Blockbuster plans multi-option movie delivery

PHYSICAL: New services will connect stores, by mail, video-on-demand

By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 12/11/2009

DEC. 11 | PHYSICAL: Blockbuster will soon promise consumers it can place every movie ever made at their fingertips, a claim it will make good on with a multi-platform service linking its bricks-and-mortar, by mail, digital and, eventually, kiosk inventories.

The positioning will be front and center at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, where Blockbuster plans to demonstrate its technology, as the retailer strives to convince both customers and Wall Street that its multi-channel approach will deliver an advantage even as home entertainment consumption migrates to digital delivery options.

Blockbuster’s goal is to deliver what chain senior VP of digital entertainment Kevin Lewis calls a “personal, cinematic and easy” experience for consumers.

The first phase of Blockbuster’s plan will be rolled out within a couple of weeks. Called “Direct Access,” it allows customers to draw on by-mail inventory if a title they want is not in their Blockbuster store. If a title is not available in-store, it can be mailed to the customer’s home without enrollment in the Total Access by-mail program. Titles can be returned by mail or in stores.

In later phases, expected in 2010, Blockbuster Video On Demand inventory will be linked to the chain’s stores and by-mail operation, so customers will be able to easily identify all the places and ways any title is available, including for digital rental or sale or physical copy sale or rental by mail or in store.

Additionally, Blockbuster expects to launch a mobile application that will enable customers to virtually check the chain’s current inventory and select their viewing option from their smart phones.

Eventually, this application will expand to let people watch entire movies on cell phones and other mobile products. Already, Motorola has signed up Blockbuster to be its exclusive entertainment programming provider.

“This is ‘Every Movie Ever Made at Your Fingertips,” said Lewis in describing the CES campaign. “We are in a unique position in the industry to do this.”

By next year, Blockbuster expects its Video On Demand service to be embedded in 10 million devices, spanning Web-enabled Samsung TVs and Blu-ray Disc players, TiVo digital video recorders and Motorola phones, among other products.

Through its VOD service, Blockbuster will show customers both the digital and physical options for any title in any of its inventory channels. If a title is available only for electronic sell-through and not for digital rental, for instance, consumers will be able to see their options for renting a physical copy in store, getting it mailed to them without a subscription, or putting it in their subscription queue.

In another evolution, people will be able to watch their Blockbuster digital content in any Blockbuster-embedded device, moving between the TV and computer, for instance, or even their own home and a neighbor’s, by logging into their personal accounts. Movies also can be stopped and started up elsewhere on different Blockbuster devices.

“Our job is to get the title to you,” said Lewis. “We can build services that will make people’s lives easier. We are beginning to build the connective tissue so consumers can migrate [to different viewing choices] seamlessly.”

Big Blue’s overall hope is to quiet Wall Street’s loud criticism that its stores are a failing part of its business. Blockbuster said in September that it will shutter as many as 960 stores by the end of next year, but it maintains that the remaining outlets are necessary to ensure people can access what they want, when they want.

Besides needing stores as an inventory source, Blockbuster also hopes to utilize outposts to demonstrate all of this technology to customers in person.