Paramount announces Silverlight Enhanced movies for Windows Phone 7

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Paramount today announced an interesting twist to movie watching on your Windows Phone: Silverlight Enhanced movies. Fetching for $9.99 and starting with School of Rock, you can download the application/movie combo from the Marketplace allowing you to watch and interact with the movie.

The best way to describe this is a DVD menu + extras on your mobile using the power of Silverlight. The features include the ability to

...create custom clips, view the movie with pop-up trivia powered by 'Scene It?', and a Movie Info feature offering users the ability to identify actors, objects, music, and places in the movie, while providing rich, contextual information, such as bios, descriptions, and even maps to the locations.

Other movies coming down the line include Zoolander, Waiting for Superman and GI Joe: the rise of Cobra. Not exactly our favorite titles, except for Zoolander, but hey it's a start. Normally, our lame-meters are going off with this kind of thing but dare we say, this might work if they get the right titles (and maybe lower the price)?

Head here to download it. Remember, $9.99 and no trial (obviously).

Source: Windows Phone Developer Blog, NewsBlaze

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

7 Comments
  • Definitely need better titles, none mentioned so far would be worth $10 to me, especially since they probably wont be playable anywhere else.
  • 1. Microsoft needs to help this out by providing the "supported" SD memory expansion. 8GB isn't going to cut it with stuff like this. Speaking of space, are we going to be able yo swap movies in/out using Zune? 2. As much as I adore the screen on my Focus, this is still a very limited way to watch movies and thus, $10 is too much. I assume for that price I'll be able to watch via Zune on my PC. 3. They need better titles. How about something released in the current year? These things cost a loy of memory and money; make it worth it, please. 4. Maybe consider purchasers of new DVDs with a digital copy like this...at least a discount.
  • I thought Waiting for Superman came out this year? Either way, this looks damn cool, especially the interface and bonus content. Really makes me wish MS is working on a WP7/Windows7(8?) tablet, because this would be perfect!
  • 8gb? what device do you have? I have the HTC HD7 16gbs
  • I won't try it until a movie I really want to watch on mobile comes out, but I really like the idea. Something that still bothers me about digital content vs. BluRay (or DVDs) is the lack of extra features. I hate paying to download a movie over Zune, when the disc edition might have all sorts of extras for the same price. I hope they use this as a launchpad for better and more comprehensive delivery of digital content. Will have to keep track of it.
  • School of Rock was a 1.1GB download directly to my Surround. Synced with Zune afterwards and don't see any way to sync with desktop so its only on the phone. Same for custom clips. Couldn't find any way to offload them (not in video or pictures hubs) and no press and hold options. Only played a little so far but it looks and sounds great especially with the Surrounds great speaker and kickstand. Still don't like watching movies on a small screen, but this is good to show to friends, especially those who own iPhones. As it's an app, I suppose you can remove it anytime and add another. Then reinstall the first one at a later date. So no need to keep more than a couple at a time. I agree that something like $5.99 would be more enticing as well as some current movies. The download did load four trailers, including Morning Glory and The Fighter, so there is hope.
  • Paramount today announced an interesting news that is movie watching on your Windows Phone: Silverlight Enhanced movies. Fetching for only $9.99 and starting with School of Rock, you can download the application as well as movie combo from the Marketplace that allowing you to watch and interact with the movie. The best way to describe this is that DVD menu + extras on your mobile using the power of Silverlight.
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