If you aren’t a Disney Movies Online member, you’d have missed the email alerting you that the service is closing on December 31. Andy and I have talked at some length over the years about the future of distribution and this closure likely bodes well for users as the Disney digital deal was, ultimately, inane.
Travis McClain over at Flickchart shares an interesting take on the whole mess.
Kudos to Disney for taking the lead on streaming rights for physical disc purchases, but there was one chief problem for consumers: the only way to stream their content was through a computer. There were no dedicated Disney Movies Online channels on streaming players, meaning that access to the streaming library was highly restrictive.
McClain walks through similar craziness in UltraViolet, the industry’s attempt to solidify a standard for protection and distribution. Jury’s still out on that one.