Sky introduces Buy and Keep movie service in UK with titles from £7.99, including a DVD copy

UK broadcaster Sky has announced details of a new Buy and Keep service as part of its Sky Store, which will allow customers to purchase digital copies of hundreds of movie titles.

However, unlike a straightforward digital download service, buyers will also receive a DVD version that will be sent out three to five days later. It forms sort of an insurance policy for people with unreliable or metered internet connections, or perhaps you just like collecting physical media still.

Sky tells TNW that the service will be available “in a few weeks”, and while it’s initially only available to Sky customers with a Sky+ HD box, it will also be available to non-Sky customers in the future via Sky Store.

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Pricing will range from £7.99 for library titles up to £13.99 for new releases. Sky said it is well placed to deliver movies just a few months after their cinematic debut, and that at launch there will be about 200 titles available. We expect this number to grow quickly. In the coming weeks,  ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, and ‘Mandela’ featuring Idris Elba will all be available, Sky said.

In the future, TV box sets will also be offered via the service too.

The new service will have its own tab on the Sky Planner under the Sky Store to make it easy to find new films to download, and there’s also going to be an option to archive your purchases so they don’t take up too much space on your hard drive. What this does is delete the film from your box, but retains the details and synopsis in your list so you know what you own. These titles can then be downloaded again as many times as you like.

It’s not an altogether unexpected move, and for a service that already counts some 4.4 million Sky On Demand users in the UK, it’s another potential revenue stream that’s well worth tapping in to. Deciding to offer a DVD copy of purchases alongside digital downloads is a best of both worlds for people wanting to own, rather than just stream.