The Internet sell-through and video-on-demand Website Vongo has announced that it will be selling and renting downloads of a number of anime titles from Manga Entertainment including the full color 1980 Astro Boy anime, as well as Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, Blood the Last Vampire, and Streetfighter II. Vongo, like Manga Entertainment is now owned by Starz Media, which is also producing its own animated projects such as the Hellboy Animated and a direct-to-DVD Turok, Son of Stone animated feature (see 'Animated Turok in Production').
In addition to offering individual downloads for sale, Vongo also has a $9.99 per month video-on-demand service it offers customers. In addition to the Manga Entertainment anime offerings Vongo offers a wide range of recent feature movies such as
Many Manga Entertainment titles have already been available for downloading via Direct2Drive and the Vongo announcement should be seen as just another example of the increasing number of attempts to make Internet downloading the key delivery system for video content (see 'Viz Gets Death Note Download Rights'). While the process is limited right now to technophiles and those who don't mind watching movies on their computer, with development of integrated entertainment centers that will allow sharing of high quality video entertainment between computers and household TVs, this process is sure to move to the mainstream in the future.
