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Disney to shutter online movie store, website

Published: November 19, 2012 Comment on this article

Disney is the only studio of the six Hollywood majors that has declined to participate in UltraViolet, a standard that gives consumers the ability to view their movie purchases on multiple devices. It is developing its own technology called KeyChest that performs a similar function.

Studios hope that giving consumers the ability to do more with their movie purchases will help boost sales.

Since launching in October of last year, UltraViolet has had about 6 million people sign up.

For the nine months through September, U.S. sales of DVD and Blu-ray discs were down 3.8 percent at $5.4 billion, according to the industry consortium, The Digital Entertainment Group.

More people are turning to subscription video services like Netflix and digital rentals through video-on-demand services connected to their TVs. When factoring in digital forms of movie consumption, U.S. home video revenue is up 1 percent at $12.3 billion this year.

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