[Hal06]

source: Forbes

Almost two months after most Hollywood studios started selling movies via online download, The Walt Disney Co.'s Buena Vista division has entered into an agreement with online distributor CinemaNow to do the same.

Beginning today, CinemaNow users will be able to choose from 30 Disney titles, including National Treasure, The Pirates of the Caribbean and Chicken Little; the studio will also begin selling online downloads "day and date" with their DVD releases, beginning with the June 6 release of Glory Road. The deal does not include movies from Pixar, the animated movie studio Disney acquired earlier this year.

A person close to the matter said Disney was attracted by CinemaNow's plans to make the downloads playable on portable devices, including media players made by French electronics manufacturer Archos. Until now, CinemaNow had only allowed consumers to watch downloaded movies on their PCs or laptops.

Meanwhile, no Hollywood studio has struck a deal yet to sell movies via Apple Computer's popular iTunes online store, which does sell music videos and one-hour television shows.

[paul w]

From CinemaNow's website:

You must use Internet Explorer Version 6 or higher on a PC running Windows 2000 or later in order to use the CinemaNow service

Boooooooooo!

[greenamp]

I think Apple will eventually offer paid movie downloads from iTunes. But most likely they would have to significantly upgrade their iTunes Store network infrastructure. 10 bucks says that new building site they just purchased has something to do with this.

[Salty]

I don't think that the new space has much to do with it, they use Akamai for their distribution of most things. And I don't think Akamai being second to only Google last time I heard for sheer computing power is really in need of any upgrades any time soon. All Apple would have to do is use Handbrake on a lot of DVDs and get the rights from the studios