Best Buy Bringing CinemaNow to PCs, LG Home Theater Gear

By Geoff Duncan May 18, 2010

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy is starting up its own online movie streaming business, and it’s going to be operating under a familiar name: CinemaNow. The company has announced that, starting this month, it will be taking on the likes of NetFlix, BlockBuster, Amazon Video-on-Demand, and other online movie services with its own CinemaNow—and CinemaNow will be available for PCs as well as built into selected Blu-ray players and HDTVs from LG.

“With the introduction of CinemaNow, Best Buy continues our commitment to evolve with our customers as their demand for digital entertainment grows,” said Best Buy senior VP of entertainment Chris Homeister, in a statement. “The convenience, selection, and flexibility of the CinemaNow service offers customers more freedom in the way they choose to consume entertainment from Best Buy.”

The announcement comes more than six months after Best Buy announced a partnership with CinemaNow. The company has been dithering about what to call its online movie services—names like “Napster Video” and “Best Buy Movies” were reportedly under consideration—and finally settled on the obvious: CinemaNow. Best Buy acquired the trade name from Sonic Solutions—which is continuing to run the back end of CinemaNow—and is rolling forward with the service.

Initially, the CinemaNow service will be available as a built-in feature of selected connected Blu-ray players and HDTVs from South Korea’s LG Electronics. Best Buy expects to launch the service on a range of other devices from other manufacturers—including its own Insignia brand—later in 2010. Customers will be able to browse and purchase movies and television content through the service; Best Buy anticipates releasing an update to the service later this year. But other than that, details are pretty sketchy: Best Buy says the service will work on “most PCs” via the Web from the CinemaNow Web site. CinemaNow typically offers “download to own” movies that work on up to three devices for $10 to $20 (TV shows are usually about $2); 24-hour on-demand movie rentals are usually $3 to $5.

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