What Happens to DVD Extras in the Digital Age?

One interesting phenomenon of the DVD era is how much bonus material is often packed onto the disc: from "making of" documentaries to Q&As at film festivals to director's commentary to fan-generated content. Blu-ray DVDs come with even more goodies.

But one question I've been thinking about lately is: what happens to all this stuff in an era when most people consume movies as digital downloads, sent directly to a PC, mobile phone, or TV?

You'll notice that when you download or rent a movie today from iTunes, Amazon, or Movielink, you're getting the feature only. There's no way to buy, for instance, Robert Rodriguez's fun "Ten Minute Film School" and "Ten Minute Cooking School" videos that have shown up on his DVDs. You can get commentary from Francis Ford Coppola on the Blu-ray release of the "Godfather" trilogy, but not when you download "The Godfather" from Amazon's video-on-demand department.

Here are two scenarios. I'm curious what you think (and perhaps you envision other scenarios):

Scenario #1:

All of these goodies that are today DVD extras eventually become available on the Internet for free. They're used to help market the original theatrical release of the film and get people into theaters, or later to get persuade to purchase or rent the digital version. (Remember, this is a world where DVDs are fading into the sunset.)

Scenario #2:

Some of the goodies become available on the Internet to market the movie in advance of its release. But some expensive-to-produce, in-depth pieces of content (like a great "making of" documentary, or an interview with an ordinarily reclusive director) carry a price tag. For an extra buck on your digital rental (or an extra two bucks on top of the download-to-own price), you might get this bonus material. Or, you might buy it a la carte for a couple bucks after you've seen and enjoyed the movie.

Here are a couple of interesting examples of content that's circulating on the Internet to promote movies, which just a few years ago would've only existed on DVD.

- Maurice Sendak talks with director Spike Jonze about how the book "Where the Wild Things Are" was originally received. Intended to promote Jonze's "Wild Things" feature film, which is coming out this October.



- William H. Macy and Kate Micucci sing "It's Time to Get Laid" (and play ukelele!) to promote the DVD release of the indie comedy "Bart Got a Room."



What do you think? I certainly would like to see filmmakers find a way to earn extra revenue from the extra stuff they produce -- but perhaps it'll be just as valuable as an engine that helps drive ticket or download sales.

Pioneering Download Site CinemaNow: Worth Just $3 Million

(Of course I didn't abandon my beloved CinemaTech... just took a long Thanksgiving vacation.)

Feels important to note that earlier this month, the pioneering digital download site CinemaNow was sold for a piddling $3 million to Sonic Solutions, a company that makes DVD-burning software. Founded in 1999 (before Movielink, and way before iTunes), CinemaNow had raised more than $30 million. Lionsgate Entertainment had been the main investor in the company, which offered rentals, downloads, and also the ability to burn some movies to a DVD.

Earlier this year, Curt Marvis, the long-time head of CinemaNow, shifted over to a digital media gig at Lionsgate.

Here's the official press release.

Good Luck to Ya! (Blockbuster Will Unveil Set-Top Box)

Blockbuster wants to be sure it still has a connection to consumers once movies go digital, so it's apparently developing its own set-top box for the holidays, according to PaidContent. The device will deliver movies from the Movielink service that Blockbuster now owns. From the coverage in Home Media Magazine:

Analyst Edward Woo with Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles said the set-top box device sounded ambitious, but wondered how consumers under pressure from the current economic downturn would receive it.

“Until I hear more concrete information, I'm not sure how receptive consumers will be and whether it will be different or better than other boxes out there or planned be out there,” Woo said.

Blockbuster downplayed posting a third-quarter (ended Oct. 5) net loss of $17.8 million and 2.7% decline ($33.6 million) in total revenue to $1.2 billion, citing a limited slate of movie titles and competition from Olympic telecasts.

Update: Venture capitalist Bijan Sabet thinks what we need is an open set-top box that will let anybody deliver content to it and build applications for it.

Disney, 'Sleeping Beauty,' and 'Kitt Kittredge': Help Me Understand This

I freely admit that sometimes I am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, so perhaps you can help me understand this...

While I was on my book tour in October, I kept seeing ads on billboards and bus shelters for Disney's release of 'Sleeping Beauty.' (I also read this review in the New York Times.) Disney refers to this as the first of its "animated classics" to be released on Blu-ray.

There are two options for those who want to buy 'Sleeping Beauty.' For about $24 on Amazon, you can get a package that includes a Blu-ray DVD and standard-definition DVD. (The Blu-ray disc has some interactive BD Live features, too.) Or for $15, you can get a two-disc standard-definition DVD set.

What you cannot do is download 'Sleeping Beauty' on Movielink, CinemaNow, iTunes, Amazon, or any other legal marketplace for digital movies.

I happened to have a chance to talk with two execs, one at Disney and one at Pixar, about the situation.

My point: why spend all that marketing money to remind people about the existence of a 50-year old movie if you're not going to offer it in all the formats people might want to watch it in?

Also, Apple said last year that there were 500 million active iTunes users, and about a million new downloads of the software every day. The most optimistic projections about Blu-ray players envision that there will be about ten million of them in use by the end of this year. (And yes, that includes those built in to Sony's PS3 game console.)

So you're going to spend millions of marketing dollars to sell to a potential audience of 10 million instead of 500+ million? I own some Disney stock, and that don't make sense to me as a shareholder.

I heard a number of rationales for why Disney would re-release a classic on disc, but not make it available to families that wanted a digital download to watch on their laptop, iPhone, or iPod. Among them:

- We'll eventually do a digital release of 'Sleeping Beauty' and we'll do another marketing campaign then.
- 'Sleeping Beauty' is more targeted at Disney-philes and collectors, not actual children
- We want to promote the Blu-ray platform
- We feel people will be confused by our promotion of Blu-ray and BD Live as a high-quality, interactive, high-pixel-count experience...if they are also presented with the option to buy a lower-quality digital version.
- You have to master a movie all over again especially for the download version.
- Movies sold on iTunes just don't look very good. (This ignores the fact that iTunes, Movielink, and CinemaNow all support HD or near-HD content.)

Contrast Disney's approach to the one Warner Bros. took with its release of 'Kitt Kittredge' last week. The movie is available on iTunes, Movielink, or Amazon as a $3.99 rental or $14.99 download. (For some reason, the download on Movielink is a bit more expensive.) The $16 standard-def DVD comes with a digital copy for your PC or Windows portable media player, as does the $27 Blu-ray disc.

(Unfortunately, the Warner Bros. "digital copy" won't play on the iPod or a Mac. That's a problem, and it makes Apple owners feel like they're paying for something extra that they can't enjoy. But at least interested viewers can purchase an iPod/Mac-compatible copy from Apple.)

So would someone explain to me how the Disney strategy makes sense?

Movies You Can't Buy Online

Ever try looking for some of your favorite movies on iTunes, Amazon Unbox, Movielink, or any of the other legal download destinations?

Odds are good that you won't find them.

I wanted to write about the issue, so I put together a list of fifty great movies (celebrated by the AFI, Roger Ebert, and Time Magazine) and all-time box office champs that you can't buy or rent online.

Here's the Variety article on the topic. One reason that you can't find movies like the James Bond series, 'The Godfather,' and 'The Lion King' is likely that they haven't yet been released on Blu-ray disc yet, and the studios are sure they'll make more money on selling high-def discs than they can with $9.99 iTunes downloads.

My favorite quote in the piece is from Jim Flynn, who runs the download sites EZTakes and iArthouse: "The pirates in general have a download exclusive," he says. "These movies are available as downloads -- just not legal ones."

Here's my list of fifty great movies you can't buy or rent legally on any of the major download sites (iTunes, Unbox, Movelink, and CinemaNow). Have you discovered others? Add them in the comments.

Fifty Movies You Won't Find Online (Legally)

Almost Famous
Amadeus
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Brazil
Brokeback Mountain
Bubble
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Citizen Kane
City of God
Double Indemnity
Drunken Master (1 or 2)
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Fantasia
Farewell My Concubine
Fargo
Forrest Gump
The Godfather I-III
Gone With the Wind
The Graduate
It’s a Wonderful Life
A Hard Day’s Night
Hotel Rwanda
Jaws
King Kong, 1933 original and Peter Jackson’s 2005 re-make (the 1976 Jessica Lange version is available)
La Dolce Vita
Miller’s Crossing
Munich
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Fair Lady
Nashville
Notorious
Pulp Fiction
Purple Rose of Cairo
Raging Bull
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rear Window
Roger and Me
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
Sex, Lies & Videotape
Shrek 1, 2, and 3
Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
The Sound Of Music
Star Wars Episodes I-VI
Titanic
The Wizard of Oz
12 Angry Men
2001: A Space Odyssey (but 2010: The Year We Make Contact is available)
28 Up

EZTakes launches a new site for the artsy cinephile

Anne Thompson noted this morning that the guys at Massachusetts-based EZTakes, one of the first download sites to do the burn-a-DVD-on-demand thing, have launched a new site called iArthouse.

It'll compete primarily with Jaman, another site focused on foreign, arthouse, and independent titles.

iArthouse, so far, is just a rebranding of EZTakes.com without some of the schlockier stuff -- no "Extreme Sports" category, for instance, and no Troma movies like "Toxic Avenger." But other than that, the fare is virtually identical: here's the drama category on EZTakes, and here it is on iArthouse.

I called Jim Flynn, co-founder of EZTakes, to see what's up. He told me that there aren't any new titles up on iArthouse yet that weren't on EZTakes, but he expects about 30 titles from Kino International to show up within the week.

Flynn acknowledged that EZTakes isn't selling as many downloads as iTunes (50,000 a day), but that he wouldn't reveal specific numbers. He said that EZTakes received a "multi-million dollar" investment in January from a private investor, in addition to the several million that he and co-founder Bill Clarke have already put in. As of the start of 2008, Flynn says the site is profitable.

Here's a graph from Alexa comparing the traffic of EZTakes to that of Jaman, CinemaNow, and Movielink. Interesting that Jaman has twice the traffic of EZTakes. Obviously, Web site traffic doesn't equal downloads -- you can visit without buying or renting -- but it's the best approximation we've got.

One more set-top box, this one from Blockbuster

Andrew Wallenstein of The Hollywood Reporter writes:

The home video giant [Blockbuster] is developing a set-top device for streaming films directly to TV sets and is expected to announce the offering sometime this month.

(CNET's News.com has some additional analysis.)

My belief is that most of us will likely never purchase a device that *only* delivers digital movies (like Vudu, for instance, and potentially this new product from Blockbuster). It'll have to serve multiple purposes, like providing WiFi access to your entire home, acting as a DVR, storage hub for your digital files, etc. It'll probably come from your cable or satellite provider, much as we loathe those guys.

But it's admirable to see Blockbuster moving so definitively in a digital direction, after buying the Movielink download marketplace last August.

Paramount's Direct-to-Net 'Jackass' Release

We can debate whether 'Jackass 2.5,' made up mostly of left-overs from 'Jackass 2,' really counts as a new, stand-alone feature film... but Paramount is claiming that it'll be the first studio feature released first online as an ad-supported streaming program. Later, it'll be available on DVD and as a paid download on iTunes and Amazon Unbox. Essentially, this is experimentation with what would've been a direct-to-DVD release, and the budget for the movie was under $2 million.

It goes up December 19th on Movielink, and on sale as a DVD and on iTunes on December 26th

From the NY Times:

...Viacom executives emphasized that this was a stand-alone venture that would pay for itself.

They described the online premiere as an experiment aimed at gauging the potential revenue streams for studio-produced, longer-form Web material that could take advantage of the consumer appetite for user-generated content.

“If this works, it could open up and really change the game about additional content that studios can create,” said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment. Then again, Paramount executives acknowledged it might not be the fairest test of long-form films, given that the movie, like the TV show, is made up of many short segments, consumable in morsels.

From the Wall Street Journal story:

The move comes as the studios explore new media in the face of lackluster revenue in traditional outlets. Box-office sales are down about 7% for the holiday season beginning Nov. 2, according to Media by Numbers LLC. DVD sales are down for the year, dropping 1% so far in the fourth quarter, according to Nielsen VideoScan.

If Paramount can show this tactic brings in revenue, it could become a template for movies aimed at young, Internet-savvy viewers. The original "Jackass," released in 2002, took in $64 million at the domestic box office. "Jackass 2," released in 2006, took in $73 million domestically.

Blockbuster CEO Watching Movies on His BlackBerry

Pretty cool... Blockbuster CEO James Keyes seems to grok the concept that people want to watch movies on mobile devices, and he's even worked out a way to get Movielink titles onto his BlackBerry (with a little help from his IT staff.)

In Variety: "Studios' Digital Dilemma"

I have a piece in Variety this week that is basically a state-of-the-market report on digital downloading of movies. It argues that Apple is becoming the Wal-Mart of this new medium -- and that that has big implications for studios and independents. From the opening:

Like Wal-Mart, Apple seems to be flexing its muscle to dictate terms to studios and indie producers. iTunes is a digital "big box" store to be reckoned with, and the choices Steve Jobs' company makes and the conflicts it faces will likely shape the way movies are consumed over the next decade.

Blockbuster Takes Movielink Off Studios' Hands

Blockbuster is buying Movielink for less than $20 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Movielink was founded by a group of movie studios in 2002, which spent as much as $150 million on the site over the next four years, according to BusinessWeek.

We could spend a while listing the problems of Movielink: limited selection, high prices, Windows-only DRM, poor marketing and promotion.

I've been bullish for a while that Blockbuster may be able to solve some of those problems.

This deal will expand Blockbuster's Total Access program, allowing customers not just to rent DVDs in stores and by mail, but download them, too. That makes Blockbuster a more formidable competitor to Netflix.

From the Forbes story:

Blockbuster's Total Access service, which allows customers to select DVD rentals online and receive them through the mail, has about 3.6 million subscribers. Netflix has 6.7 million subscribers.

Blockbuster added 600,000 subscribers in the second quarter, while Netflix lost 55,000 - its first quarterly decline since the service began in 1999.

Two iPhone pieces from Variety

I was hoping to avoid contributing to the orgy of iPhone hype this week, and in fact have summarily been deleting PR pitches that begin, "If you're planning to write about the iPhone..." I got at least a half-dozen of those.

But I failed.

I spent this afternoon working on a piece for Variety about what the iPhone means for media companies and content creators, which is here. I hope it's sufficiently skeptical...since I try to hold Apple's feet to the fire for operating a closed-loop system with the iTunes Store and the iPhone/iPod.

From the piece:

If the phone is a hot seller, that could nudge more media companies to do deals with Steve Jobs' company -- or find a way to circumvent the tight link Apple has forged between its devices and iTunes, its online media marketplace.

Apple's newest product will play a selection of 10,000 free videos from YouTube, as well as video podcasts offered for free on iTunes from outlets like CNN and HBO, plus movies and TV shows sold on iTunes by suppliers such as Disney, Lionsgate, NBC and ABC.

But like the video iPod before it, the device won't play content sold by sites including Amazon Unbox, Movielink or CinemaNow, which offer movies in a Windows Media format that Apple doesn't support. Apple also doesn't allow content marketplaces other than the iTunes Store to sell content "wrapped" in Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) technology. That restrictive policy guarantees Apple a high degree of loyalty among iPod and iPhone users but has recently brought scrutiny from European Union regulators.

There's another piece, by Michael Schneider, about how everyone in LA is coveting an iPhone as the new status symbol.

What's So Scary About iTunes?

Why do Sony, Fox, Universal, and Warner Brothers opt not to sell their movies on iTunes?

Three big reasons:

1. They worry about Apple being the only game in town, as far as digital distribution; on the music side, Apple controls more than 70 percent of the download market. That kind of dominance gives Apple the power to dictate price, and all kinds of other deal terms, to their suppliers.

2. They worry about encouraging consumers to stop buying DVDs. DVDs are the studios’ cash cow – they brought in almost $25 billion in 2006. The studios are also hoping that high-def DVDs will keep consumers shelling out $25 for a physical product that they can own – as opposed to $14.99 for a digital download.

3. Apple’s Steve Jobs isn’t making studios happy with his anti-DRM crusade. Remember, studios have always been more aggressive with copy-protection on DVDs than the music industry has been with CDs (you need special, illegal software to rip a DVD onto your laptop).

The transition from DVDs to digitally-delivered content is going to be painful. Consumers aren’t willing to put up with punitive DRM constraints, and they’re not going to pay the same price for a digital file as they did for the DVD.

But do I believe that there are going to be lots of new opportunities in the digital world that didn’t exist in the world of DVDs and videotape? Absolutely. Studios have just been slow in chasing them. There are classic movies people are dying to see – if studios would only clear the rights and make them available online. People would be willing to pay 99 cents to buy scenes from their favorite movies to store on cell phones and video iPods – if studios would sell them. If studios offered some of their best behind-the-scenes footage and making-of featurettes (the stuff that appears on DVDs as bonus material), film fans and wanna-be directors would buy those.

Studios simply haven’t put enough digital product out there, with innovative pricing models, for fear of cannibalizing DVD sales and antagonizing big DVD sellers like Wal-Mart and Target. That’s fostering piracy, and it’s allowing Apple to emerge as the dominant player in digital distribution.

If the studios really want to help create a strong rival to iTunes, why aren’t they giving exclusive content (like celeb interviews) to Amazon.com’s Unbox, or packaging a free download of the soundtrack with a purchase of a digital movie file? Why aren’t they promoting Movielink, a service they created in 2001 but have since let wither, or CinemaNow, which is majority-owned by Lions Gate?

Here’s the LA Times article that got me thinking about this…

…and also in the news today are some hints that Apple will start renting movies on iTunes this fall. (Stories in Forbes and the Financial Times). Would rental make it easier for more studios to play with iTunes? Yes, particularly if Apple is willing to let them offer movies for rental only. Retailers wouldn’t feel threatened, since they’re not in the rental business. But it’d be time for Netflix to start sweating…

As for Apple and iTunes...why not open the gates to indie content while the studios dither, rather than letting other sites (like Jaman.com) become the go-to destinations for lesser-known but high-quality films?

New survey data on movie downloading behavior

Toronto-based Solutions Research Group surveyed 1,230 Americans earlier this month, and found that:

- Only 8 percent have paid to download a movie (up from 5 percent in October 2006)
- 30 percent of iTunes users have visited the movie section of the store. Among visitors to Amazon.com and WalMart.com, 10 percent and 8 percent, respectively, have visited the movie areas of those sites.
- A third of all Netflix members use Netflix's "instant viewing" feature to watch movies (or parts of movies)
- Among other movie download sites, 9 percent of survey respondents had visited Movielink.com, 8 percent had visited BitTorrent.com, 5 percent had visited Vongo.com, and 5 percent had been to CinemaNow.com.

A PDF summary of the survey results is here.

(Via Movie Marketing Blog)

Thursday links: Comcast and Fandango ... Drive-Ins at Home ... Movie Gallery and Moviebeam

- Comcast just bought Fandango, the movie ticketing site, and announced that they're going to try again to create some sort of cool new digital destination called Fancast.com, described in the NY Times piece as a site that will "allow users to watch on-demand shows via television, the Internet and wireless devices." It'll be up this summer. The Journal describes Fancast a bit differently, as "a national online destination that will allow consumers to search, discover and manage entertainment choices across multiple platforms including television, computers, DVDs and wireless services."

Either way, I'm sure it'll be stupendous. Remember Comcast's Ziddio, launched way back in November?

- Sweet NY Times piece on wealthy movie buffs who install drive-in size screens in their back yards. Joyce Wadler writes:

Feeling a little bored in the backyard with your pool, spa, outdoor kitchen, tennis court, fireplace and fire pit? Fear not. Outdoor video has landed. It’s been seen here and there in the last few years — a pop-up TV in the side of the hot tub, a video projection on an inflatable screen — but it’s been an outdoor novelty, the equivalent, perhaps, of Angelenos and their cellphones 15 years ago. But with such advances as weather-resistant television sets impervious to rain; good-quality low-cost video projectors and screens; and widescreen high-definition TV, as well as the general trend to move the indoors out, outdoor theater is gaining ground.

“It’s becoming more and more popular because the products are better and cheaper,” said Jeff Hoover, the president of Audio Advisors in West Palm Beach, Fla. “Instead of having to spend $10,000 or $15,000 for a projector, you can get a nice little $1,500 projector now that will make great 100-inch pictures. And now that there are large-panel TVs that are getting brighter and cheaper, people are starting to put outdoor theaters in patios that are mostly covered.

- I somehow missed the news last month that Movie Gallery, the video rental chain that also owns Hollywood Video, had purchased MovieBeam, a system that delivers movies over the air to a set-top box. MovieBeam had received about $48.5 million in funding last year from Disney, Cisco, Intel, and several venture capital firms. Seems like Movie Gallery is paying in the neighborhood of $10 million for MovieBeam (earlier CinemaTech coverage here), which makes it a phenomenally cheap bet for a bricks-and-mortar rental company to make on the digital future. Blockbuster has been talking for eons now about buying Movielink, an Internet-based service that doesn't require a set-top box or antenna, as MovieBeam did...

Internet Movie Marketplaces: Who's Most Likely to Succeed?

Who’ll end up as the Blockbuster of Internet movie distribution?

No one has all the elements in place yet: big audience, vast selection, intuitive design, and a simple way to transfer movies onto portable devices and the living room television.

But here’s my ranking of the five players that are “most likely to succeed” in the business of digital distribution.

1. iTunes Store The big dog. Works for both Mac and PC users, and as of April 2007, had sold 50 million TV shows and two million feature films. New $299 Apple TV device makes it easy to wirelessly transfer iTunes content to a television and view it there. The negatives: no rentals (only download-to-own, at $9.99 and up), no way yet for indie producers to sell their content, no simple way to burn shows or movies from iTunes to a DVD. Also: only a few studios offer features on iTunes, including Disney, MGM, and Lionsgate. Paramount supplies older films -- not new releases. Others have so far been reluctant to cut deals with Apple CEO (and Disney board member) Steve Jobs.

2. Amazon Unbox Unlike iTunes, Amazon Unbox makes movies available for digital rental and purchase. Movies can be sent directly to an Internet-connnected TiVo device for viewing on a TV. While Unbox hasn’t yet built much momentum in the marketplace, Amazon has a built-in advantage over the other players on this list: hundreds of thousands of consumers already trust the company with their payment information, and have Amazon accounts already. Amazon can also make movie recommendations based on past purchases. Indie producers can make their content available on Unbox using Amazon’s CustomFlix service, and keep 50 percent of the revenues. That makes Unbox the most “long tail”-friendly movie service. Among the studios offering features: 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, Universal, Paramount, Sony, MGM, and Warner Bros. Movies from Lionsgate, Sony, Warner Bros., and Fox. Works well with Windows-compatible portable devices like the Creative Zen Vision. PC only.

3. CinemaNow CinemaNow has been in the movie download business longer than most anybody else: since 1999. It helped pioneer technology to download a movie and then burn it to a DVD (more than 100 titles are now available, mostly older movies), and CinemaNow also hasn’t been prudish about offering “mature content,” working with porn providers like Vivid and Hustler. CinemaNow is the only service working with all six major Hollywood studios. Offers some movies for free, as ad-supported streams. Movies can get to TV with a Windows Media Center Edition PC, and to Windows-compatible portable players. PC only.

4. Vongo Vongo is unique in offering an “all you can eat” movie service for a dirt-cheap $9.99 monthly fee. About 1000 movies are available at any given time, but some titles rotate in and out of inventory. Works with various Windows systems (Media Center Edition, Vista Ultimate, Xbox 360) to display content on a TV. Content can also be synced with Windows-friendly portable media players. Vongo also offers a live, streaming version of the Starz TV channel. Rental only, PC only.

5. Microsoft Xbox 360 Video Marketplace Microsoft has sold more than 10 million of its Xbox 360 gaming consoles, as of December 2006. The video marketplace offers standard-def and high-def features from Warner Bros., Paramount, Lionsgate, and New Line. (As of April 2007, Xbox and CinemaNow are the only of these services offering movies in high-definition.) Rentals only; no download-to-own. High-def new release movies cost $6, and standard-def new releases cost $4. Since the gaming console is already connected to a TV, viewing on the big screen is a breeze.

Dark horses (in no particular order) MovieLink: Initially launched as a joint venture of several major studios, but never well-promoted. Blockbuster is reportedly interested in acquiring Movielink – which could help introduce the service to a wider audience, especially if Blockbuster ties in digital downloads with rentals from its retail locations. ClickStar: Offers both rentals and downloads. Some movies, like “10 Items or Less,” will appear on Clickstar just a few weeks after their theatrical debut. Biggest things ClickStar has going for it: the involvement of Morgan Freeman and his producing partner, the supremely tech-savvy Lori McCreary. Netflix: Digital downloads are now built into Netflix’s monthly subscription package. About 1000 titles available, which could grow to 5000 by the end of 2007. Streaming only, PCs only. Wal-Mart: Expect Wal-Mart to offer the cheapest prices, if not the most compelling user experience. Launched in February 2007. Joost: Viacom announced a deal in February 2007 to make movies from Paramount and MTV Films available on Joost. BitTorrent: Download or rent movies from Fox, MGM, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Bit Torrent’s advantage is zippy peer-to-peer download speed. GUBA: Partnerships with Warner Bros. and Sony.

Some other comparisons of Internet movie marketplaces:

TechCrunch (good pricing comparison)

ExtremeTech

Three Worth Reading: Incompatible Movie Formats, TiVo's Web Smarts, and More Burton in 3-D

- Stephen Wildstrom of BusinessWeek writes about the many incompatible formats and viewing options for digital movies. He writes:

The problem is that the quickly growing stock of movies and shows available for download is scattered among an assortment of stores including Movielink, CinemaNow, Google Video (GOOG), and Amazon.com (AMZN) Unbox, as well as Apple's (AAPL) iTunes Store. And while there's a lot of overlap, there's also a significant amount of content exclusive to one or another service.

This has happened because the digital-download business isn't like any other sort of retailing. Any bookstore can order any book in print from its publisher. And once customers buy it, they can do whatever they wish with it. But download services must negotiate their rights studio by studio, sometimes title by title. And the deals cover not only which movies and TV shows are available but also what sort of video quality can be offered at what price, and, in excruciating detail, just what consumers can do with the video they have bought or rented.

Consider the rules covering movies purchased from Movielink, typically for $13.99 (different rules cover rentals). You can watch your movie as often as you want, but only on a Windows PC. Some films can be watched on up to three different PCs; others can't. You can make a backup copy to DVD, but you must copy it back to a PC to view it; you can't watch it on a standard DVD player.

- David Pogue of the NY Times appreciates TiVo's recent efforts to create a simple, useful connection to the world of Web video, including the ability to download movies from Amazon Unbox.

- Disney is converting one of Tim Burton's first animated shorts ('Vincent') into 3-D for this fall's release of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D,' according to The Hollywood Reporter. Carolyn Giardina writes:

Made in 1982, "Vincent" is a six-minute stop-motion film that tells the story of Vincent Malloy, a youth who imagines that he is like Vincent Price. The black-and-white short is based on a poem written by Burton, who was influenced by Price. Price narrated the film.

"When you have an evergreen title like 'Nightmare,' it is very important to give the fan a chance to sample something new," said Chuck Viane, president of Disney's Buena Vista Pictures Domestic Distribution. "Each year on bring backs, we are going to try to add some value."

From the WSJ: 'Hollywood Weighs Copyright Protections'

Sarah McBride has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal today on whether Hollywood studios might consider removing copy protections from their digital movies. My guess: not any time soon. Home entertainment execs within the studios are very powerful, and they're already worried about digital downloads *with* restrictions cutting into DVD revenues -- forget about digital downloads sans restrictions. McBride writes:

The studios are increasingly engaged in internal debate over the right course for the future. According to people familiar with the matter, the studios' technology executives and engineers have been calling for Hollywood to at least re-examine the issue. They are meeting with stiff resistance, especially from the "home entertainment" units that distribute films on DVD -- and are adamant about the need for digital rights management.

Nonetheless, the same forces pressuring the music industry to consider removing such coding are closing in on Hollywood. Pirated copies of movies circulate freely online, without any restrictions on how they are traded or copied. While the damage hasn't been nearly as great as in the music industry, many fear it will grow worse in the near future.

...Many movie executives agree that physical DVDs still need copy protection, but some are starting to discuss whether the heavy-duty digital rights management now on electronic copies is the right route. While movies sold on Apple's iTunes can be played on as many as five computers and an unlimited number of iPods, most online movie stores offer far less flexibility.

"Consumers can find ways to get our content anytime they want to," says a Hollywood technology executive. "They get it from a friend, [or] the Internet. By putting on an onerous DRM, it's making an honest person want to go to the illegitimate side."