Now Blockbuster Wants To Sell You A Proprietary Box So It Can Sell You Streamed Movies
from the broken-record dept
Stop us if you've heard this before: a company wants to sell people a box so they can pay to download movies. Sound familiar? That's because plenty of companies have tried it before -- all with little success. Consumers haven't shown much interest in buying service-specific hardware so they can buy movie downloads from a single provider for a number of reasons: poor selection of movies, the cost of downloads, the cost of the hardware, download times, and lack of portability to name a few. What's amazing is that so many companies keep lining up with their own efforts, without ever really fixing any of the problems, as if time will solve them. Now, it's Blockbuster's turn, as it's announced a $99 box that can access $2 movie downloads. Blockbuster says its service is different than all the failed ones before it because it has "more recent" movies. Netflix's streaming service has 12,000 films and TV shows -- less than 10 percent of its collection, thanks to Hollywood licensing schemes. Blockbuster has a whopping 2,000. But they're newer, they swear. So not only has Blockbuster failed to solve one of the problems of these services (narrow selection), they've exacerbated it and are calling it a feature. Now that sounds like the path to success.
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Filed Under: movies, settop box, streaming, videos
Companies: blockbuster, netflix
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Success
Not!
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suits me
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Re: suits me
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Re: Re: suits me
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Defective by design
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For those that are interested in more than knee-jerking
That's the source code. It is GPL, which means you can do whatever you want to the damn thing, and there will be mods for it possibly even commercial ones.
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Re: For those that are interested in more than knee-jerking
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Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and soon Blockbuster all have the online infrastructures to support massively profitable online distribution of digital media content. But they can't, because the luddites who run Hollywood are technical retards. Instead of embracing the opportunity, they try to block it and almost force people to the dark side - people who would pay if they could. Does Hollywood think that online digital downloading isn't happening anyway? Do they think that there is even a single popular movie that isn't available for download? Hollywood has *nothing* to lose and *tons* to gain by embracing these models. Even if Hollywood only benefits from people like me who *want* to pay for a decent download model, that's still a huge gain over today's business. Sure, people will keep stealing, but it will be a smaller problem than it is right now. Clueless idiots.
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I dont think so.
Who, in their right mind, would buy into the proprietary lock me into your product bullshit ?
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However, proprietary boxes are a near-term necessary-evil until somebody pulls off a god-box or a cable-card equivalent. If Blockbuster didn't provide a box, how would they get movies to the main-screen TVs? PCs? Nope, not enough people have PCs close to their TVs yet. TiVo? Nah, that's just a more expensive proprietary box. Cable or Sat boxes? Apple TV? Oops, that's the competition. Game consoles? Uh... which one? See what I mean? A proprietary box is needed in the near term. What's broken is the business model. The box needs to be free. AND, if I were Blockbuster, instead of just defending my business with a me-too online video player, I'd also embed the best damn Hulu player on the market. Apple is soooo close with Apple TV. If they would productize a version of Boxee and add a fully functional browser to that thing, it would get a LOT more notice. Doing so should be very simple for them... so that's what I want for Christmas!
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buy the hardware and your locked into one service provider
thats what these companies are wanting
then once they have a large user base, thay can tell the movie corps what kind of revenue they are missing out on.
streaming is the way of the future we just dont know when its going to be the present.
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You mean...ahhh... like Windows.......?
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They Locked My Movie In A Box (and kept the key)
This week I rented "Who Killed The Electric Car" for $10 as an electronic download. I only wanted to watch it once, so the price was a little high, but meh. So now I "own" the movie, but it's tied to certain accounts, and certain hardware such that someday my "ownership" will probably vanish in some upgrade, bankruptcy, or such.
But more importantly, as things go, I talked up the film the next day at work, and a colleague who often shares his DVDs with me asked me if he could borrow my film. Hmmm. Guess not, short of carrying my Tivo box to his house. I don't really own the movie: I can't lend it, I can't give it, I can't sell it.
So I like the notion of one-off on demand rentals for a couple of bucks, but this weird notion the studios have of "buying" a locked-down DRMed film for download is about as legit as selling land in the Everglades.
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"More recent" crap
There are the occasional winners like the new Batman movies but, for the most part, people are tired of the suckage that is Hollwood and the comic book/video game/sequel madness that gets put out.
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If they try and push a monthly fee on the box, people will figure out a way to unlock them or build an alternative box.
If they try and push a subscription service to access the files, the service must compete with the existing free services already out there.. essentially running a higher end torrent tracker with guaranteed seed-boxes.
The big problem with this model is that going through legal channels they will have their movies/music/etc later than existing and freely available providers, so I think they would have to focus on having the infrastructure to provide storage for tens of thousands of older movies you're less likely to find seeded or to find in the quality of a master ripper.
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No, I didn't think so.
What makes them think I want to SPEND $99
to GIVE (exclusively) THEM MONEY?
Does it make popcorn? Does it have ANY utility
other than their service?
I cannot understand why they believe I should (or would even want to) pay ANYTHING for it.
The money wasted developing & prepping for sale of this device and "service" would be better spent washing the windows & cleaning their stores, they are looking pretty seedy around Chicago.
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A buch of 28 year old MBAs who cheated their way through school, and now are trying to sell their fake market research to Blockbuster management. What the hell...it worked for them in school. They got their degrees, didn't they?
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@AC 8:58
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/11/25/blockbuster_settop_box/
The unit’s only initially available in the US, where film fans can pick up the box for free with any advance $99 (£65/€77) rental of 25 Blockbuster OnDemand films. After your 25 films are up, individual titles can be rented for a minimum of $2.
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But more importantly, as things go, I talked up the film the next day at work, and a colleague who often shares his DVDs with me asked me if he could borrow my film. Hmmm. Guess not, short of carrying my Tivo box to his house. I don't really own the movie: I can't lend it, I can't give it, I can't sell it.
Which is why I'll never "buy" anything from these DRM crippled services. I'd consider paying for good quality DRM-free AVI files, but not for crap that's tied to a specific piece of hardware. I'll stick to downloading the scene releases.
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Entertainment On Demand
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A little education could help
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