And now - Pay per View for DVDs too!

[_____V_____]

Homevideo distributors have long argued that just because you own a DVD doesn’t mean you actually own a copy of the movie or show that’s on it. Your disk, they contend, is just the digital equivalent of a ticket, allowing you to view their movie, within regions and release windows of their choosing.

In Japan, one distributor has taken that logic to the next level with a service that delivers movies and TV shows to consumers on DVD but asks viewers to pay when they want to watch.

"We’re pioneering a third way between sell and rental DVDs," says Hiroshi Uchikoga, prexy of Visionare, the DVD developer and distrib behind the service. "Our targets are occasional users who own a DVD player but seldom watch anything on it."

The service allows users to buy animation DVDs at a discount and to watch individual episodes on a pay-per-view basis for one week.

Launched on Sept. 4 with DVDs of the classic "Joe of Tomorrow" (Ashita no Joe) toon series, the service uses discs made with the company’s own DVDMagic encryption technology.

Users purchase the DVDs for $5.83, then, after receiving the disc, visit the Visonare website, either by scanning a bar code on the disc sleeve -- bar code scanners are common on Japanese cell phones -- or by typing in a URL. Once on the site, they then pay the PPV fee -- for instance, $1.12 for one week of unlimited viewing of each toon episode -- and input a six-letter password using their DVD remote to view the disc. They can also buy multiple episodes in a package.

When the week ends, the disk goes into a lock mode. Users can unlock it for another week at any time, however, by paying an additional $2.25 fee.

"These are standard DVDs -- not throwaways," Uchikoga says. They work in any standard DVD player.

The system solves a problem for the Japanese. "There are a lot of consumers who won’t buy DVDs because the disc prices -- $30 or $40 -- are too high," says Uchikoga. "We’re offering that sort of consumer a more affordable alternative."

Tokyo-based Visionare has been selling PPV DVD titles since 2005 and now offers nearly 200, from classic toons to the first three seasons of the "24-Twenty Four" series, at convenience stores and other retail venues, as well as Amazon and Yahoo sites. The "Joe of Tomorrow" discs, however, are the first to allow users to purchase individual episodes -- a total of 79 on the 10-disc set.

Founded in 2000, Visonare now partners with major convenience stores chains in Japan, including 7-Eleven (13,000 stores), Lawson (9,000 stores) and Circle K Sunkus (8,000 stores), as well as online sellers Yahoo and Amazon.

[ferretchucker]

Hahaha.

Shoot 'em all!