Prometheus Leads Fox's Digital HD for the Latest Movies through New Streaming Access before Discs

Want to reach the latest blockbuster weeks earlier before DVD and Blu-ray copies available? As announced earlier this month, 20th Century Fox would make it possible by offering users support for streaming movies services-selling HD digital copies of movies, either stream or download the movies. As a matter of fact, the sci-fiction movie "Prometheus" leads the trend, which is already on the shelve for downloading while the disc version won't come out until Oct. 11th.

Such new access for latest movies services work through iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Cinema Now, PlayStation, Vudu, Xbox Live and YouTube as well. It is named as "Digital HD", which provides movie addicts better offer: earlier release at lower cost of similar quality, even with Cloud storage as well as multiple devices supported. Prometheus just appears as an excellent example when you can get it now for $15 (DVD for $29.9 while BD for 39.9 on October 11). As Mary Daily(President of Worldwide Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment) put it: "Over time, DIGITAL HD will embody the benefits of HD quality and the ultimate all-access pass to the best in entertainment".

Actually Fox took efforts to promote its discs over the past few years, while this transition to stream access for movies indicates that digital will rules the future pictures, it's the coming of medium time (as Mike Dunn-worldwide president of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment believed).

According to Fox, the New Digital HD for the Latest Movies through Streaming Access before Discs is available around 50 countries and more. With the alien Prometheus as initiative Digital HD, 600 movies including Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, The Watch, among others, will soon be shown on the above retailers such as Amazon, iTunes, etc.

DVD Playback is not Supported in Windows 8 Without Built-in WMC

Without the built-in Windows Media Center, playback of DVDs encoded using the most widely-used MPEG-2 video format and Dolby audio format would not be supported in Windows 8. Nor can users burn DVDs directly, unless you pay for Windows Media Center, which is only available on the updated Windows 8 Pro version. Or maybe you can get it solved by some 3rd party software.

And from Windows 8 to the Pro version, Windows 8 Pro Pack is indispensable. In the Building Windows 8 blog, Steven Sinofsky wrote" Based on the above discussion, it should be clear that we cannot enable DVD playback all the time in Windows Media Player. Given the ongoing feedback to avoid feature overlap and to avoid the complexity of behavior changing for a previously installed component, we only enable DVD playback in Media Center once it is installed. "

One of the reasons for such remove of DVD playback function from its previous versions with pre-installed Windows Media Center is mainly because of the vastly decreasing usage in PC TV and DVD playback these years. Slim and portable tablets (with no DVD drive) even could be viewed as the substitution of PC, and streaming media online (Netflix, YouTube, etc.), the changing consuming direction and pattern, leads to the declining of DVDs.

For another reason, as pre-installed software for DVD playback costs, while many PCs would not ever contain an optical DVD drive as is commonly-seen in recent PCs. However, such PC Windows still carries the cost. This is somehow for consumer’s sake.

The future video supporting mainly goes to streaming online (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) playback.

However, Cyberlink would provide consumers with software for DVDs which may probably pre-installed on Windows 8. In fact, there are many other choices of DVD tool. Does this bother you if upgrading to the Windows 8?

Related Articles:

Windows 7 to Windows 8:No DVD Playback and More 
Best Free Options for DVD Playback in Windows 8: VLC Media Player