SightSound Technologies announced today that they are offering the first movie to be downloaded and individually sold for playback on a PocketPC.
Quantum Project is available beginning today as a download specifically for the Compaq iPAQ PocketPC.
The six-year-old technology company's movement toward offering movies in the format for a handheld computer demonstrates another extension of SightSound's distribution system to support consumer demand.
"The portability of movies and the ability to watch them on a variety of devices is essential to our goal of getting the movies into the hands of the consumer in the most convenient way," explained Scott Sander, President and CEO of SightSound Technologies. "Downloading to a handheld computer is just another example of how our system provides digital distribution solutions for the motion picture industry. Now with one system, a studio is able to download their movies into the theater, the consumer's home and now to portable devices."
SightSound Technologies has been digitally distributing movies to consumer's PCs for more than two years, beginning in April 1999 when the company offered the movie Pi for rental. Since then, SightSound has developed and demonstrated a digital cinema system that leverages the Internet for the transfer, commerce and digital rights management of movies into theaters.
The ability to combine the distribution to theaters, personal computers and PocketPCs creates a technological and economically efficient solution for the content owner, as they need only one system in order to reach these three markets.
Like all movies offered by SightSound, the PocketPC version of Quantum Project is an encrypted Windows Media file requiring each user to buy a license to view it. Movies downloaded from SightSound or copied or beamed between PocketPCs all need a key for playback.
Quantum Project was produced exclusively for Internet distribution and released on May 5, 2000. Since then, it has been released into the Gnutella file sharing network as an encrypted file on June 14, 2000, the subject of SightSound's first digital cinema trial on March 19, 2001 and now the first movie sold for viewing on a PocketPC. The Internet feature film is available for purchase for the personal computer as well as the Compaq iPAQ for $3.95.
In preparation for this new distribution method, the movie was re-encoded at a screen resolution of 240X100 and will be 30MB in size. Users need an Ipaq 3600 series running Windows Media 7 to download and view the film.
SightSound will continue to add movies for the PocketPC from their current movie library as well as future titles.
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