The idea, said Chris Homeister, senior vice president for entertainment at Best Buy, is to let consumers pay once for a DVD and then eventually be able to play it on any device: television, Blu-ray disc player, personal computer, handheld media player or smartphone.

—Oh, I’m sure that’ll work great, as Best Buy prepares for a world where people don’t buy things on shiny discs. I’m sure the magical DRM fairy dust that they’ve concocted will be both effective and completely interoperable on all of these platforms. Perhaps Best Buy can deliver these movies right to my door via their army of unicorns.