That’s a cool idea someone would say. I find it very interesting too and somehow very simple. Chris Armstrong, the business founder, started wondering about how difficult it is to rent a movie when he spent time in line to get one at a local store in Galway, Ireland. Then he thought to create a company that rents movies on flash memory cards.

The company called PortoMedia has kiosks where people can download movies directly on flash drives. The kiosks will have hard drives that can hold 350 to 5,000 titles. Depending on hardware speeds a movie could be download in less than one minute. PortoMedia will use IBM’s help to develop the transaction system, hard drives from Seagate Technologies, and Samsung’s flash memory devices. Toshiba will fabricate the chips for the high-speed interface.

Armstrong said, its company has signed deals with several retailers from US. The MoviePoint kiosks have already been tested in Dublin at the end of 2007. PortoMedia will sell a proprietary ultra-fast USB interface for customers. A start pack will cost $60 and will include a flash key, a dock, and six movies. Then the customers will use the same flash key to buy other titles from the MoviePoint kiosks. As Armstrong said, the company will establish the future fees for the number of viewings.

Renting movies on flash memory cards will be a great business for movie makers, as well as for the stores. There are many advantages upon DVDs or Blu-Ray discs. First of all, delivering the movies on flash sticks will reduce cost for transporting and packaging the DVDs. Furthermore, the stores won’t have the shelves full of DVDs. Comparing with the Internet downloads, this solution is faster and safer. I hope PortoMedia will be successful in this business.

The original story here.