Home Entertainment
December 22, 2005
LOVEFiLM.COM Launches The First UK Mass Market Movie Download Service
(December 22, 2005 – London) - LOVEFiLM.com, Europe’s largest online DVD rental service, has today announced the launch of an innovative movie download service to its UK subscriber base, increasing its rate of delivery from two days through the mail to a matter of minutes. The service is the first of its kind to combine both major studio and independent film titles in a service to an existing audience.
The library includes well known popular titles from Warner Bros. such as ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,’ ‘Alexander,’ ‘Batman’ and ‘Poltergeist,’ through to more specialist and niche titles. The service will have approximately 500 titles available by early 2006, and will continue to grow as new titles become available. All titles can be downloaded from just £2.99.
Josh Berger, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Warner Bros. Entertainment UK. Limited, said: "Warner Bros is happy to be in business with Lovefilm for this new Video on Demand service in the UK. The service will allow us to meet the on demand needs of our consumers and enable us to deliver movies to our customers in a convenient way to view when and how they want at a reasonable price.”
C.E.O of LOVEFiLM and President of Arts Alliance Media Mark Livingstone comments: “The launch of this movie download service is an obvious and complimentary addition to our leading online DVD rental service. We have a huge ready-made audience of film fans with whom we engage constantly. We have a trusted relationship with them, and through our rating technology and individual movie preference ratings database we can even personalise the video on demand service.”
“Our customers occasionally want the more immediate delivery of a download movie, and thanks to our database of more then 10 million preferences and ratings we can target the choices they make.”
The video on demand service has been developed and tested with a closed user group of LOVEFiLM members to date and is now accessible to all subscribers and free trialists of LOVEFiLM by Friday 16th December 2005.
How It Works
LOVEFiLM.COM users will be able to view the service through Microsoft Windows Media Player version 10, which also provides the necessary digital rights management system, security and anti-piracy control. The service is further enabled through LOVEFiLM’s own unique technology platform, Hoffman.
Once downloaded, which can take a mater of minutes, films are viewable on the users PC for a seven day period. An additional benefit of the service is that customers have a 24 hour viewing window once they’ve started to watch, allowing them to stop/start viewing and return to a film within that time period.# # #