But Wait... There's More: MSBlockFlix

from the clamping-together-many-pieces dept

Yesterday, I wrote about how Blockbuster's Netflix-copycat offering seemed pretty weak in that it didn't do anything more than Netflix and didn't really leverage their stores at all. Oddly, it appears they held back on a bigger announcement for one day. Now, comes the news that Microsoft and Blockbuster are teaming up to offer downloadable movies among other things, as part of the effort. Netflix has said in the past that they'll eventually offer downloadable movies, but this is one way that Blockbuster can go a bit further out of the gate. Of course, that would be true if the offering were any good -- but unfortunately, it looks like they're just bundling the incredibly weak CinemaNow offering, which has been described as "annoying to use," "agonizingly slow," and having a "pathetically thin selection." Not particularly enticing. The MSN/Blockbuster link will also let people buy tickets to movies. Basically, they're setting up a system so that you can watch movies any way you want -- download, delivered by mail, picked up at store, or in that (oh yeah) theater place. This strikes me as a bit more interesting, but the implementation appears pretty weak. Still, it might be cool if they started to combine these features. For example, they could give discounts to those who saw a certain movie in the theater, so they could get that movie on DVD later. Or, perhaps let anyone buying tickets to a remake freely download the original version. The movie industry still seems to be missing out on the fact that movies are more of a social experience, and they should think up ways to use the content to encourage more group movie activities. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen, as the main focus seems to be on making sure they get paid for each and every movie, rather than looking at the bigger picture.

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