BT and Universal into movie downloads

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 26 July 2006 21:23

Your IT - Home IT

UK carrier BT and Hollywood studio Universal Pictures have signed an agreement which will enable BT broadband users to download movies to buy.

Under the agreement, broadband users will be able to buy a movie starting at £7.99 on the same day as the DVD is released.

Unlike other sites which have agreements with Universal, there is no rental plan in place. However, for their money, users get to own three copies of the movie for different digital players. Once they download a copy to their PC in Windows Media format, they can copy it to a mobile player. Then in true telecoms carrier style, BT sends them a copy of the DVD through the post.

Oviously to buy a movie to keep three copies of, you would want to really like that movie. However, in the September quarter, BT intends to launch its set top box broadband service, which will enable users to watch movie downloads on TV and will include a rental plan.

According to Universal, the studio plans to do a number of movie download deals going forward. The market is really only waiting for the bandwidth of broadband connections to increase an order of magnitude to make downloading times more reasonable.

Most movies are larger than 1 GB and can take up to 2 hours to download on lower-end broadband connections. In addition, some broadband providers may need to raise their allocation of monthly data downloads for customers who happen to be movie buffs.