Sprint Brings Pay-per-View to Mobile Phones

Sprint has announced a new service which will bring pay-per-view movies to U.S. mobile phone users for $4 to $6 apiece.

You know it’s happened to you: you’re stuck somewhere, away from home, shiftless, bored to tears, too mind-wiped to even think straight, and suddenly you think to yourself: “Dang! What I really want to do right now is watch a movie on my cell phone.“

Mobile network operator Sprint plainly believes you’re not alone, and wants to tap into all that wanna-watch-a-movie-on-a-phone mojo with Sprint Movies, its new pay-per-view movie download service for mobile phones, announced today.

“Sprint Movies allows our customers to be entertained on the one device that they always carry with them and during times when watching a movie at a theater or on a home entertainment system isn’t possible,” said Alana Muller, Sprint’s director of entertainment product marketing, in a release. “For example, customers can take their mind off a busy day during a lunch break, breeze through a few minutes while waiting in the parking lot for a child’s soccer practice to end, or make a two-hour delay at the airport much more bearable. And with child-friendly titles such as Herbie: Fully Loaded and Babe, Sprint Movies are also great to keep the kids busy in the backseat.”

The service follows on the heels of Sprint’s mSpot Movies, which for $6.95 a month offers users all-you-can-eat movie selections. Sprint says mSpot Movies has been seeing growth rates of 30 percent per month, indicating strong customer demand for mobile movie and entertainment options. In contrast with mSpot Movies offerings (which will continue to be available), Sprint Movies will cost between $3.98 and $4.99 apiece; users will be able to view the movie unlimited times with rental periods which range from 24 hours to one week, depending on the title; users who rent 24-hour titles can get up to two 24-hour extensions for $0.99 each. Users can watch an entire movie all at once, or play, pause, resume, and chapter-skip in a manner similar to standard DVD players.

Sprint Movies will be available on compatible handsets while subscribers can connect to Sprint’s Power Vision network or nationwide Vision network. Movie selections have been edited, if necessary, to meet TV-14 ratings standards. Sprint says it will continually add new titles to the list of available selections, which currently features a few dozen recently-released and catalog titles from Buena Vista, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, and Universal.

(What? You still haven’t felt this unsatiated movie-on-a-phone desire? Really?)