CinemaNow app dropped from Sony devices, including PlayStation (2 Viewers)

Sony and CinemaNow have parted ways, meaning the CinemaNow app is no longer available on any Sony TV, Blu-ray player, and even PS3 and PS4 consoles. What does this mean, exactly? It means that any content purchased on CinemaNow that is not UltraViolet can no longer be viewed on these devices.


What are CinemaNow and Sony doing about this? Absolutely nothing, except offer an apology and hope that one day, in the future, CinemaNow will be available again. The only solution provided by CinemaNow is to either connect a PC to your HDTV or purchase yet another device to connect to your TV that supports their service.


This is why I prefer physical media over digital streaming/downloads, and that the latter is great for sharing UV titles with family and friends across the country and for portability when traveling.


My feeling is that if CinemaNow is not going to be available on my devices anymore, then they should either offer compensation to repurchase the content in my library that can only be viewed on their service from another provider (such as VUDU) or at least help cover the cost to get a new device, such as a Roku.


What are your thoughts on the matter?

Yet another reason not to "buy" any movies this way. Losing CinemaNow is no big loss however if it works anything like it does on the Rokus- it's unusably slow (takes almost a full minute to bring up an Ultraviolet library!) and doesn't even have 5.1 sound. Even Best Buy gave up and sold it a while ago.

Todd Erwin said:

Sony and CinemaNow have parted ways, meaning the CinemaNow app is no longer available on any Sony TV, Blu-ray player, and even PS3 and PS4 consoles. What does this mean, exactly? It means that any content purchased on CinemaNow that is not UltraViolet can no longer be viewed on these devices.

What are CinemaNow and Sony doing about this? Absolutely nothing, except offer an apology and hope that one day, in the future, CinemaNow will be available again. The only solution provided by CinemaNow is to either connect a PC to your HDTV or purchase yet another device to connect to your TV that supports their service.

This is why I prefer physical media over digital streaming/downloads, and that the latter is great for sharing UV titles with family and friends across the country and for portability when traveling.

My feeling is that if CinemaNow is not going to be available on my devices anymore, then they should either offer compensation to repurchase the content in my library that can only be viewed on their service from another provider (such as VUDU) or at least help cover the cost to get a new device, such as a Roku.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

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CinemaNow hasn't been available on PlayStation in a couple of years.

satam55 said:

CinemaNow hasn't been available on PlayStation in couple of years.

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Yeah, Sony and CinemaNow parted ways back in October 2013...

???

The app, although no longer available from the Playstation Store, still works sporadically on PS3's. Neither company will offer support, though.


The main point I was trying to make was to use caution when buying content that is not shared with other providers. In other words, don't purchase something that isn't UV or DMA, and don't purchase it from a non-UV or non-DMA partner. Thankfully, 98% of my CinemaNow library is UV, and 100% of my VUDU library is either UV or DMA.

Yeah because buying on iTunes is highly risky Todd =p

Todd Erwin said:

The main point I was trying to make was to use caution when buying content that is not shared with other providers. In other words, don't purchase something that isn't UV or DMA, and don't purchase it from a non-UV or non-DMA partner. Thankfully, 98% of my CinemaNow library is UV, and 100% of my VUDU library is either UV or DMA.

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Yeah because buying on iTunes is highly risky Todd =p

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Both of you have a point. I don't feel comfortable buying Non-UV or Non-DMA Movies & TV shows.
iTunes & Amazon Instant are the only VOD retailers that I'm comfortable buying Non-UV or Non-DMA content.

I don't get that at all? Guess that's one of the reasons I make sure titles I purchase are on UV, that way I know I can watch elsewhere.

CinemaNotNow?

Truth be told, CinemaNow has been circling the drain for a couple of years now. No one has ever taken this service seriously, even back when it was launched by Lionsgate. Rovi has been trying to sell off the engine that the service runs on for years, and Best Buy finally wised up and sold off their interest in the service to a holding company around two years ago, although they still have a marketing agreement for digital pre-orders. CinemaNow offers an onlline disc-to-digital service, but it only supports DVD and not Blu-ray (even though VUDU has been offering that option for a few years now).


If and when they finally throw in the towel, I suspect they will transition their customers over to M-Go, rather than VUDU.

CinemaNever!


When they started out, they had a deal where you would pay to download a DVD ISO image for burning to a blank disc- for the same price as purchasing a regular DVD of the same movie. They had a demo disc you could download for free to test it out, and I could never get it to work (despite having downloaded DVD files from less, um, official sources.) I wrote tech support several times, they offered suggestions that didn't work until finally saying that they basically didn't know what to do.