‘CinemaNow’, the planned online service to be launched this month by largest consumer- electronics retailer Best Buy, will give users the advantage of purchasing, renting and downloading movies as well as television shows.

Best Buy’s CinemaNow service – which is a result of a November-announced partnership announced between Best Buy and technology provider Sonic Solutions – will enable the electronics retail giant to offer substantial competition, not only to emerging services like Netflix Inc and Wal-Mart’s recently-acquired Vudu service, but also to established online media players like Amazon and Apple’s iTunes store.

The partnership with Novato, California-based Sonic, which took over online movie distributor CinemaNow in March last year, will give Best Buy the ownership rights to the CinemaNow trademark.

According to a Tuesday announcement by the Richfield, Minnesota-based Best Buy, customers can also access the CinemaNow service with their computers via the website www. cinemanow. com. Best Buy also said that the sales for the new service will initially commence via LG Electronics’ Blu-ray players and later be expanded to other Web-enabled electronic devices later this year.

Elaborating further, Chris Homeister, Best Buy’s Senior VP of entertainment, said in an interview that the service will start with a la carte, on-demand purchases; and might later turn into a subscription service like Netflix.