Blockbuster, which is likely to launch a movie download service as early as 2007, expects High Definition DVD sales to rule over High Definition movie downloads for a long time yet, according to Chief Executive John Antioco in this c|net story. Until consumer broadband speeds improve, the speed and quality of High Definition downloads will push consumers into getting titles on physical media instead. Antioco expects movie download sales to reach around $1 billion by 2009, under 0.5% the total movie industry revenue. At present, many broadband consumers do not have enough bandwidth to attempt to download a HD movie and for most others, a download takes several hours.
Another problem with moving to download services is that the movie studios are stuck in long-term agreements determining when movies are made available by pay-per-view, DVD and so on, although the download market cannot be left out either. Just recently, Blockbuster tried a new unlimited DVD rental by mail service method called Total Access, in which instead of returning the DVD by mail, the consumer can return it to a Blockbuster store and their next rental disc will be sent immediately in the mail, unlike returning a disc in the mail where the next disc is not sent out until Blockbuster receives the last one.
Blockbuster expects its online DVD rental service to continue to improve and expects to reach 2 million subscribers by the year end. With the strong growth in online DVD rentals, particularly with Netflix having some 5.7 million subscribers, Blockbuster expects to close about 400 of its 5,400 stores as a result of fewer customers heading to its high street shops.
Thanks to GristyMcFisty for letting us know about this news.
