Attention shoppers – Blue Light special on streaming movies on aisle 3

Streaming movies is turning out to be one of those bandwagons that everyone and their brother seems to want to jump on even though it isn’t native to their core business. Such is the case in the news that the parent company, Sears Holdings, of Sears and Kmart has signed a multi-year deal with Sonic Solutions to provide branded movie streaming services.

The services are expected to launch later in the year and of course they will be heavily promoted in the stores. For the most part this doesn’t seem to be anything more than an attempt to boost the visibility of Sears and Kmart’s presence on the web.

From the Sonic Solution’s press release

Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC) today announced it has entered into an agreement with Sears Holdings to provide consumers easy access to Hollywood entertainment on a range of Internet-connected devices including TVs, Blu-ray Disc players, and mobile phones. As part of the multi-year agreement, Sears has licensed the RoxioNow™ platform, which will power digital entertainment delivery services for both Sears and Kmart. The new services are expected to launch later this year and be broadly promoted at retail stores nationwide.

“Teaming up with Sonic is a great opportunity for Sears and Kmart to quickly establish a position in digital video entertainment, and offer another great service to our customers,” said Karen Austin, President of Home Electronics for Sears Holdings. “With direct access to so many movies and TV shows from a broad range of devices, our customers will have the ability to obtain the latest high-quality entertainment virtually anywhere, anytime.”

The entertainment services will offer a complete range of regularly updated movies and TV shows for rent or purchase, including new releases often on the same day DVDs become available at retail stores. Sonic and Sears will team to embed the services on a growing network of devices including portable media players, Blu-ray Disc players, mobile phones, and high-definition television sets from leading manufacturers.

I give it a year and they’ll figure out that it hasn’t done any good.