Cinema Now’s Burn On Demand Still Has A Way To Go

July 26th, 2006 Davis Posted in VOD, DVDs |

We are starting to see the first reviews of Cinema Now’s burn on demand program start filtering into the blogosphere and the reaction is a bit mixed. Video Business went through the process of downloading a $10 movie and burning it so that they could watch it on a TV.

The good news is that this is a much faster way to get delivery of a film then DVD by mail, but the bad news is that the process still took a mind numblingly slow 5 and a half hours to complete. I’ve got to assume most of that time was spent downloading and not burning, but between having to pay at least $10 for a film, needing your own equipment and discs, having to wait 5.5 hours & still getting quality less then a traditional DVD, it’s clear that this program has a ways to go.

I love that Cinema Now is trying to innovate, but I really think download to burn in the home is the wrong way to go. VOD and downloadable movies to a set top box makes a lot of sense, but immedietely you are limiting the number of customers who can even use the product to those who have DVD burners and those sophisticated enough to use them. While this isn’t a tiny number, it does limit your potential audience and the $10 price tag doesn’t help.

I think a much better solution is download and burn at the video store level. This would make everything on demand much simpler and video stores could maintain digital copies of the most popular movies so that consumers wouldn’t have to wait for the download process. It would also let consumers click on a website and pick up their movies by the end of the day. This might still take 5.5 hours to do, but there is a big difference between having to wait at your computer and making an appointment to stop into a video store to pick something up later in the day. If Blockbuster or Movie Gallery could implement such a program, it would make them more like Kinko’s and less like traditional retail. It would eliminate storage needs and would give a cool factor to going back to the video store again. Overall, I like what Cinema Now is starting to do, but would like to see them expand this to burn on demand kiosks or stores instead of making customers wait 5.5 hours for a low res DVD in the home.