For a while there it looked like Blockbuster was up against the ropes. Netflix was kicking all sorts of ass, and in the dawn of the digital online age, some people predicted the big corporation was about to enter its death bed. But hold on. Recently Blockbuster introduced its own “rent by mail” service… then added the ability for people to return those film to the physical stores if they wanted (reducing the turn around time for getting their new movies)… THEN they also added free in store rentals on top of your mail rentals if you returned a film in store. These solid moves dealt a serious blow to Netflix and started a resurgence for Blockbuster.
Well… looks like Blockbuster wasn’t finished. They just made another slick and solid move. They just bought movie download service Movielink. Yahoo News gives us this:
Movielink was launched by five studios in 2002, marking the first time that a large supply of recent, popular films was available for rental on the Internet. The privately held service has struggled to gain popularity, even as it allowed the purchase of films and signed licensing agreements with all major studios and a large number of independent film companies.
“Our acquisition of Movielink, with its associated digital content, is the next logical step in our planned transformation of Blockbuster,” chairman and chief executive Jim Keyes said in a statement. “Now, in addition to the entertainment content we provide through our stores and by mail, we have taken an important step toward being able to make movie downloading conveniently available to computers, portable devices and ultimately to the television at home,” he said.
In Canada, you can’t get either Blockbuster’s or Netflix’s services, so I have no first hand experience with either one. All I can say is that Blockbuster is making some very good moves, and I just don’t see how Netflix will compete with them long term unless they also start introducing some new moves. We’ll see. One thing is for certain… major battles between big services is always good for the consumers. Battle on!
