Los Angeles, April 4:

Major Hollywood studios will start offering new movies for sale online at the same time as they are released on DVD.

The move marks the continued development of the Internet as a film resource, with analysts predicting that within a few years movie downloads will become commonplace. Among the fist movies to benefit from the new plan are hits such as ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and ‘King Kong’, which will be available online in the US this week, according to an announcement today.

Until now, the studios have made movies available on the Internet for rental only.

Six studios — Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and MGM — will offer some first-run and older titles on the websites Movielink.com and CinemaNow.com, making Disney the only major studio not to join the initiative.

New films will be priced similarly to DVDs — between $20 and $30 — while older titles will sell for $10 to $20. But they will come with copy restrictions that will prevent copying them to DVDs and limit them to specified computers.

“The important thing is to embrace the future, respect the economics of DVD but move forward into digital delivery,” said Ben Feingold, president of Worldwide Home Entertainment at Sony Pictures.