Panasonic 1080p plasma TV.

Screens from Ratatouille—note that the Vudu shot is standard-definition only:
Screens from 3:10 to Yuma—note that the Apple TV shot is standard-definition only:
Screens from Transformers—here the three devices are all running high-def versions, and I've mixed in a screen from the HD DVD of it as well, for surprising comparison.
Keep in mind that the key here is to compare the shots with each other, as they were all shot the same way. (Note that the same perceived down-rezzing issue I noted before on Vudu's high-def is still obvious.)

Now that you've seen all the evidence I could gather. It's a toss-up to me, though I think for content I have to lean towards Vudu and for pure video quality (and most HD content) the Xbox 360 is hard to beat. Meanwhile, Apple TV is cheapest and lives up to its name with the best access to actual TV programming—though NBC is still painfully absent. How about helping me make the call here?

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Given that the movie download market is still in its relative infancy, Hollywood believes that they don't "need to rush into a deal with Apple." Fools rush in, true—but look at what came of the music industry's reticence to embrace new avenues of distribution.

Moreover, that ever present fear, cannibalization, is also at play, with the studios wringing their hands over the possibility of losing the coin that trickles in from standard PPV. Not to mention that at $2.99, the fee would undercut pretty much everyone else in the game.

What to do, what to do? If Apple wants a rental store, the smart money would point in its favor, though the terms might not be as favorable as we initially heard. On the other hand, smartly leveraging Apple TV (perhaps with a few other tricks up its sleeve) might make the deal too tasty for Hollywood to pass up. What do you guys think? – Matt Buchanan

Hollywood balks at Apple online movie rentals [Yahoo!/Reuters]

The move marks two major breaks from Apple's current offerings, which are download-to-own only and come solely from Disney and Paramount—a rental store with several major studios would not only shift the way users can view movies using iTunes, it would dramatically expand Apple's catalog. Not to mention the number of people using VOD, which is a boon for studios, and no doubt their incentive to come to the table.

Moreover, it makes current digital rental plans, like Xbox Live's Video Marketplace, look like they're giving customers the shaft with their comparatively measly rental windows and higher prices. Can we expect a swift reaction? The hopeful fall debut of Apple's service leaves a lot of leg room for others to step up. Perhaps more importantly, we will finally see the jump to HD on Apple's part? More details as they come. – Matt Buchanan

Hollywood studios in video talks with Apple [Financial Times]

To use the Unbox On TiVo service you must have both an Amazon account and, of course, a TiVo account. First you make sure your TiVo is enabled for movie downloads at the TiVo site, and then go to the Amazon Unbox area, log into your Amazon account, and if you register for Unbox on TiVo by April 30 of this year you get $15 worth of free movies and TV shows. It's a bit of a pain in the ass making sure you're all registered and signed up on both the TiVo and Amazon sites, but once that unpleasantness is overcome, that's when the fun starts.

There's a wide selection of movies from which to choose, and some of them you can rent for $3.99, while others must be purchased for the ripoff price of $14.99, but that's for a fairly new movie such as Running With Scissors. We decided to first try renting a movie, so we picked out The Illusionist, a $3.99 download.

After your first rental, it's a delightfully easy one-click process, where you simply press the "rent now with 1-click" button and then the movie's on its way to your Now Playing queue on the TiVo. Incidentally, you don't need a TiVo to use the Amazon Unbox service, you can download the special DRM-addled Unbox player to your PC and watch its movies there.

The site instructs you that your movie will begin downloading to the TiVo within 15 minutes, and sure enough, after about 10 minutes, a blue light appeared on the front of our TiVo Series 3 HD box, one which we'd never seen before and which apparently means there is content that's downloading rather than being recorded.

At the same time, in the TiVo interface, instead of a red dot next to The Illusionist on the Now Playing list, there was a blue dot. Alas, TiVo wouldn't let me play back any of that movie until it had been completely downloaded.

This is where the DRM comes in, and it's a bit annoying. When you rent a movie, it stays on your system for 30 days, but if you click Play, then the movie will erase itself within 24 hours. Damnit, if I'm paying four dollars I would like to choose what I'm doing with this movie, short of sending it out to the rest of the world. At least with Netflix I can watch part of the movie now and the other part a week from now with no penalty. Plus, for much less than that $4 price I can rent a high-definition Blu-ray or HD DVD movie from Netflix.

Then there's the quality of the movies. It's pretty average-grade standard definition television, letterboxed but not taking up the full screen on our 1080p test equipment. We saw plenty of compression artifacts, and the focus seemed rather soft, but the colors were reasonably saturated and the result was a watchable movie with decent sound. Trouble is, we've been completely spoiled around here with 1080p HD DVD movies, and anything less pales by comparison.

Summing up, once you get all signed up, this is a seamless process that works well, but we were disappointed in the DRM restrictions and the complete lack of high definition choices. Nevertheless, the Amazon Unbox On TiVo service is off to a fair start. – Charlie White

Unbox on TiVo [Amazon]

The idea of having a limitless selection of every movie ever filmed is compelling, but it's rife with so many gotchas that the majority of movie fans are staying away in droves. To put it into perspective, Ben Fritz at Variety offers a sobering stat: the all-time total number of legal movie downloads in history is less than the first day's sales of the DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. That really does suck, doesn't it?

Here are the Top 10 reasons why the idea of digital downloads of movies hasn't gained much traction yet:

1. Pricing: Apple's iTunes store charges $14.99 for a new release and $9.99 for an older movie, and Wal-Mart is expected to come close to matching that except for brand-new releases for which it will charge $19.88. That's comparable to the price of a DVD, but with that you get a disc you can hold in your hand, cover art, a tangible item. Plus, that price is a whole lot more than you'd pay to rent a movie at Blockbuster or have one delivered to your mailbox from Netflix.

2. Meager selection of movies: although Wal-Mart promises movie downloads from the "big six" studios (Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal), it still won't be able to match the vast collection of an ordinary video store, at least not for a while. And the iTunes store's selection of films is so slim, it's just pathetic.

3. No computer in the TV room: Most people don't have a computer near the TV, and getting a downloaded movie from one to the other is awkward at best.

4. Quality: As HDTV finally begins to catch on, even ordinary people are becoming accustomed to ultra-high-quality movie viewing, and downloads are still mired in the world of standard definition. Of course, this will change over time, but that's not happening anytime soon.

5. Force of Habit: It's hard to change the habits of John Q. Public, especially when it comes to comfortable routines such as TV watching. Just look at how long it took HDTV to gain any interest whatsoever. Even some techno-geeks we know are inexplicably clinging to standard definition television.

6. What's the diff?: If you can record, say, Mission Impossible 3 via HBO onto your Series 3 TiVo in full quality HDTV, what's the difference between that and downloading the same movie from the iTunes store? Yes, those staggered release dates imposed upon us by the studios make some downloads (and DVD purchases/rentals) more appealing, but many people don't mind waiting a month or two to get a high-definition viewing of a semi-current movie, rather than going through all the gyrations of downloading that same flick.

7. Download Speed: Many broadband connections are not fast enough to download a movie in a reasonable amount of time. And then, let's don't even think about downloading HDTV movies, which will take four times longer to download.

8. Broadband flakiness: Another problem with broadband connections is that many customers are frequently throttled, where the amount of data they're allowed to download is capped after a certain magical number. Broadband providers are trying to choke bandwidth as much as possible, just to be sure their services are profitable. Sure, might think you have "unlimited" Internet service, but it's only unlimited as long as you don't use it much.

9. DRM bullshit: Even if you are able to solve all the problems with downloading movies, there's still gobs of digital rights management slathered onto that data, restricting how and when you can play it back. Nobody but the greedmeisters at the Hollywood studios likes this.

10. Too complicated: Finally, all of that knowledge and computer know-how needed for downloading movies is simply nonexistent in the skill sets of the average movie viewer. They're just not willing to climb the learning curve to get digital data from the PC to the TV screen when they can effortlessly pop in a DVD.

Until these 10 issues are at least halfway resolved, it's going to be a while before digital downloads gain acceptance for mass audiences. And we, the gadget obsessed, aren't much interested in the concept until we can download at least 720p quality movies that are reasonably current. Our prediction? Digital downloads won't catch up with DVD sales and rentals until at least 2010. – Charlie White

Of course, there's DRM involved in the form of AOL's comically-named "Hi-Q Delivery Manager," and it only works with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6.0 or 7.0. Hey, you better hurry, because the whole beta experiment ends on Groundhog Day. You wouldn't want to miss out on all those great free movies, now would you? – Charlie White

Video Beta [AOL]

"We can't be put in a position where we lose the ability to price our most popular content higher than less popular stuff," said a studio exec close to the negotiations."

What do you think? Let's have a vote. Download movie price poll after the jump. – Charlie White

Apple, studios reportly at pricing impasse on movie downloads [ars technica]

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