It’s been a few months since Microsoft announced an intent to invest in Barnes and Noble. The early suspicion was that these two companies were going to work together on a new tablet, or maybe Microsoft wanted to add the eBook retailer to the list of launch applications for Windows 8. There’s been very little said about that investment until today, when Barnes and Noble announced Nook Video, a new video store and streaming service.
The Nook Video store will offer users the ability to shop for movies and TV shows from a wide selection of content creators. Starz, Viacom, HBO, and Disney are just a few of the companies that have signed on to provide content to the store, with a promise from Barnes and Noble that more will be available later. Everything you purchase from Nook Video will be available in the Nook Cloud, and it’s likely that everything with access to the cloud service will be able to stream Nook Video purchases.
On top of digital purchases from Nook Video, users will be able to add content from Blu-ray and DVD purchases that are Ultraviolet compatible, which will give Nook users access to some content weeks before it is available in other digital retailers.
Nook Video will offer Barnes and Noble subscribers a massive infusion of content, quickly elevating the Nook tablets to a highly competitive state. The selection available on the Nook will quickly surpass what is available on Google’s Play Store, and the service will be the only one to offer Ultraviolet natively instead of through the Flixster app.
B&N was able to put together all of this because of Microsoft. The content creators that are going to be providing content to the Nook are the some ones currently providing content through Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. Even the Ultraviolet integration is due largely to Microsoft being one of the principal backers of the the budding digital content service. Nook Video will be available in the Fall for the US and available in the UK by the holiday season.
Via Geek.com
