An Old Twist On New Movie Downloads

TechFlash reports: Walking the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show last week, it's clear that the prevailing trend in movie delivery is digital downloads and other methods of sending content directly to the home and devices. But high in a tower at a nearby hotel, a Seattle-based company, Mod Systems Inc., is going a different direction.

The company, pressing forward after a tumultuous year, is showing a kiosk that it began testing with NCR in November at selected Blockbuster Inc. and Hollywood Video outlets. It lets consumers select movies, slide a credit card to rent them, and then transfer a digital file to an SD card for playback on their televisions at home.

The tests at Blockbuster are being used to assess consumer preferences for different aspects of the kiosk service, including the price to charge to rent movies.

Currently, the service requires a special set-top box to play back the movie from the SD card, but the company this week moved to expand the options, announcing a software development kit that consumer electronics and device makers will be able to use to build support for the Mod Systems technology into their machines. The company also announced a PC playback application that's expected to be launched in the first half of this year.

After seeing it in action I asked why anyone would choose to go to a store and download a purchase to an SD card when there are so many methods of getting movies delivered directly. Larry Smith, Mod Systems senior vice president, acknowledged that it's a common question from techies. However, he said the company believes it's providing a good solution for people accustomed to DVDs and other physical media. That's a big portion of the population, he said.

"Much in the same way that the need for retail hasn't gone away, there's always going to be a need for physical media," he said, explaining that the company believes SD cards have the right properties for the job, particularly as they improve and allow for faster writing of data from the kiosk.