Download and burn kiosks roll out to colleges
Polar Frog forms partnership with National Assn. of College Stores
By Jennifer Netherby -- Video Business, 9/23/2008
SEPT. 23 | Polar Frog Digital will begin rolling out digital download kiosks to seven college campuses next month through a deal with the National Assn. of College Stores, the two announced today.
NACS, a collegiate retail trade organization with 3,100 member stores, will add kiosks to campus bookstores at NYU, UCLA, San Diego State University, University of Colorado—Boulder, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Bowling Green State University.
Students at those schools will be able to use the touch-screen kiosks to download movies and TV shows and burn them to DVD or transfer them to a Flash or USB drive. They also will be able to buy downloads online or via mobile phone with the ability to download to a PC or burn it to DVD for pickup at the bookstore.
Polar Frog has content from independent suppliers including Magnolia Entertainment and First Look Studios, as well as more niche providers, and is in talks with major studios.
Polar Frog CEO Todd Rosenbaum said the kiosks will add textbook downloads by the spring semester.
He was hopeful that putting kiosks before the most sought after demographic would encourage major studios to license content for the kiosks.
“Obviously, we think this is a big push,” he said. “I don’t understand how this wouldn’t be an option” for studios.
NACS plans to roll out an additional 10 to 25 kiosks at other colleges in the spring.
The group formed a new company, NACS Media Solutions LLC, to serve as aggregator for digital content. It will focus on making that content affordable for students who choose to use their campus store. Rosenbaum said pricing would likely be comparable to DVD.
“Many college stores currently have a limited capability to offer digital content at an affordable price,” NACS Media Solutions president and chief operating officer Ed Schlichenmayer said in a statement announcing the deal. “NACS Media Solutions will fill this need among our members while at the same time taking the big-box retailer concept of power buying and applying it to benefit our members, which in essence are small-businessmen and businesswomen.”
The kiosks will burn to DVD using CSS copy protection, the same technology used to protect commercial DVDs.
Last month, Polar Frog announced a partnership with technology company Nero for its liquid media technology, which allows DVD burning using CSS.
