Blockbuster Seeking to Bring Movie Downloads to Apple Devices?

[MacFly123]

I am just very excited to see what the Apple TV has in store this year with their renewed interest and investment in the platform

Can you imagine content deals, new hardware and "wii" remote, dvr, safari, an sdk and the app store..... SIGN ME UP!!! BRING IT APPLE!

 

[MrSmith]

Competition doesn't mean lowest common denominator. For example, there are many luxury car makers (Lexus, MB, BMW, Infiniti, etc.,) that are all competitors but obviously don't cater to the lowest common denominator. There are also different tiers of software, video cameras, home theater systems, etc.,. The buying power of a company's target demographic for a specific product plays a big part in the features and the price tag of said product. You are also making a big assumption that a company w/a monopoly or near monopoly in a specific market will be more altruistic than greedy. If iLife had more direct competition would the apps be more feature filled than they are now? If Dell was the only computer maker in town would they sell better PCs at 'today's prices' or would they sell 'today's computers' for twice as much?


Lethal

I'm not disagreeing. My original (and only) point was that competition is not necessarily a good thing by right. Whether that means in some cases a monopoly would be a good thing is academic. Privatization (i.e. the resulting competition) of the UK postal service was a disaster. That really did become cheapness over quality. But that's just one example, a nationalized industry rather than a real market monopoly and therefore maybe irrelevant. Lastly, if a monopoly in non-essentials tries to screw its customers they will answer with closed wallets.

 

[synth3tik]

Blockbuster lost my business a long time ago. This is too little way way to late.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

This is great, Blockbuster coming to Mac's, Ipod's, iphones and Apple TV is a great thing.

I don't know why people have problems with it. The more content people can watch on Macs.... the better.

Look at the great content flood on Macs for 2008-2009.

Netflix
Amazon Video
and alot more... some sites like hotmovies.com (isnt it always adult that helps paves the way in new tech)
-------
Now possibly Blockbuster... fantastic.

But... to me the biggest issue is that most of these are using streaming media solutions. ie Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe's solution. this allows for DRM protection for studios.

But... Mac doesn't have a good download solution. what happens if someone wants to watch content while on the road, for plane flights or when they are offline. the only content they can rent is... via iTunes.

There needs to be a subscription, rental solution that isn't just supplied from Apple. I know to many this is sacrilege. but i just don't think we should rely on Apple for everything.

Apple needs to start playing a more open system ... Apple TV needs Netflix on it. maybe amazon and blockbuster as well.

Mac's and iphones/ipods need to play well with others as well. this includes opening up the Apple Fairplay DRM to allow for other companies to sell/rent product to Apple Product loving consumers like us.

Apple needs to be more open to deals with companies like blockbuster.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

Blockbuster lost my business a long time ago. This is too little way way to late.

this is different, try out Amazon Video on your ac ... it works great. basically it is the same thing. movie rentals without the physical disc.

Blockbuster without the late fee's. if they offer a good service, i hope you would give it a shot, we need competition for consumers, not just itunes.

 

[muskratboy]

Blockbuster Online... and no, you're not quite right

I definitely get my moneys worth as I never mail the movies back I just exchange them for new movies in the store and then they mail me the next movies from my queue...sometimes I have as many as 6 movies at a time. Oh and no late fees either...

um... not any more you don't. BB is obviously flailing around, as they've revised their online service about 6 times in the last year. they are just trying anything you can think of.

now you have one "universal queue" ... so you DON'T have 6 movies at once, you have 3. you don't get a new one sent until you've returned your store box copy. this is a new change, apparently requested by all the incompetent morons who can't tell the difference between a box and an envelope... and so they essentially REQUESTED that their service be cut in half, for the same price. morons.

so instead of having boxes for 5 days and envelopes for infinite days... now you have all movies for infinite days. which means you get basically half as many movies.

now i just want to find a movie they have a single copy of, that is still somewhat important... and just keep it forever. i'm sure the local store will love that..

"this guy has had "shaun of the dead" checked out for 3 years. do you think we could maybe get that back?"

 

[pkoch1]

now you have one "universal queue" ... so you DON'T have 6 movies at once, you have 3. you don't get a new one sent until you've returned your store box copy. this is a new change, apparently requested by all the incompetent morons who can't tell the difference between a box and an envelope... and so they essentially REQUESTED that their service be cut in half, for the same price. morons.

I still get mine sent to me when I return the online movies, not when I return the in-store movies.

From the TOS:

If you have the maximum number of BLOCKBUSTER Online Rentals allowed by your plan checked out, no additional movies will be shipped until you return one or more of the BLOCKBUSTER Online Rentals.