CinemaNow is an Internet-based digital video distribution company founded in 1999.

The CinemaNow library contains approximately 14,000 feature-length films, shorts, music concerts and television programs from more than 250 licensors, including 20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...

, ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 News, Disney

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...

, Endemol

Endemol

Endemol is an international television production and distribution company based in the Netherlands, with subsidiaries and joint ventures in 23 countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Poland,...

, MGM

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

, Miramax

Miramax Films

Miramax Films is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films. For its first 14 years the company was privately owned by its founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein...

, NBC Universal

NBC Universal

NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...

, Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

, Sundance Channel, Koch Entertainment

Koch Entertainment

Koch Entertainment was a music, film and television distribution company. It was purchased by E1 Entertainment in 2005 and now operates under the name E1 Entertainment.-History:The company began in 1975 as Koch International...

, and Lions Gate Entertainment

Lions Gate Entertainment

Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation is a North American entertainment company. The company was formed in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1997, and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California...

. Video from CinemaNow is available for electronic sell-through Download To Own

Download To Own

Download To Own is a concept of legally downloading movies to your computer via a network such as the internet. Generally to obtain movies this way a user must have a broadband connection and an account from an internet distribution company....

, in the home video release window including DVD burning using Qflix

Qflix

Qflix is a proprietary technology developed and licensed by Sonic Solutions and Pioneer Corporation to add CSS copy protection/DRM to recordable DVD-R media....

 as well as rental time-limited viewing in the pay-per-view window.

In November 2008, CinemaNow was acquired by Sonic Solutions

Sonic Solutions

Sonic Solutions, acquired by Rovi Corporation in 2010, was a computer software company headquartered in Novato, California. In addition to having a number of offices in the U.S., the company also maintained offices in Europe and Asia.-History:...

. In January 2009, Sonic and Blockbuster, Inc. announced an alliance to provide digital content delivery under the Blockbuster brand, essentially merging CinemaNow and its erstwhile competitor, Movielink

Movielink

Movielink was a web-based video on demand and electronic sell-through service offering movies, TV shows and other videos for rental or purchase. First available on November 11, 2002, Movielink drew its content offerings from the libraries of Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment,...

, which was acquired by Blockbuster in 2007. In November of that year, Sonic Solutions and Best Buy

Best Buy

Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...

 announced a strategic alliance which resulted in Best Buy acquiring the CinemaNow trademark.

Codecs and DRMs

CinemaNow video is generally encoded in VC-1

VC-1

VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...

 at 700 to 2500 kbit/s. H.264 and MPEG-2

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...

 encoding is also used for certain playback devices. CinemaNow primarily employs Windows Media DRM

Windows Media DRM

Windows Media DRM is a Digital Rights Management service for the Windows Media platform. It is designed to provide delivery of audio and/or video content over an IP network to a PC or other playback device in such a way that the distributor can control how that content is used.WMDRM includes the...

 to control access to downloaded movies. In August 2008, CinemaNow added Widevine Technologies DRM for streaming to Internet-connected consumer electronics devices.