Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group announced it has acquired Flixster, the popular movie discovery mobile app. As part of the acquisition, Warner Bros. will also get Rotten Tomatoes, a website devoted to aggregating movie reviews and ratings from across the web.

Flixster acquired Rotten Tomatoes from IGN Entertainment in January 2010 and at the time, we described the partnership as "a match made in movie-lover heaven."

At first blush, it might appear that Warner Bros. is buying Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes to gain influence in the apps, websites and associated communities. However, in its statement announcing the acquisition, Warner Bros. says that Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will "remain fully independent." The Flixster team will continue to work out of San Francisco and Rotten Tomatoes will stay in Los Angeles.

Instead, it looks like the Flixster acquisition is part of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group's broader digital content strategy. Last month, the company previewed a new app code-named Digital Everywhere that is designed to help consumers get information and make purchases for all movies — not just Warner Bros. titles.

Digital Everywhere is an aggregator of sorts that allows customers to see various purchase and rental options for movies and TV shows. It's also a portal that offers news, movie trailers and reviews from across the web.

The most exciting part of Digital Everywhere — and perhaps one of the reasons Flixster was acquired — is the plan to allow customers to access their movie and TV libraries from various connected devices, like the iPhone, iPad, Android devices, laptops and set-top boxes. Warner Bros. and other major studios have signed on to use a technology called UltraViolet that will power this cloud-based service.

Perhaps in an effort to avoid the same problems that have plagued the music industry, movie studios have actively looked at ways to bring digital distribution and device-agnostic purchases into the home-video fold.

Even though box office receipts as a whole continue to grow, studios are watching home video revenue sink from the highs of the late '90s and early '00s. Studios need to find a way to make digital content as attractive to customers as DVD discs were a decade ago.

To that end, it's reassuring to see that the biggest studios are at least embracing various digital distribution channels and are willing to work together to make things easier for consumers.

This change in direction isn't limited to Warner Bros.; other studios are embracing digital channels, too. At CES 2011, I spoke with the North American head of home video at Fox Entertainment and he was absolutely aware of the realities facing his industry. This isn't like the music industry — when executives were unwilling to face facts and listen to their customers; the studios know they need to deliver a solid solution to customers that will be easier than simply Googling for a torrent or download link.

To that end, being able to integrate existing movie communities like Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster with this next wave of products and distribution channels could be a step in the right direction.