Sony and HP pair up in DVD deal

Palo Alto (CA) – Hewlett-Packard (HP) has licensed “select” catalog titles from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) for production and distribution via HP’s “DVD manufactured-on-demand” service.

Sony becomes the first major Hollywood studio to use HP’s service, which was announced in Summer of last year. It remained unclear which content HP will burn onto DVDs, but the two companies indicated that it will content that has not been generally available on DVDs so far.

“We know there is strong consumer demand for these titles, and by working with HP we can monetize our deep product library and help give retailers the means to bring a wider offering of Sony Pictures product to consumers without a significant investment in inventory,” said SPHE president David Bishop in a prepared statement.

HP said it focuses its DVD production and distribution service on classic and older TV shows, foreign movies, specialty genre movies (religion, education, lifestyle, health, food, sports), cable TV programming content, independent movies and recently broadcast shows and sporting events “with high relevancy in specific geographic markets or within specific consumer segments.“

At this time, the license is limited to DVD production. A spokesperson for HP, however, told TG Daily that the two companies are “exploring” a possibility to publish content on Blu-ray discs as well.