CinemaNow, the video on demand company has just secured a further US$11 million in financing for its projects. The investment is expected to fund the company’s expansion into the European and Asian markets, as well as acquiring new content and developing CinemaNow’s technology. CinemaNow have developed the PatchBay content on demand distribution system, and their website is based on it.
This new round of funding was led by Menlo Ventures, with additional investment from Cisco Systems (who provide hardware to CinemaNow) and Lions Gate (who provide content).
CinemaNow was established in 1999, and now has a library of 5,000 titles for downloading and streaming over the internet. Content is available on a pay-per-view, subscription and download to own basis. CinemaNow features content from 20th Century Fox, Disney, MGM and Warner Bros, amongst others.
They are currently second place in the market behind MovieLink, and has recently announced that it has been breaking even.
CinemaNow
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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