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Blockbuster to stream online videos to PC with CinemaNow

January 14, 2009 — 10:38am ET | By Pete Wylie

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Blockbuster continued its efforts to battle Netflix for supremacy in home movie delivery, as it announced it will co-brand San Francisco-based CinemaNow's Internet movie delivery service. This major partner announcement should be a boon for both CinemaNow and Blockbuster, as CinemaNow's service gets serious name-brand recognition and Blockbuster opens up IP delivery of its movie content.

CinemaNow was founded in 1999, but failed to win a mass audience, perhaps because broadband speeds at the time of its inception weren't fast enough to substitute for a quick trip to the video store. It claims it was the first website to offer Pay-Per-View and download-to-own films from major studios, so it has tried and tested architecture to deliver the movies to the consumer.

Blockbuster hopes to use the CinemaNow technology to reach the market Netflix has mostly cornered to this point. Blockbuster will try to use its new-release distribution deals with film studios to differentiate itself from Netflix, which only can stream 12,000 movies that have been released for some time. One potential stumbling block to Blockbuster's success here is the lack of a subscription model, as it claims to be developing it, but can't bring it to market immediately. Netflix's subscriptions offer unlimited streaming to PCs, next-gen gaming devices and some Blu-Ray players, in addition to DVD home delivery, a total offering that Blockbuster simply can't match currently. Initially, the Blockbuster-CinemaNow partnership will offer online video rentals and download-to-own options only.

For more:
- see the Associated Press report here