Online movie distributor CinemaNow may have scored a major win in the battle to sell legal copies of Hollywood movies online: the company’s just-announced Burn To DVD service enables customers to purchase and download movies via the Internet and burn them to standard DVD disks which can be used in portable players, everyday DVD players, laptops, computers, and other devices. And users don’t just get the movie: they get the entire commercial DVD release, complete with any extras, commentaries, interviews, deleted scenes, and more.
Download-to-burn has been the holy grail of online movie distribution, but so far studios have been reluctant to let customers burn movies to standard DVDs for fear of inspiring movie piracy. CinemaNow has apparently convinced studios to play ball