Lions Gate (NYSE: LGF), the feisty little studio that is responsible for torture-porn franchises Saw and Hostel, has hooked up with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to see whether consumers care about owning digital copies of the movies they buy on DVD and Blu-ray format.

According to the following press release, Lionsgate will include an iTunes digital version of choose projects on assured home-video releases. The digital copy will allow users to transfer a film to an iTunes explanation, so it could thereupon be viewable on multiple devices like PCs or Macs, iPods, Apple TV and iPhones. First up for the iTunes digital treatment will be Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo — yes, the old soldier is still around — to be released to home video in May.

As the studio makes clear in its press release, that is all about experimentation with the promotion of new distribution models. Lionsgate wants to efficiently, and effectively, create new opportunities for its library. It’s not alone — Disney (NYSE: DIS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Sony (NYSE: SNE) and General Electric’s (NYSE: GE)

NBC Universal asset are all on a never-ending study of how best to leverage the digital era to form money from substance portfolios. Lionsgate wants DVD buyers to realize that they can use iTunes to buy movies from its catalog. It’s a bit weird to me, though, since one would figure that a person who buys a DVD will probably just access that specific subject matter from the DVD itself. I understand the value of transferability, of course, but whether Lionsgate — or any subject matter provider, for that matter — simply ensures that each digital product sold online contains rare, compelling extras that cannot be found in any other format, next a digital library will be that much easier to monetize.

At any rate, it will be interesting to see how Apple and Lionsgate do with that scheme. Apple and its iTunes sort are certainly mighty drivers of digital distribution, so possibly users will perceive a value from the digital copies.

Disclosure: Steven Mallas owns shares of Disney and General Electric; positions can change at any moment.

Original post by Steven Mallas

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