Sonic, parent company of CinemaNow, just keeps popping up in the news. The company has now partnered with Widevine to provide Hollywood movies via flash media drives. The self-contained CinemaNow USB Movie Drives(TM) will include an integrated media player as well as the necessary video codecs to enable instant high-quality PC playback of movie content offline. Widevine is providing Hollywood approved DRM to secure the drives.
Once you connect online with the drive on your PC, you’ll also be able to move the content to your “CinemaNow Digital Locker” enabling you to watch it on other ecosystem devices to include networked Blu-ray players and HDTVs. You don’t actually have to upload the content though. Once it’s in your digital locker, you’ll be able to play the content back on up to four other devices with each one receiving a stream that has been tuned to be compatible with that device. The CinemaNow ecosystem includes PCs, connected TVs, set top DVRs, Blu-ray Disc and mobile media players from Archos, Dell, HP, LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, Pioneer, Samsung and TiVo.
This I think is something I could get into. I know CinemaNow used to be Media Center compatible. Not sure that it is any more but I plan on calling the company to find out. Knowing I could buy a movie one time and legally use it on 5 devices (technically more if I move the drive around) is great news. I’m not limited to just my living room TV anymore.
