Best Buy and Sonic Solutions announced a strategic relationship that will result in a new Best Buy customer offering in its line-up of digital entertainment products.
The new on-demand movie and entertainment service will be powered by Sonic’s Roxio CinemaNow.
To power this offering, Best Buy has entered into a multi-year agreement in which the company plans to license and deploy Sonic’s Roxio CinemaNow technology and services platform to make on-demand digital content delivery a standard feature on connected consumer electronics devices sold throughout U.S. Best Buy retail stores and BestBuy.com.
Roxio CinemaNow is a part of Sonic’s Roxio family products that enable consumers to manage personal digital media content and give an access to premium Hollywood entertainment on a broad range of connected devices. It is also powering internet movie delivery for Blockbuster.
Under the terms of the agreement, Best Buy acquired warrants enabling it to purchase shares of Sonic Solutions common stock.
To foster the consumer appetite for obtaining on-demand premium content electronically, Best Buy intends to embed the Roxio CinemaNow technology on a wide array of devices – web-connected television sets, portable media players, PCs, Blu-ray Disc players, set-top boxes, and mobile phones – from a variety of manufacturers.
The company says they expect to undertake a marketing program to educate consumers about the increased convenience, flexibility, and choice digital content delivery affords.
With the new Best Buy service, consumers will have access to buy or rent an extensive library of content including new movies, TV shows, independent films, and older catalog movies, which they will be able to access on devices in the broad ecosystem.
It is anticipated that new titles will often be available on the same day they become available on DVDs in retail outlets. Together with their Studio partners, Best Buy and Sonic plan to also collaborate on new service and content offerings, including those that leverage digital copies to bridge physical disc sales and electronic sell through.
"With Best Buy’s focus, we expect on-demand entertainment to quickly grow into a mass market activity, with digital sell-through and rental becoming a significant new revenue stream for content owners," said Dave Habiger, president and CEO of Sonic Solutions.
