Japanese venture technology company Visionare has developed an application, Pay-Per-View Blu-ray that makes it possible for consumers to rent or purchase the content of a BD disc using a mobile phone for payment. PPVBD is based on a concept developed for DVD (PPV-DVD).

The consumer purchases a Blu-ray disc at a rental price and type into the player with the remote control the code printed on the disc box. The content is available to watch for a week as rental. The ‘rental’ option is available as often as the user is willing to renew payment.

If the viewer is interested to keep the content in a sell-though fashion, he uses his camera-mounted smartphone to scan the barcode on the disc box, pay the purchase price and receive a security code to be typed in the resident memory of the BD player. Access to the content is thus illimited.

The system enables consumers to “try” the movie before buying, which is done by mobile phone bill collection, but also by pre-paid cards or credit cards. In a nutshell, the locked video content on the disc is distributed, then unlocked when viewers want to access it by paying a ‘rental’ or ‘sell-though’ price.

“It offers an alternative business model for distributing DVD and Blu-ray content,” says, President and CEO Hiroshi Uchikoga. “Since there is no need to return the discs after watching, they can be distributed through ordinary distribution channels such as convenience stores, retail stores or internet shopping sites.”

PPV-DVD is equipped with CSS copy-protection and, in addition, has its own random password-locking functionality to prevent unlawful usage of the contents.

Called 1-Week DVD in Japan, the PPV-DVD technology has been used for well-known Japanese animation title and US TV series such as 24. Then number of titles is increasing every year and the accumulated number of PPV payment has already exceeded 100,000.

Convenient to content owners, passwords can be set up for each section of a multiple content one disc. Also, the window for paid viewing and the number of times the content can be viewed is set by the content owner, so they can respond to various target audiences’ needs.

Story filed 29.05.10