MOD Systems Signs Warner Brothers and Paramount Digital Entertainment (SD Cards)

[gadgtfreek]

Now if anything kills BR, this could be it. I think its a better idea. Why not have a card you can keep reloading for rentals, or buy the cards and own them.

I imagine we arent far off from cards that can hold a 1080p movies, you could even have a BR player with sd slot and the ability to play disc movies or card movies.

MOD Systems Signs Warner Brothers and Paramount Digital Entertainment

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MOD Systems, an industry-leading provider of digital media delivery systems for retailers, today announced it has signed the first major U.S. studio agreements to distribute digital video from Warner Brothers and Paramount Digital Entertainment via downloads to SD cards in retail stores. The agreements enable MOD Systems to offer physical retailers a vast digital inventory of standard definition titles, including new releases, and make titles available to consumers in conjunction with availability from leading online providers.
“MOD Systems offers a new avenue for consumers looking to access Paramount Pictures movies on-the-go, with a solution that is quick, convenient and compatible across a wide range of devices,” said Alex Carloss, executive vice president, digital distribution, Paramount Digital Entertainment.
MOD Systems’ growing digital entertainment catalog for retailers includes nearly 4,000 titles from major studios as well as independents such as Anchor Bay Entertainment, First Look Studios, and Image Entertainment. The catalog also includes nearly 4 million music tracks.
The catalog is part of the MOD Retail Enterprise System, which handles all aspects of securing, ingesting, and fulfilling digital content in retail stores. With digital distribution, retailers are empowered to fill customer needs at the point of sale through download to a device or SD card. This approach eliminates the need to order, stock, or return traditional pre-packaged media.
“We’re excited to work with Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures to provide retailers with a digital video solution,” said Mark E. Phillips, CEO of MOD Systems. “These agreements validate our commitment to be at the forefront of developing solutions that offer rights management, interoperability, and content protection. Digital downloads to SD cards via interactive kiosks from our partner NCR give retailers a new way to increase content and device sales and ultimately better compete.”

 

[teamerickson]

If the cost of flash memory continues to drop this could be doable. I could take the SD card and put it right in my Panny 55.

 

[navychop]

What's the largest SD capacity now available?

 

[gadgtfreek]

SDHC is 32gb's.

SDXC, announced at CES, will be up to 2 TB.

 

[navychop]

Well, more than enough to match Blu-ray. But is that enough to replace Blu-ray?

 

[meStevo]

Not anytime soon, they'll reap profits for a while im sure, with just competition to help lower it a little quicker than they'd want.

We've seen this already with Sony putting movies on memory sticks, it just didn't 'stick' really, capacity left more to be desired, and they werent made as a product to move movies, but as an incentive to buy that particular product.

 

[dlsnyder]

But you still have to go to a physical store for the content. Instead how about a box that connects to the internet in your home. Could be a PC, could be a game machine, could be something like the Roku box. Why bother making people drive to a B&M location?

 

[meStevo]

I am all for streaming to be the solution, as the DRM involved isn't as obtrusive, problem being the limitation of bandwidth. If we had a SD slot on the Roku, or had an adapter on the 360 or PS3, and were able to dump the movie we want to flash based media and take with us to view on our PSP, DS, Car monitors, laptop, or other means then we'd probably have to reauthorize the content every x hours or days to allow for that to happen.

This is very contradictory to the push for no-DRM push that's slowly been gaining momentum. Perhaps as a compromise a standard could be developed that just DRMs a partition on the SSD device (whether that be a SD card, or other stuff) to allow for essentially DRM free content, but it's not accessible unless the device supports some kind of standard.

All of the above to negate casual piracy of course, since those with enough motivation will circumvent what people with honest intentions will leave alone.