iW NEWS | iArthouse Launches World Cinema Service

iArthouse, the first online site dedicated specifically to world cinema officially launched today, with an initial library of more than 800 films. Featuring download-to-burn technology, the iArthouse library aims to include several thousand international and arthouse films by year's end, many previously inaccessible. iArthouse is the first major company to succeed in bringing international cinema to the online arena through this means. iArthouse is a new division of EZTakes, and led by EZTakes founders Jim Flynn and Bill Clarke, together with veteran cinema distribution and marketing executives John Lawrence Re and Larry Jackson. "Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the entertainment industry today is learning how to compete with free, illegal downloads," said Flynn in a statement. "By offering a high caliber of quality, legitimate content and enabling customers to burn their purchased downloads to playable DVDs, iArthouse is providing the kind of value and convenience that millions of people are willing to pay for, which we've already proven with the success of EZTakes." [Peter Knegt]