Movies to come to Cellphone

Privately held digital entertainment provider CinemaNow said on Tuesday that U.S. consumers would be able to use their cell phones to view movie trailers and order full-length movies to watch on their home television or computer through its mobile website.

The service, offered on Web-capable phones at mobile.cinemanow.com, would let U.S. consumers immediately buy or rent a movie when they hear about a new offering while they are out with friends.

"It definitely makes discovery a little more social when you can talk about the movie and do the purchase while you're there," said David Cook, CinemaNow's chief operating officer.

The service automatically downloads movies to a Web-connected consumer electronics device such as a home computer. Having a movie ready to watch by the time a user gets home could also help save time as full movies can take an hour or more to download over the Internet.

CinemaNow, which already competes with services such as Apple Inc's iTunes in Web video rentals, charges about $14.99 for online movie purchases and about $1.99 for rentals.

The technology for the new CinemaNow service is from uVuMobile Inc, which specializes in mobile video.

U.S. service providers are looking to generate an increasing amount of revenue from data services such as video streaming since as many as 150 phone models being sold in the U.S. today can already support streaming video, according to Cook.

He said the company planned to approach U.S. wireless service providers after Tuesday's launch of the site with a view to forging agreements to put the service onto the carriers' main menu of data offerings.

Cook said the service could be followed with video downloads directly to mobile phones as early as 2009.

"I think it's something you'd see next year," he said.