The idea is to let consumers pay for service once and eventually watch movies on any device, from television, personal computer to media player and smartphone, stated Chris Homeister, senior vice president, Best Buy.
The movie streaming facility will be offered on almost all the devices being sold by Best Buy in more than 1000 stores in the nation.
Simpler online movie distribution
The online service market is increasingly becoming competitive. Companies like Apple’s iTunes, Netflix, Amazon.com are already offering services.
To outflank rivals, Best Buy’s top priority would be to make the whole process of distributing movies simpler.
The company’s biggest advantage is its retail stores. Considering this, Best Buy will be marketing the new service through its store with training guiding the customers through the process of downloading movies.
The company has yet not named the service, which is expected to be operational early next year.
Tapping emerging market
With this new alliance with CinemaNow, Best Buy is hoping to carve a niche for itself in the delivery market, as selling just hardware has, over the years, increasingly lowered profits margins.
For the same reason, the company has acquired the music service Napster and tied up with Blockbuster and Netflix, the online movie rental services.
Ryan Pirozzi, director of digital media for Best Buy was quoted by Los Angeles Times as saying, "Digital is developing as a channel and we're forecasting that by 2012 it will be a significant, double-digit percentage” of the revenue from movies watched at home."
Even CinemaNow, the online video provider, hasn’t achieved much success with its 'movies on demand' service. With its tie up with electronic retailer, the company is hoping to reach to larger audience to turn downloading movies into a mass market phenomenon.
Currently, Cinema Now is offering more than 20,000 film titles, mostly new releases, through its online service.
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