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Kodak and SolaByte Partner to Simplify Purchase of Licensed Entertainment Content

Friday 28. December 2012 - Eastman Kodak Company, a worldwide leader in retail imaging solutions, and SolaByte, a cloud media service provider, today announced they have signed an agreement to facilitate electronic sales of copyrighted music and motion pictures through automated disc-to-digital transfer and online content purchases.

As part of this agreement, Kodak and SolaByte will develop and market solutions that utilize Kodak’s global footprint of 105,000 KODAK Picture Kiosks to automate the disc-to-digital upgrade process. The automated process identifies content stored on DVD’s, CD’s and BLU-RAY Discs and authenticates the disc as genuine prior to registering the license for the content to the consumer’s account. The disc is digitally flagged by the system to limit the number of digital copies that can be obtained from the disc. SolaByte’s patent-pending technology eliminates the need to move large video or music files to the cloud, conserves storage space, and does not compromise the playback of the original disc. The professionally mastered digital copies, made from the KODAK Kiosk, then may be easily used by consumers to listen to music or to watch movies online, at home, or on their portable devices.
“Kodak has been at the forefront of capturing, preserving and sharing printed photo experiences throughout our history. Through our collaboration with SolaByte, we plan to extend this leadership into additional content types, both digital and physical formats,” said Larry Trevarthen, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Retail Systems Solutions, Eastman Kodak Company.
Keith Chatfield, CEO of SolaByte, added “We are honored to partner with Kodak and bring our technologies to Kodak’s retail network. Our goal is to continually evolve our innovative solutions that liberate content from physical formats so the content may be deployed from the cloud and enjoyed on a broad range of devices anywhere. Kodak is the perfect partner to help us bring our solutions to market.”
Initially, the partnership will be focused on innovative ways of simplifying access to content of all types (e.g., music, movies, etc.) for consumers in North America. The first deployments are estimated to occur in mid-2013. In addition, SolaByte and Kodak will continue to advance digital solutions to expand options for consumers and help retailers open new revenue streams.