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Blockbuster To Rent Movies on SD Cards: Too Little, Too Late?

Posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 by David Chen

blockbuster1

Things aren’t going well for video news rental goliath Blockbuster. Netflix’s rental service arguably offers a superior consumer experience. Redbox DVD kiosks are cheap, convenient, and fast. And online streaming from Netflix, Hulu, and other companies threatens to destroy a huge chunk of the DVD industry at a whole. In September we learned that they might be closing almost 1,000 of their remaining 4,400 stores.

Into the breach comes a new scheme to allow movie rentals through kiosks via SD cards. But does the plan make any business sense?

According to Fast Company, customers can take an SD card to these kiosks (Or a card would be provided for you. It’s not 100% clear) and then load it up with a movie, after which it can be played on a TV or a SD-reader equipped mobile device. The new scheme will actually have some benefits over your standard Redbox rental: Specifically, you won’t need to return the movie, since there will be DRM software loaded onto the card that will prevent you from playing the movie after a certain date. SD cards are also harder to damage than DVDs.

Bafflingly, the article posits that “Blockbuster is hoping that the better quality video contained on their SD cards will win streaming video customers back…” It sounds plausible to me that this is Blockbuster’s reasoning, but if so, it further demonstrates their inability to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. People don’t stream movies because they’re looking for the highest quality; they do it for the convenience above all else. These kiosks seem to be anything but.

I can see these kiosks being popular at airports, where people with netbooks or Macbook Pros might be able to stick an SD card into their laptops and play a film on the flight. But I can’t see this beating Redbox (who wants an SD card instead of a DVD?) and I definitely can’t see it supplanting streaming as a growing and preferred content delivery method of choice.

Discuss: What do you guys think? Would you ever rent a movie on an SD card?

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  • freemachine
    With the H1N1 crisis, shouldn't someone make SD condoms? Because I'm not sticking my thing in their slot for a good time unless I'm protected!
  • they probably could get some good business from airports. not a lot, but a decent amount. just seems like another thing that some people will go to and others just won't care. just something else to sit around and be all futuristic
  • Remember those little independent video stores packed with VHS tapes that slowly got phased out when Blockbuster started to push in on territories and DVD suddenly happened? Blockbuster will get what's coming to 'em-- and it feels right.
  • Spike
    They are shooting themselves in the foot. The vast majority of consumers have to have the freaking "geek squad" to come hook up their dvd players, blu ray players, etc., and they expect Joe Backcountry to figure out SD cards?

    This is the worst. idea. ever.
  • iec
    someone needs to take them out back with the shotgun...
  • Points for creativity, but it won't be a revolution. Good call on the airport market.
  • greggorybasore
    I still rent movies (though much less than I used to) on DVD's grabbed off of store shelves. As much a pain the ass as it can be it's still a better experience than this sounds.
  • Octoberist
    yeah, at the sametime, Blockbuster can only carry so many movies. So if I want to rent something more obscure - be it old, indie or foreign, they may not have it.
  • JasonSearcy
    I called and asked, a few times, for movies they did not have in stock, and about 3 weeks later i was browsing their shelves and sure enough they had that movie there. I was surprised and delighted and rented the movie on the spot. Sure there was a delay of when I wanted to watch it and actually renting, but it shows that they listened to what people wanted.
  • sallyskull
    I had been going to our new Blockbuster in town for two years. While the entire two years, asked where the copy of Mulan was. ( I have kids) It had not been returned in over 2 years, and they wouldn't order another one.
  • greggorybasore
    With the rise of services like Net Flix and streaming sites on the web I think the Corporate/counter culture movie rental store will go by the way side even quicker than locally owned video stores which are also disappearing.

    If Block Buster wants to stay in the physical location game I think they should switch to focusing primarily on video games and emulate stores like Big City Gaming where you can pay to use a New console like PS3 or XBox 360 for a few hours.
  • cdouglas
    In our newly realised world of HD, DVDs are still played but going a way a bit. So SD cards of over 50gb would have to come out for people to get hi def...come down in price alot($80 currently), and a person would have to be patient while the machine wrote 50 or so GB to their sd card....maybe 5-10 minutes? Doesnt sound that plausible. Even for regular DVD quality...it would still be a wait to download the 4.7 gb....
  • hhl
    You can get an HD movie in <8GB with good codecs and 8GB cards are cheap.
  • cdouglas
    yeah...but theres a difference between an 8gb h264, and a 35 Gb blue ray....and I work with video for a living so Ive seen that difference. And the kiosk would still have to be faster than you average computer to get people to stand there while it downloads
  • Many who actually care about their equipment will care (like us on the forums and blogs), but the great unwashed masses probably wont give a toss as long as "itz in da AychDee..."

    Whole endeavor reeks of fail tho...
  • sallyskull
    blah blah blah, all these numbers, whatever. Redbox, One dollar.
  • norbert
    Theoreticaly this can go veeeeeery quick but apparently not so many people are interested in pushing the technology.
  • Guy
    I think Blockbuster are finished. They are routinely late to adopt new ideas.
  • Octoberist
    SC cards? Huh? That's so backwards.
  • Rick_Dickulous
    Blockbuster should forget about all this competing against Redbox and Netflix at their own game shit. It's just not gonna happen. They should just focus on making their store experience better. Adopt a similar plan to Redbox but in store. You pay a dollar a day for movies, $1.50 per day for games.
  • hhl
    I think the idea is great. the kiosk never runs out of movies, has a bigger selection than redbox and no need to drive to return. movie playable on netbooks, phones, hopefully on bluray players/tvs with usb/sd slots etc.
  • Shurakai_Zero
    You may not have to drive someplace to return a movie, but you'll have to drive there to get it in the first place, which is something I don't have to do with my Apple TV.

    Yeah, this might work okay for airports, but I can't really see it having a broad appeal otherwise. And even in an airport, so long as you have a wi-fi connection, there's nothing stopping you from renting something from iTunes or some other digital store - no physical media to bother with.
  • hhl
    Hopefully these kiosks will be in locations like grocery stores, malls etc (like redbox) and you dont have to drive to get a movie.

    Plus number of people with TVs/DVD players with USB/SD>No. of people with Apple TV boxes. Also I paid good money for my TV/BluRay player and
    I don't think this is to kill streaming, this is to be better than redbox.

    As for AppleTv I'm not spending 229 on another box and my internet connection is 768k so streaming kind of sucks.

    Movies in the mail + store = good enough for me. If BB replaces the store exchanges with these rentals and puts one of these in all stores, I'll definitely use it. I'm tired of new releases always being all checked out.

    In the US, airport wifi!=free and the idea is to watch in flight, not at the airport.
  • How long do you think it will be before people start stealing these units? Seriously i bet they get snatched up and people take the hdd's out of them being that its a server essentially and steal all the stuff on the hdd's and break the drm. Not to mention, micro sd? Really? Why not just make an 8-track slot to download to...

    This is another example of throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks and in the end this not only hurts the consumers but the people that use to work for Blockbuster before they went bankrupt because of ill conceived notions like this one.
  • jdforslin
    When Blockbuster says the bit about hoping to draw people from streaming with higher quality, I think they're saying that people aren't watching things via streaming for the quality, they do it for the convenience, so the high quality of the SD card rentals will entice people away from the ease of streaming. I can't say I agree with them however. I say that good quality paired with convenience will trump great quality and inconvenience every time.
  • gorwell
    I'm waiting for the brain implants where they beam movies, music and information like laws I should be obey, who to vote for, and what products to buy directly into my brain stem.

    I won't even have to move or think. I'll just sit and drool.

    Welcome to the future.
  • Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix, and I bet you they had the chance to buy Redbox. But they didn't. Why? They were owned by Viacom when Netflix started up, but they were an independent company by the time Redbox came out. I think that those two decisions are going to be what sinks this company.
  • Fail. Utter fail. Failicious. Fail whale at fail dot com.
    WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER HARDWARE DELIVERY SYSTEM.
    See there are these things called DVD's and Blu Rays that deliver movies to our TVs. Flash mem is not as convenient, and DRM'd flash mem will probably get hosed at some point. Most consumers wont want another box under their tv just to play a movie.
    It's a BASIC tenant of marketing, if you have to ask the consumer to do something different, your product will probably fail.

    See if blockbuster were smart, they'd use what little capital they have left and buy up Redbox. Then using their size and clout, pack those kiosks full of blu ray (or do a "redbox" for DVD and a "blubox" for BD).

    The cool thing is, if this is their plan, then we know they aren't smart, and will most likely die.
  • I just heard Blockbuster is abandoning their SD card idea and going with "Plan B" - flipbooks. They're trying to figure out how to store more than 5 movies in the kiosk at a time since each movie is about the size of two phone books...
  • joooeforlong
    I don't think this is a bad idea in the sense that SD cards or flash drives (if they were cheaper) should have been the next generation for movies instead of Bluray discs. When I've got something like a WD TV which plays all of my ripped DVDs in beautiful fashion I'm essentially just looking for a way to get my physical media into digital form. Sure, digital movies from the internet might be the best way for that but I WANT to own something physical. Nothing is going to take away my collection of spines so you better start putting SD cards or something else in the cases or else I stick to buying DVDs.
  • topheavy
    I would bury Blockbuster with my own bloody bare hands if I could, the swine.
  • Not really no, I don't think so. I'm too happy with Netflix.
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