Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Samsung Movies Aims to Put Films on Your Phone

By
Samsung Movies Aims to Put Films on Your Phone

Looking to cash in on consumers’ desire to be able to access any manner of media from their mobile phones, Samsung has taken the wraps off a public beta version of Samsung Movies, a new service that enables users to buy or rent movies and television episodes for their mobile phones. The service features both current and library titles from major Hollywood studios (Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal are on board); Samsung movies currently offers over 500 titles, and plans to offer 1,000 by the end of the first quarter of 2009, and 2,000 titles by the end of June.

Samsung is launching the service in the UK and Germany, and plans to extend the service to other European markets during 2009. The service is based on technology from the privately-owned movie retailer Acetrax, which has inked the distribution deals with the movie studios. Samsung is the first company to take Acetrax’s service to a global market. The service is currently only available for Samsung’s Tocco Ultra Edition (S8300) phone, but the company will support more devices soon. Users download the movies and television shows to their PCs, then sync them to their mobile device. The service uses Windows Media DRM.

Recommended Videos

A 24-hour movie rental is priced at £2.49 (about $3.50); movies can be purchased for £4.99 (about $7).

Samsung says it plans to expand the service to include music offerings, as well as to enable notebook computer users and owners of Samsung TV’s to tap into the service.

Whether the world needs another iTunes competitor remains to be seen, but by focusing first on the mobile market rather than PCs, Samsung opens up another front of competition with the likes of Nokia, which offers a bevcy of content services for mobile users.

There’s no word on whether Samsung plans to bring the service to the North American market.

Editors' Recommendations

Geoff Duncan
Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Is the messages app on your Samsung phone crashing? Here’s how to fix it
Google messages versus samsung messages app icons side by side on Galaxy Z Fold 5.

App crashes are annoying, but they’re extra annoying when it's your text messaging app that crashes while you’re trying to reach someone or — worse — when you're trying to get a two-factor authentication code.

According to users on Reddit and the Samsung Community forum, the Samsung Messages app keeps closing when they try to open any conversation. This is happening across Samsung Galaxy models, including the S21 and S4 Ultra, and across different carriers, meaning it’s not a device or carrier issue. Many users have reported that restarting their phone, restarting in safe mode, and clearing the app cache hasn’t helped.

Read more
This new Android feature isn’t coming to your Samsung phone after all
Someone holding the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus.

A screenshot of the Instant Hotspot feature Google

Google has announced seven new features rolling out to Android phones soon, including message editing in Google messages, improved cross-device services, and perhaps most notably Instant Hotspot. This feature streamlines hotspot creation and tethering between your Android phone and tablet or Chromebook, letting you create hotspots without having to deal with passwords and QR codes.

Read more
Here’s how iOS 18 could change the way you use your iPhone
The lock screen on the Apple iPhone 15 Plus.

It seems the long-overdue Siri overhaul will finally arrive at WWDC in just over a week from now, and the digital assistant will embrace AI trickery in all its forms. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s planned upgrades for Siri will deeply integrate with on-device functions at the OS level and with the installed apps, too.

“The new system will allow Siri to take command of all the features within apps for the first time,” the report says. The most notable capability is that Siri will only require voice prompts to interact with apps, thanks to a major change in the AI architecture powering it and putting large language models in command, just the way Gemini or ChatGPT draw their own skills from such models.

Read more