Hollywood Wants to Make You Pay $30 to “Rent” Movies

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Actually, it’s not a joke. Four big studios are rolling out “premium VOD,” and they want you to pay $30 to watch a movie. The service will actually let users view recent movies that haven’t hit DVD yet.

Warner Bros., Sony, Universal and 20th Century Fox will let the charges roll through its”Home Premiere.” It only includes movies that are up to two months removed from their theater debuts. Is the local dollar theater a bit too dirty for your liking?

Wait, what happened to those movies you pay for on DirecTV, for like $8 a pop? Gizmodo points out that movies actually performing well at the box office won’t make it in the service. That’s reassuring.

The service will be distributed on DirecTV and some Comcast areas. AllThingsD actually points out the whole thing might actually be a bargain considering rising ticket prices and if you’ve got an audience of more than one. Your bowl of microwaved popcorn does not count.

(via AllThingsD)

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Related Topics: hollywood, Universal, warner brothers, Web Video, Business, News, Sony
  • http://atlusworld.wordpress.com Anubus

    So you have to pay 30 bucks for movies that sucked in the box office? Yikes.

  • pks29733steel

    This will go the way of the old Magnovox ‘Laser Discs’ (a ‘lp’ sized disc with a plastic ‘lp like’ cover and a player somewhat like the design of our current ‘DVD’ players. The ‘Laser Discs’ lasted for about a year til the advent of VHS machinces arrived on the market. $30 bucks to watch it two months earlier than the DVD release? Heck I will wait 6months and buy it in the $5 bin!!

  • http://jkolak.wordpress.com John K

    They have to do something to recoup losses on box office flops.

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