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Blockbuster to Rent Movies on SD Cards at New Kiosks

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:03:16 -0600

Blockbuster will soon begin renting movies on SD cards. You will need to visit your nearest Blockbuster Express Digital kiosk to rent your favorite movies. There, users will be able to transfer DRM-protected movies to their own SD cards. According to a Fast Company report, the rentals will cost $1.99.

All said, hardware incompatibility may prove to be a major issue as not all phones, TV sets and notebooks feature a full-size SD cardslot. The kiosks will be built and managed by NCR Corporation, the very company that manages Blockbuster’s DVD-rental kiosks.

Image Credit: Fast Company

Blockbuster Closing 960 Stores, Shifting Focus to Kiosks

Paul Lilly — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:56:30 -0500

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Blockbuster plans to board up anywhere from 810 to 960 of its retail locations by the end of 2010. Blockbuster says the closures affect all unprofitable stores as it aims "to improve four-wall profitability."

Most of the closures will take place this year, with between 580 and 685 stores expected to be on the chopping block. The remaining unprofitable stores will shut down sometime next year, but there's still time to turn things around.

"All these stores are candidate stores," Blockbuster spokesperson Randy Hargove said in a phone conversation with Cnet. "Although we may in fact close that many stores, if we can renegotiate leases or remodel stores to make them more profitable, that number might go down."

Meanwhile, the company's kiosk business continues to grow and is set to explode this year. In a separate filing with the SEC, Blockbuster said it plans to have 2,500 units available by the end of 2009, up significantly from the 497 kiosk units now available. And by the end of the 2010, Blockbuster anticipates 10,000 kiosks scattered throughout the country in an attempt to "increase the points of distribution."

And maybe increase its stock price. Blockbuster shares are currently trading for $1.40, a far cry from the $45 Netflix shares change hands at.

Image Credit: blogs.dallasobserver.com

Blockbuster Still One Step Behind Netflix with Tivo On-Demand Movie Deal

Paul Lilly — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:16:02 -0500

In an attempt to better compete with streaming giant Netflix, Blockbuster this week announced a new deal to begin transmitting movies to TiVo users.

"This relationship with TiVo is step one in getting into the places that consumers care about," says Kevin Lewis, Blockbuster's senior VP for digital.

As part of the deal, Blockbuster will start selling TiVo DVRs in its retail stores later this year. However, neither company was willing to divulge how many of Blockbuster's nearly 4,000 stores will participate. Nor is it known what movies will be available, as "The studios and we are trying to figure it out," Lewis added.

Due to begin in the second half of 2009, Blockbuster's OnDemand will feature content to both buy and rent, and will be integrated into TiVo Series2, Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL DVRs, Blockbusters says.

Barring any changes, TiVo owners with Blockbuster accounts will pay up to $4 to rent a movie and then have 30 days to begin watching. Subscribers will then be given a 24-hour window. Alternately, movies will be available for sale at up to $20 a pop, but DRM will prevent subscribers from copying purchased content over to DVD.

Netflix Nukes User Profiles, Kicks Roommate Off Queue

Paul Lilly — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:43:45 -0500

Image Credit: Netflix

A scant six months ago, we all wondered which camp would prevail in the
high-definition format war. But as fate (and the studios) would have
it, Sony's Blu-ray format emerged as the victor, leaving movie buffs
with yet another question: Where will we get our flicks from? The days
of renting movies in a brick and mortar store are slowly coming to an
end, and this new war for your movie-renting dollar is being waged
online. Both blockbuster and Netflix offer video rentals delivered
straight to your mailbox, and while Netflix seems poised to emerge as a
fan favorite, not all changes have subscribers jumping for joy.

Blockbuster Balances Online Rentals with Brick and Mortar Business

Before we get to what's brewing with Netflix, let's first look at its competition. Like Netflix, Blockbuster offers an online subscription movie service. But unlike Netflix, Blockbuster lets you return your movies to any of its participating retail outlets in exchange for a free in-store rental. This perk had the potential to be a key advantage, and it was, right up until Blockbuster realized it was hemorrhaging too much money. To stop the bleeding, Blockbuster raised prices across the board and now limits in-store exchanges to up to 5 per calendar month. Alternately, you can pay a hefty premium to maintain unlimited monthly exchanges. Boo!

Image Credit: Roku

Netflix Set-Top Player Struts Into Living Room

While Blockbuster continues to tweak its pricing structure, Netflix has been looking for ways to add value without adding to its bottom line. At the beginning of the year, Netflix began offering unlimited streaming videos to subscribers on select plans, which today includes anyone paying $8.99 and up. And as of last month, subscribers have the option of purchasing a $99 set-top player to watch streaming content on their living room television. Video quality leaves much to be desired and the catalog of streaming content remains limited, but aside from the player itself, there's no additional fee to kick back on your couch and have movies streamed to your TV. It's like getting a free Filet-O-Fish thrown in with your Quarter Pounder meal - not the tastiest item on the menu, but you'll probably eat it because it's there.

Netflix Nixes User Profiles

So what's the big change that has some subscribers ready to shun Netflix altogether? The soon to be absence of user profiles! Starting September 1, moms and dads will no longer be able to configure a separate profile with parental controls for little Johnny. And if you share an account with a roommate, you'll also have to share a queue, so you may want to quiz potential roomies on their movie preferences before renting out that spare bedroom.

With more and more customers abandoning Blockbuster over rising costs and reduced features, it's curious that Netflix would nuke an arbitrary feature and risk riling its customer base. On its blog, Netflix claims "too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome." It also hinted of a revamped profile feature sometime in the future, but made no mention of what or when. The blog has garnered over 700 reader comments so far, many of them voicing strong opposition to the change. If you find yourself among them, head over to SaveNetflixProfiles.com and sign the petition. In the meantime, start weaning family and friends off of your account.

Movielink

Michael Brown & Will Smith — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:59:51 -0500

The Movielink software client is integrated into both versions of Windows Media Center, so you can easily watch your rentals from the comfort of your couch, using an MCE-compatible remote.

Movie-rental outfit Blockbuster Entertainment acquired movie-download service Movielink in August 2007, but the company seems to have lost interest in its latest asset. When we contacted Blockbuster’s corporate communications department in preparation for this story, they couldn’t be bothered to provide us with Movielink’s phone number (which wasn’t listed on either company’s website). It’s easy to see why.

The fact that Movielink is integrated into Windows Media Center gives it a leg up over BitTorrent, but there’s nothing else about the service to recommend it over CinemaNow or any of the other services we tested. And if you’re interested in watching rented or purchased movies on a handheld device, Movielink isn’t for you—it supports only notebooks. Oh, and Movielink doesn’t support Firefox either, unless you install the Firefox add-on IE Tab. Now that’s just lazy.

Movielink’s catalog is comparable to that of CinemaNow, Unbox, and Vudu. Movie rentals and TV episode prices are the same as the competition’s ($2 and $4, respectively), but like the rest of the field, its movie purchase prices were $5 higher than Unbox across the board. The search engine in the Movielink Manager client enables you to locate films by category (including Coming Soon, Last Chance, and Award Winners, as well as by genre, director, actor, or keyword). Searches can be limited to rentals only, purchase only, or both. Movielink does have a cult cinema category, but Office Space was the only movie available from our list. It did have some other good catches, however, including Roger Corman’s Bucket of Blood, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, and the blaxploitation classic Foxy Brown.

You can play downloaded content on up to three PCs, make backup copies on DVD (in their original format, which won’t play on a standard DVD player), and stream from a PC to your TV using a Media Center Extender (using either Vista or Windows XP). All of Movielink’s videos are in WMV format and in standard definition, so they suffer from many of the same scaling problems as the rest of the SD field.

Movie rentals: $3 to $4
Movie purchases: $8 to $20
TV episodes: $2