Lycos Links Up With Movielink

May 10th, 2007

Terra Lycos and Movielink have begun to offer the latter’s movie download service from a jointly-branded Web site, a move that adds this service to the Lycos network and expands Movielink’s reach.

Terra Lycos will promote the Web site throughout its network of sites, offering links to it from, for example, pages whose content relate to movies, said Dean Tsouvalas, content manager at Terra Lycos. For example, a user accessing pages about actor John Cusack would get pitches to go and download his movies at the joint Terra Lycos/Movielink site, he said.

The joint site will feature special promotions not offered at the main Movielink site, he said. The joint site will also offer certain movies before the Movielink site, he said.

Things that remain uniform in both sites are download prices, which range between $2.95 and $4.99, and rental terms: movies will have the same download prices in both sites and they can be stored in a hard drive for up to 30 days. However, once the user begins viewing a movie, the rental agreement lapses in 24 hours, at which point the movie erases itself from the user’s hard drive.

Currently there isn’t an option to buy a movie from the Movielink service, but that is something that will probably be offered in the future, Tsouvalas said. The movies can’t be transferred from the PC, which means they have to be watched there. It is allowed to hook up a TV set to the PC.

The service will appeal in particular to business travelers who like to watch movies on their laptop PCs in long flights but find it a hassle to carry around DVDs or dislike the power consumption playing a DVD entails, he said. Viewing a downloaded movie uses much less power, he said.

The average movie takes about 30 minutes to download, but users can begin viewing the movie just minutes after the download begins, he said. The service is available to U.S. residents only. Terra Lycos, based in Barcelona, Spain, has its U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Movielink, based in Santa Monica, California, has similar agreements to the Terra Lycos one with various partners, including Hollywood.com, a division of Hollywood Media, the Road Runner broadband service, owned and operated by Time Warner Cable, and BellSouth.

Movielink, founded in 2001 as a joint venture between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros., launched its service in November 2002.

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