CinemaNow Adds Shows, but Who’s Watching?

Besides being one of the providers selling BCS games as part of Fox’s announcement, online video distributor CinemaNow announced last week an agreement to sell Showtime and A&E programming at the popular price point of $1.99 an episode. But according to Forbes Magazine, Cinemanow only enjoys a 1% share of the online video market compared to a whopping 90% share for iTunes — as Sony looks to enter the market armed with scads of its own content to sell over the PSP and PS3. Could it be CinemaNow, see you later?

The big problem CinemaNow faces is getting the content onto the living-room set. Dave Zatz, no slouch when it comes to connecting media hardware, kludged his way to a “CinemaNow -> PC -> Xbox 360 -> TV” setup to get CinemaNow working on his home tube. A CinemaNow rep recommended using their DVD burning feature, or to connect a computer via video cable.

“Non-geeks won’t bother and high-def aficionados shouldn’t,” said Zatz about the challenges of getting CinemaNow content to a bigger screen. But with better Windows Media Center integration (and documentation), there’s no reason why every Xbox 360 and Zune owner couldn’t be added as a potential customer — a curious gap considering that Microsoft is an investor in the company.