Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has become the first major studio to license niche and older DVD titles for production and distribution through HP's DVD manufactured-on-demand service, the two companies said on Thursday.

The MOD service allows Sony to offer a wider choice of catalog titles to consumers because HP can press and ship single discs as they are ordered through affiliated Web sites.

Sony has not released content because of the cost of maintaining inventory and the difficulties of gauging demand, said David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

"We know there is strong consumer demand for these titles, and by working with HP we can monetize our deep product library and help give retailers the means to bring a wider offering of Sony Pictures products to consumers without a significant investment in inventory," Bishop said in a statement.

HP has signed up 40 other content providers and digitized about 5,000 titles for its electronic library since the service became available a year ago.

Consumer pricing would not be known until the list of titles was finalized, the companies said.

HP typically presses the disc, prints the packaging and drop-ships DVDs the same day consumers order them through wholesalers or third-party retail Web sites.