Universal Studios "gets it" in the UK

"It gives instant access, it gives portability and it gives much greater flexibility for the consumer to consume his product any way they want," said Universal Pictures UK Chairman Eddie Cunningham. Universal Pictures is part of General Electric's NBC Universal unit.

Hollywood studios have been reluctant to sell digital versions of their blockbusters for fear they would be copied and pirated online.

1. A DVD sent to you in the mail.
2. A digital version you can play on your PC
3. A digital version you can play on your mobile device (personal media player)

You will own these copies.  They are not rentals, so they will not expire.  The digitial files will be protected by Windows DRM so I expect that the personal media player must run the "Plays For Sure" windows brand of media player.  That sucks a little.

The article states that the price is comparable to a regular DVD purchase, 20 British pounds, which seems a bit expensive by my standards because that means a $40 CDN which is about 2x the cost of a regular DVD.  If this was the cost for me here in Canada, I wouldn't buy it.  Certainly if it was a couple bucks more than a DVD I can buy from the store, I'd buy it, and many more.

This is an incremental step in the right direction.  It'll only be available in the UK for starters.  I expect that the plan was to start it in a small region to see how it goes, and if nothing blows up they'll expand into other regions.

[added 03.25.2006] There are some disenting opinions out there.  Techdirt for example has a "try-again" post about this.  The major complaint is that the DRM on the digital media wont work on iPods and Sony PSPs, and as a result will fail.

While iPods may be a huge existing market, it is a closed system.  You have to go through Apple to distribute your content through it.  The complaint seems to be that the media has DRM, and also is not iPod compatible.  But isn't iPod content DRM'd as well?

Certainly getting the files without DRM would be preferable.  You'd then be able to play the content on almost any digital media device you can find assuming the format (WMV, MPEG, AVI, etc...), but if you've got DRM'd video content... I'd much rather have it play on a variety of devices rather than just those devices from a single vendor.