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Blockbuster v Netflix in box bout

November 25, 2008 11:55pm
by Chris Nuttall

MediaPointA battle of the boxes began today between Blockbuster and Netflix, the principal online DVD rental services in the US.

Blockbuster announced its MediaPoint digital media player to serve movies to TVs over the internet. Its response to Netflix’s Roku box, launched six months ago, differs in some important respects.

The Netflix box costs $99 and allows monthly subscribers to its postal service to stream the content of more than 10,000 DVDs to their televisions at no extra charge. The same capability is being built into certain high-end DVD players and the Netflix service also launched last week as part of the new interface for the Xbox 360.

The MediaPoint player, made by San Jose’s 2Wire, is being offered free to Blockbuster subscribers willing to pre-pay $99 for the first 25 DVDs served on it. DVDs rented after the 25 are used up will cost $1.99 to $3.99, but there is no monthly subscription fee.

The player has a more sophisticated interface - users can search through Blockbuster’s library  to choose what they want to watch, while the Netflix system requires queues of movies to be set up on a computer.

The boxes have similar capabilities, but the MediaPoint is prettier and has a USB connection, currently disabled, for external storage. Crucially, it also has internal storage for up to five standard definition movies or two high-definition ones at a time. The Roku box has no storage capability.

Blockbuster movies have to be watched within 24 hours once started, while Netflix allows its selection of movies, mainly older titles, to be watched and watched again over any length of time for free.

While Netflix streams its movies, making quality dependent on the robustness of the broadband connection - flakey at times, in my own experience - Blockbuster does “progressive playback”, which means the movie is downloaded to the device and can be started and played in consistently good quality while the data is still being downloaded.

Blockbuster says it is offering 2,500 “of the best, biggest and most current movies available” - so a smaller choice than Netflix but more recent material, with new DVDs available on the service within 30 days of release.

Blockbuster may have come out six months later with this device, but it is arriving in time for the big holiday buying season. It should appeal to  those who want a quality picture but have a less than stellar broadband connection and who also prefer to pay one-at-a-time for recent releases rather than choose from a larger back catalogue of free (monthly postal subscription apart) movies and TV shows.

Netflix should be concerned…although, it already has to worry about a plethora of competitors vying for space under the TV such as Tivo, Vudu and Verismo.

November 25, 2008 11:55pm in Consumer Electronics, Digital media, Hardware, Internet | Comment

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