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circuit city
Posts Tagged “
Blockbuster
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circuit city
online video
Blockbuster wants to clutter your set-top
When not bawdlerizing movies or trying, and failing, to kill Netflix, Blockbuster has been busy planning to develop and ship a set-top box that will allow customers to download movies at home. The company purchased online movie download service Movielink for $6.6 million last August. But it still hasn't integrated Movielink into Blockbuster.com after seven months. The chances they can come out with an inexpensive, easy-to-use hardware device in the foreseeable future seems slim — look for the company to partner with or acquire an existing manufacturer, such as struggling startup Vudu. (Photo by AP/Ron Heflin)
stocks
Wall Street unimpressed with Jobs, less impressed with competition
Stock traders weren't blown away by Steve Jobs's Macworld announcements, sending Apple shares down 5 percent. Rivals faired even worse, however. From the numbers, they expect Apple's movie-rental service with support from all of the major studios to pummel brick-and-mortar competitor Blockbuster, and to a lesser extent Netflix. Blockbuster is trading down more than 15 percent in after hours while Netflix is down 3 percent.
jackass
Is Web video the new "direct to DVD"?
Viacom is determined not to fall into the music industry's technophobic trap. Instead, it's embracing the online-video frenzy by releasing Jackass 2.5 directly onto the Web next week. Initially offered as a free streamed video on Blockbuster's Movielink, it will eventually move to pay outlets like iTunes and, yes, DVD — which is where this on-the-cheap knockoff probably would have landed just a couple years ago. More »
lawsuits
Facebook may have violated video-rental privacy law
By publishing the names of customers and the videos they rented, Facebook and Blockbuster may have violated the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, New York law professor James Grimmelmann explains on his blog. Don't worry Zuck, it's only $2,500 per violation. More »
netflix
Netflix envelopes jam post office, Wall Street
DVD rent-by-mail operation Netflix may be kicking rival Blockbuster where it hurts, but all is not well with the company. According to the U.S. Postal Service, the ubiquitous red return envelopes used by Netflix, hailed for saving the company millions of dollars, are prone to jamming mail sorting machines. The USPS estimates the cost at $21 million per year. To recoup that amount, the postmen propose a 17-cent surcharge per mailer. Such a charge would cost Netflix two-thirds of its operating income and lower its monthly profit per subscriber from $1.05 to $0.35. Netflix is likely to redesign its return mailer, yet again, to mitigate the burden. A company so vulnerable to the price of postage must be thinking that video downloads are looking better and better.
online video
Netflix stomps Blockbuster in movies by mail and digital downloads
Through-the-mail movie rental outfit Netflix has been very aggressive in fighting Blockbuster's competitive advances — and winning. Analytics firm Compete has a rundown of Netflix vs. Blockbuster and lists Netflix.com as having four times the visitors Blockbuster.com does. Also, Netflix's download strategy seems to be having some success with 450,000 "Watch Instantly" users in November. Blockbuster is still attempting to roll out a download service it gained from its purchase of movie download site Movielink. Good luck to both of them. Apple is rumored to be introducting movie rentals to iTunes. Will they be battle-tested veterans by the time Steve Jobs shows up — or so bloodied from fighting each other they'll fall victim to his shiny white-plastic machine?
online video
Blockbuster's face-saving deal to buy Movielink
Here's what no one's saying about Blockbuster's acquisition of Movielink, the Hollywood-backed movie-download site: It's a desperate move to shore up Blockbuster's online failures. Blockbuster, remember, has been promising video downloads for most of this decade. First came a deal with Enron's broadband division, and, well, we all know what happened there. Since then, Blockbuster has said that video downloads would be coming soon for years. But Hollywood studios, burned by past negotiations with Blockbuster for sharing video rental fees, are understandably loath to cut favorable online deals with the video-rental chain. And it's hard for Blockbuster to compete technologically with the likes of Apple, Amazon.com, and Netflix. Buying Movielink gets Blockbuster deals with studios and ready-made tech — all of which gives it merely a place at the online-video table, not the ability to eat everyone else's lunch.
Microsoft is looking to put Blockbuster out of business. How? Having added 100 gigabytes of storage to the Xbox videogame console, enough to store dozens of high-definition movies, it's now undercutting Blockbuster's rental fees for download-to-rent movies. Microsoft's rental charge — about two bucks — is low enough that some think it will hurt DVD sales, too. [MonstersandCritics.com]
viral marketing
Blockbuster seeks embedded virus infector
Remember, fondly, the time when companies were moderately coy about viral marketing? When there was at least a small degree of modest subtlety involved in deceiving consumers? Those days are long gone, as demonstrated by this Monster ad by Blockbuster for a "Blog/Viral Mkt Manager." The ideal candidate shall:Just make sure that your network of trusted evangelists and influencers are willing to shill for under-the-table payola. Fortunately, most are.
