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We’ve heard it all before, that the DVD is dying, and that the Blu-Ray might not even matter for movies, that the industry is going towards digital download.  While that may be true, there is a chance that we might be seeing another physical way of distributing movies before we move to all download and streaming.  The good news is that’s it won’t be yet another optical disc to worry about.

The “new” method comes from a deal between Kingston and Paramount that would see movies distributed via flash memory.  More specifically, movies will be available on USB flash drives and SD cards.  The new method would see movies sold not only individually, but as part of bundles possibly on the same drives/cards or as part of a series, it’s not particularly clear.  The deal itself isn’t too clear at the moment, with no release date scheduled, but the partnership and plans seem to be there.

Distributing movies on flash memory seems like a smart idea.  Assuming the files are in some sort of standard format without DRM, they should be able to work on just about any computer or netbook.  These would work especially well on netbooks or laptops, where users don’t want to carry around DVDs, but may not have the storage to fit a large collection of movies, or no Internet connection that can stream movies.  It would be nice if the drives/cards contained both HD and SD versions for a netbook and laptop version.  What’s more likely, however, is just SD films so they can be put on the cheapest cards available with a small amount of storage space.  Either way, when the partnership does see some real product emerge, it will be interesting to see how well it takes off/fails miserably.

Read [Electronista]