One of the world's largest manufacturers of optical and stolid state storage media, Okhla (near Delhi) -based Moser Baer, has taken the distribution of cinematic entertainment to a new technology level: it has begun distributing Indian feature films on USB drives. T

Ten original Bollywood hits like ‘Fashion’, ‘Khosla ka Ghosla, Dev D, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Padosan, Andaaz Apna Apna, Kaminey, Shaurya, Fashion, Iqbal and A Wednesday are already available nationally, recorded on 4 GM USB flash drives. The advantage is that the pre-loaded content can be erased by customers as and when required and the device used as a normal USB drive.

The company has announced plans to distribute over 100,000 units within a month. While the films on USB are uniformly priced at Rs850, they are being sold at the MoserBaer website for an introductory price of Rs680. http://shop.moserbaer.in/product-subCategories.asp?subId=87 . This is not bad value since Moser’s own blank 4 GB drives cost around Rs 600. Also on the cards are multiple movies on 8 GB and 16 GB pen drives.
Moser Baer has been among the first to market Blu-Ray discs and products in  High Definition formats as well as LightScribe DVDs on which images can be etched on a PC printer. Two years ago, it made a disruptive entry into the CD/DVD movie market in India by acquiring rights to a large number of titles in Hindi and all other Indian languages and retailing the recorded products at almost a third of the prevalent rates – which were around Rs100. Today MoserBaer is the dominant player in the Indian language movie DVD business.

Its leap into movies on USB comes at a time when worldwide, customers want to carry multiple movies on handy devices they can play on netbooks and mobile phones, rather than lugging a stack of DVDs. The bust of America’s biggest DVD movie rental player Blockbuster, last week, only underlines that in this region, home to the world’s largest movie business, we are a jump ahead, technology –wise.  September 26 2010



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