Movies on SD card now a reality

First came movies on USB thumb drives. Now feature films are suddenly finding their way to SD cards, the same media you use in your digital camera.

While the thumb drive movie appears to be a one-off experiment involving just one title bundled on a flash drive and being sold in just one retail chain, movies on SD card are actually invading on a broader scale.

Specifically, kiosks that offer consumers movie rentals downloaded to SD card will arrive in six Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores located in Dallas, Seattle, and Portland this week. The kiosks will come loaded with a thousand films (and 500 more by the end of the year), including both catalog titles and major new releases -- and they'll be available on the same day as the general DVD release, before they hit video-on-demand services on cable networks or the Internet.

Want to play back the movie? In addition presumably to having the option of playing it on your computer, video stores will rent or sell set-top boxes that can play SD-stored content directly. It's unclear if users will be able to bring their own SD card for the download or will have to purchase one in conjunction with the movie rental.

Pricing, curiously, is set to be higher than the $1-a-night standard for DVD kiosk rentals, largely because they will use a similar strategy to VOD pricing, where movies can be watched at any time up to a month after the movie is rented and must be completed within 48 hours of when you start watching the film, after which time the movie can no longer be viewed.

SD-based movie purchase options, with no time limits on viewing, are also in the works.

I don't live in a market with these kiosks so won't be able to try them out firsthand. If any of you manage to find one of these kiosks in the real world, please report back with your thoughts!

The kiosks are being installed this week.