With Apple TV leading the way in set-top movie streaming, and Netflix teaming up with LG for their own device, it was only a matter of time before Blockbuster got involved.

There certainly is a risk that Blockbuster will end up taking business away from it’s brick and mortar stores in the process, but the type of consumer that would buy a set-top box may already be getting their movies from a by-mail service like Netflix or Blockbuster online.

The box is apparently going to be an offshoot of Movielink, the online movie service they purchased last year.

Blockbuster is trying their best to move beyond the video store. After Apple announced their online movie service, Blockbuster’s stock plummeted on the news. Their stock is currently valued at less than half of its 52 week high.

As movie streaming increasingly moves its way into our homes, the question begs to be asked: how long does Blu-Ray really have to build and maintain market dominance?

I don’t have a Blu-Ray machine yet, and a lot of people don’t. As HD sets continue to become the norm, they will certainly sell more boxes, but if an efficient way to deliver HD movies through a set-top device is introduced in the next year or two, who wouldn’t want to go with that, especially if it was easy to store your movie collection on a large hard drive?

It’s hard to see Blu-Ray really being viable in the long term, but I might be wrong. Perhaps people will want both, or they will all buy Blu-Ray in the next year or so, or the allure of having a dvd in one’s hand will override the urge to get a movie quickly online. There are still questions about the streaming of HD movies and how viable that is.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 2:37 pmand is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.