Since acquiring Movielink about a year ago, Blockbuster’s been relatively quiet with the property… The Movielink video download service has carried on in the interim. However, according to the Dallas News a rebranding under the Blockbuster name is nearly complete. A few hundred Total Access members have been provided beta access in a program that will grow until the official launch – projected for August. As the computer video marketplace swells, these service providers will need to find television outlets (think Netflix on Xbox, Amazon on TiVo) for mass market adoption. And even then the embedded Comcasts, Verizons, Time Warners, etc will most likely still take the lion’s share of video-on-demand revenue. (Thanks for the pic, Travis!)
Right, all these web-only outlets need to get access to TVs. I just wish it’d happen sooner than later as all the VOD stuff is pretty fractured — different providers have different catalogs, can’t easily access networks’ streaming sites on TV, no HD TV episodes for sale, etc.
They’re moving far too slowly here for my taste. Don’t they understand the threat to their core business? I don’t know how quickly the switch is going to happen given broadband penetration rates, etc but I’d say its obvious that eventually a LOT of that DVD rental business is going to be replaced by at home digital delivery in some form or other.
I suppose they have more time than I think they do, but I don’t think its good for them to keep having Netflix run rings around them. The perception among the technorati at least isn’t going to be helpful.
BTW, why is nobody talking about a digital distribution format for “full DVD” access, meaning at the very least the extras and subtitles and so forth. When I rent a movie from my Apple TV, why do I have to forgo these things?
Hmm. I see “new release downloads to rent” and “new release downloads to buy”. Looks like a bit of Netflix Watch-Now stuff with the ability to pay-per-download for the newer releases and more popular titles.
I’m honestly surprised Netflix hasn’t added the pay per title thing yet. I hope they never go that way – I’d rather have different tiers of access then the pay per view thing.
@Brent Not like Netflix – which streams via browser and has an all-you-can-eat pricing model. This looks to be like the existing Movielink service: Place some items in your cart, download and watch via desktop software. In the quarterly Netflix call, according to paidContent they said they’re not going to a PPV/VOD model.