You may have seen it coming a mile off: JB Hi-Fi has launched a streaming video service, but it's not exactly as you might have expected it to be.
Rather than offering a catalogue of titles for rental, JB Hi-Fi Video Now is instead a portal for Ultraviolet video content. When customers buy UltraViolet titles on DVD or Blu-Ray they can retrieve a digital license for the same film and stream it through Video Now to TVs, tablets and phones.
It's no Netflix
Though it will be a new service in Australia this year, UltraViolet has been around for a few years already. The service launched in 2011 in the US, and has grown beyond just linking the sale of physical copies with a digital license, to a fully-fledged rental service, like iTunes.
There is also a disc-to-digital service run by supermarket chain Walmart, that lets you purchase digital licenses for any movie you own on DVD. You can even choose whether to pay just US$2 for a standard-definition digital version, or upgrade to an HD copy for US$5.
It will be a while before Australians have access to comparable features in the UltraViolet service locally.