Following on from the short announcement that Steven Soderbergh's next short film will be distributed on the Internet using BitTorrent, Warner Brothers has announced that they will be using this technology to distribute and sell movies across the Internet on the same day they are released to DVD.

From TwinCities.com comes the exciting development:

...it will use BitTorrent's ability to speed the downloading of large computer files to rent and sell its films the same day the movies become available on DVD.

The studio also will sell permanent copies of films and TV shows online that can be burned to a backup DVD, although the copy will only play on the computer used to download the film and not on standard DVD players....

...The companies did not specify a date but said the service will be offered starting this summer. Pricing is also undetermined...

..."Those are the kinds of baby steps to offer users a good trade off, a good alternative to doing things the wrong way," said Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent.

Yes, baby steps. The disappointing thing for me is that the film will only play on the computer you downloaded the movie through, you won't be able to play it on a DVD player and it seems there's been no thought of doing something with the XBox or PS3.

Imagine that, downloading on your console overnight and watching the next day? Adding an external burner to that to store them on DVD. Actually that idea wouldn't make the restriction to the device you downloaded on so bad, but the PC? At least with a games console you wouldn't be excluding the Home Cinema buffs from this equation because they're more likely to have their consoles attached to the same Cinema system, they won't be likely to have their PC wired up.

I don't know, although it's an interesting development is this something you'd really use for movies? I would for TV shows, but not films.