ClickStar

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ClickStar, Inc.

Type	Broadband Movie Distribution
Founded	2004
Headquarters	Santa Monica, California, USA
Key people	Lori McCreary, Founder and Chairman & CEO, Morgan Freeman, Founder
Industry	Electronic commerce
Products	Online Movie download and rental
Revenue	Unknown
Employees	Unknown
Website	cstar.com

ClickStar (cstar.com) is a broadband movie distribution company founded by actor Morgan Freeman and film producer Lori McCreary of Revelations Entertainment. Intel Corporation has joined forces by contributing with an unknown amount of funding in the company. The business model will be distribution of movies on the Internet before general DVD availability. Currently the site is in a preview-beta phase. It is not accessible from outside the lower 48 of the United States due to licensing restrictions by major movie studios. ClickStar launched in December 2006 under the leadership of interim CEO James J. Ackerman and Chairman/Co-Founder Lori McCreary.

In 2006 ClickStar became the first company in motion picture history to offer a legitimate motion picture download, 10 Items or Less. while the movie was still playing in theaters. ClickStar was highlighted by the American Film Institute in their AFI Awards 2006 "Moments of Significance" for this achievement.^[1]

ClickStar currently has deals with several major movie studios including Sony, Universal and Warner Bros..

1 Purchases, Rentals and Service
2 Limitations of Clickstar while in Beta
3 Future Direction
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Purchases, Rentals and Service

The ClickStar service is currently in its beta phase. Movies are available on a per item basis, some for purchase, rental or both. ClickStar also offers some of their movies in HD. Free content includes trailers, artist created channels (such as Our Space hosted by Morgan Freeman), and small in-house film shorts. Purchased content includes full length movies and documentaries for download to either own or rent. The catalog of available movies is updated regularly. ClickStar in its Beta 2 stage, removed the forum blogs, and movie discussion features, refocusing more on product and less on community.

[edit] Limitations of Clickstar while in Beta

There are several beta phase limitations which are expected to change.

As of January 2007:

Mac users are unable to use the service.
Downloaded content cannot be redownloaded if the content is lost, for example.
Content can be backed up to DVDs but cannot be converted to DVD.
Requires Microsoft Internet Explorer or Firefox on Windows XP or Windows Vista

[edit] Future Direction

This section does not cite any references or sources. (December 2007)
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ClickStar's partnership with Intel and its corporate website seem to indicate that the ultimate goal is to enable viewers to watch downloaded movies on their TVs without the need for a computer.

It is speculation as to whether this will be via a proprietary set top box or via other devices recently announced by other companies, such as Apple Computer. However, it is clear that ClickStar set out its corporate intention long before rival companies announced their products.