According to a report in Hollywood Reporter yesterday, movie rental chain Blockbuster is working on a set-top box to deliver content from its Movielink service to our living room couches. The prospective product is described as "a stand-alone product akin to Apple TV as opposed to embedding a Blockbuster-branded service in such existing devices as Microsoft's Xbox 360 or TiVo."
I don't think that's a good idea, and hope that the unsourced rumors turn out to be wrong.
What's wrong?
I don't think that Movielink, which Blockbuster bought for a song last summer, is a terrible service. It is, however, hardly a standout among a gazillion competitors such as CinemaNow, Apple TV, Amazon Unbox, Akimbo, Vongo, Netflix's Watch It Now, and Vudu. MovieBeam and Stage6 were in the same boat, but they're no longer with us. Rest in pieces. You could even argue that shorter-form distribution channels like YouTube, Hulu, and Joost lay claim to many of the same potential eyeball minutes, and should be considered competitors to Movielink. At some point, you have to stop and say that enough is enough. How many online movie services do we really need, particularly since most of them could have come from the same cookie cutter?
That's not even the biggest issue I have with Blockbuster's rumored hardware, though. Most of the movie services I listed are just barely surviving, let alone growing. YouTube and the Netflix movie-streaming feature are two of the rare exceptions, and they happen to have one obvious attribute in common despite a plethora of large differences:
The services depend on open standards. Just in two very different ways.
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I don't think that's a good idea, and hope that the unsourced rumors turn out to be wrong.
What's wrong?
I don't think that Movielink, which Blockbuster bought for a song last summer, is a terrible service. It is, however, hardly a standout among a gazillion competitors such as CinemaNow, Apple TV, Amazon Unbox, Akimbo, Vongo, Netflix's Watch It Now, and Vudu. MovieBeam and Stage6 were in the same boat, but they're no longer with us. Rest in pieces. You could even argue that shorter-form distribution channels like YouTube, Hulu, and Joost lay claim to many of the same potential eyeball minutes, and should be considered competitors to Movielink. At some point, you have to stop and say that enough is enough. How many online movie services do we really need, particularly since most of them could have come from the same cookie cutter?
That's not even the biggest issue I have with Blockbuster's rumored hardware, though. Most of the movie services I listed are just barely surviving, let alone growing. YouTube and the Netflix movie-streaming feature are two of the rare exceptions, and they happen to have one obvious attribute in common despite a plethora of large differences:
The services depend on open standards. Just in two very different ways.
Discuss Add this link to... Bury
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