We brought you the news about Nokias N-theatre recently which is a service only offered in India, bringing 5 movies on a memory card when purchasing selected handsets. The Nokia’s recent announcement of the OVI Store also have their share of media contents such as video clips and anime episodes. New into this game is Sony Ericsson with their service branded Play Now Arena, which will be launched in June with their W995 and rolled out to Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and UK this summer. Could their launch of service be said to be a direct competitor to the other stores out there?
From the press release it says that you can only download the movies from www.playnow-arena.com/movies on your computer before transferring them to your phone via USB. You can watch the movies as often as you want for up to 90 days and the movies are not playable on other devices. Free choice between 15 movies with four new movies added to the catalog each month. A restriction of 60 movies can be download over a 12 month period. Movies features new titles as well as old classic titles, dependent on the regional location.
As this is a Sony Ericsson service you’ll definitely see it on upcoming handsets such as the Symbian-powered Saito (Previously known as Idou). Having different restrictions obviously means that there is some form of DRM in use. Now I only wonder how good the quality is on the videos and what native resolution it offers.
[Via Press Release ]
