I-play, the mobile entertainment company, and Universal Studios have introduced a new streaming video service, “Movie Minutes,” offering the most memorable scenes from Universal’s catalog of blockbuster movies to North American fans.

Movie Minutes comes with Universal Studios’ extensive film archive including scenes from King Kong, The 40 Year Old-Virgin, and The Fast and the Furious, as well as classic hits Animal House and The Breakfast Club.

With the offering, I-play has expanded into the broader mobile entertainment space in order to leverage its strong relationships with Hollywood studios and to utilize the full capabilities of its proprietary UNITY content delivery platform. I-play has created the “I-player,” its proprietary mobile video application helping consumers stream video clips and bookmark their favorites to build up a personalized library of videos.

“People love to talk about, reminisce over, and imitate their favorite moments from film and television. Now those same fans can have clips from Universal's rich film and TV library anywhere they go, anytime they want them,” said Jeremy Laws, senior vice president, Universal Mobile Entertainment, in a press release. “I-play’s proven reach and advanced technical platform make them the perfect partner for this project in North America and we look at this as a very natural extension of our strong relationship with them in mobile gaming.”

Hollywood Movie Minutes allows users to search for their favorite video clips by theme, genre or tag.

“This signals the launch of a ground-breaking service, which brings bite-sized nuggets of blockbuster entertainment to movie fans on mobile for the first time,” said David Gosen, CEO of I-play. “Streaming video clips to mobile devices is a huge growth area for us and we are thrilled to be working with Universal Mobile Entertainment and proud to be in a position to offer the best of Universal's film library to North American customers.”

I-play offers mobile entertainment via a network of over 120 carriers worldwide, including Sprint, Verizon Wireless, Cingular (News - Alert), Vodafone and Telefonica Moviles. I-play has been creating mobile games since 1998 and continues to spearhead the creation of mobile entertainment for the next generation.

Universal Mobile Entertainment (UME) generates revenues and enhances brand awareness for NBC Universal’s motion picture and television properties through licensing agreements with top-tier publishers.


Niladri Sekhar Nath is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering telecommunications, service providers and networking. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

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