Universal Touting Downloadable Movies

Sort of a surprising report from CNN: Universal Pictures and online rental service Lovefilm will be offering downloadable movies in Britain as of April 10 -- starting with Peter Jackson's King Kong -- and customers will be able to keep the movies they download.

In fact, the deal is that you would get three formats with one purchase: two digital files (one for a computer, the other for a mobile device) and a DVD, sent by mail. The expected cost for new releases would be ?19.99, about the same as the list price for a new DVD release in the UK.

The intent would be to eventually have all 6,500 movies in the Universal catalog available for download, with new releases coming out in digital and disc form simultaneously.

Mind boggled yet? Mine is. But there seems to be a catch. The article says that security measures "will make it impossible to e-mail the film to somebody else." To me that says DRM, special player software, or some measure of both. It remains to be seen if this will actually be consumer-friendly in the end, but right now I'm willing to call it a welcome first step.