Disney working on “pay once, watch anywhere” movie deal
Disney is planning to launch a system which allows customers to pay for a movie once and then watch it at any time on any device. It comes as the firm concedes recent DVD and Blu-ray sales have been disappointing.
The project, codenamed Keychest, would not involve any physical media such as disks. Instead fans would buy a movie in digital form and, rather than download it, would be able to stream it at anytime, watching it as many times as they want.
The idea is to apply the purchase to all services where that particular title is available, meaning users could watch it on mobile devices, any computer, or through video-on-demand cable TV services.
Disney’s home entertainment chief Bob Chapek told the Wall Street Journal that, “Our vision for the future is that consumers won’t have to think about where they bought [a movie], how they bought it, or when they bought it.”
The news follows comments by Disney’s CEO Bob Iger who said that sales of the firm’s titles on both DVDs and Blu-rays have been lower than expected. That appears to be partly down to Disney overestimating how many customers who own a title on DVD are prepared to buy it again when it’s re-released on Blu-ray.
The Keychest plan appears to be based on flawed logic. To Disney, it’s a sensible response to their theories that sales are hurt by the expanding range of legal and illegal ways to acquire digital content. It even puts forward the theory that Keychest would protect customers against individual streaming services going out of business.
However, the firm seems to be forgetting that a high proportion of its audience is young children, a group not exactly known for its interest in multi-platform digital distribution. And let’s be frank, if your six-year-old daughter wants a Disney movie for Christmas, Santa needs to wrap up a boxed disc, because a scrap of paper with a user ID and password isn’t going to cut it.
Related Posts:
October 23rd, 2009
What’s disappointing is the stupid movies Disney is making these days. They need to get with the times. Mickey Mouse can only go so far. All they do is keep bringing out the same movies over and over. They need to come up with some new princesses and other stories. The classics are good but get old after the kids watch them 2-3 times. I have 3 little girls and they like them but not as much as watching new episodes of shows like Dora and Deago.