Disney launches online movie site, without fanfare

This article comes to us from the LA Times.

Walt Disney Co. quietly launched Disney Movies Online, which lets consumers buy or rent digital versions of Disney and Pixar films and watch them on the Internet. The site, which debuted without fanfare in May, was conceived as a bridge to step the family entertainment company’s mainstream consumers gently from the physical to the digital world.

How much without fanfare? Disney still isn’t promoting the site –- there are no links on the Disney.com site — beyond inserting the Web address on a sleave inside DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

In a second, more-public milestone, Disney partnered with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to offer a free “digital copy” of the movie “Toy Story 3” with the purchase of the video. Consumers use an enclosed code to unlock and watch the film through the retailer’s Vudu online movie service.

Taken together, these developments help lay the foundation for Disney’s vision of the digital future, in which consumers would buy, store and access digital copies of the studio’s films from one place. These efforts work in tandem with an initiative announced last year called KeyChest. The technology would allow consumers to pay once for a movie, then watch it on any device, such as Internet-connected computers and mobile phones.

“We believe if we harness the power of these separate initiatives … we’ll immediately seize the opportunity, extend a lot more benefits to Disney customers and sort of catapault this thing into the future very rapidly,” said Bob Chapek, distribution president for Walt Disney Studios.

Despite the convenience of renting and buying movies online -– and the promotional bonanza 38 million visitors to Disney.com delivers -– the company is keeping mum about Disney Movies Online because it is still in a test phase, officials said. At some point in the first half of 2011 a promotional campaign for the studio’s digital offering is expected to kick in, under the name Disney Studio All Access.

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