Details emerge about MGM`s movie downloading service, dubbed Epix

While sites like YouTube and Hulu may have rights to limited content from Hollywood, Studio 3 Networks plans to take online video to a new level with epix, a service that will offer in excess of 15, 000 films and television shows across multiple platforms - Read Write Web reports.

This "next-generation entertainment service" is expected to launch as a premium movie channel in the fourth quarter of 2009 but will be offered to online subscribers first, with an expected Web launch in May.

"With epix, we are creating an entirely new category of entertainment service for consumers that is unlike anything that currently exists," said Mark Greenberg, President of Studio 3 Networks. "epix is the first brand to hold exclusive exhibition rights to movie content that can be delivered anywhere, anytime." While this is great news for Internet users, Greenberg told The Wall Street Journal that the Web streaming service is "not our primary business model."

Studio 3 Networks, the joint venture formed by Viacom's Paramount Pictures unit, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate plans to provide access to directors' script notes, outtakes, auditions and other extras giving Web folk over and above what is currently available on other movie sites.

Offering up newly released movies such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at launch, epix will also have the rights to all 17 re-mastered James Bond movies as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Unfortunately subscription prices have yet to be announced but we look forward to watching it evolve.

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