杏吧原创

Full-length films can now be compressed tightly enough to fit on memory cards so they can be watched on cellphones.

The award-winning tale of a miscarriage of justice The Shawshank Redemption became the first movie to go on sale on a 64-megabyte Multimedia Memory Card (MMC) last week. Rok Corporation of Wolverhampton in the UK, which is behind the idea, says its cards will work in any MMC-capable phone from Motorola, Panasonic, Samsung, Nokia or Toshiba. The firm also says it has patented a technique whereby its movie-player software, carried on the card along with the film itself, starts up automatically when the card is inserted and plays the encrypted content. Because the chip card鈥檚 content is self-extracting, the phone plays the movie even when there is no cellphone network available or when the phone function is switched off: no transaction with a network is necessary.

At first, films will be available via the web at , but the firm hopes soon to convince standard movie rental shops and cellphone stores to stock phone movies. Feature films are expected to cost 拢15 and half-hour TV comedies around 拢10, says a Rok spokesman.

But who, precisely, has time to watch a movie on a phone? 鈥淧eople travelling, people waiting in queues and parents keeping kids entertained in cars,鈥� he says.