Zediva has an interesting approach in that it has a data centre in California that has hundreds of DVD players set up like an automated jukebox. When you ‘rent’ a movie from Zediva, you are actually renting the DVD player with the movie loaded.
You can access various features such as closed captioning, subtitles, director’s commentary and languages if included on the DVD. It is not yet understood if this includes audio description, which is usually a special feature not currently enabled by Zediva.
The Zediva system simply streams the DVD output via the Internet. It works in a similar way to the Netflix DVD service, but without the mailing out of DVDs. Zediva buys lots of copies of the DVD on release and then loads them into its system.
The playout requires a web browser supporting Flash video (so it won’t work on Apple portable devices, but Zediva says that it is working on an app to fix this).
Following a burst of publicity in the last couple of weeks in the USA, the website says that it is building more capacity so that it can take on more consumers.
So far it has not been challenged by lawsuits from the movie companies or distributors.
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