Audio Video News

We go on and on about digital downloads, video-on-demand, and even mail-order movie delivery. Let's face it, there's lots to talk about there. It's easy to forget that your neighborhood Blockbuster stores are still around, and still account for more than half of Blockbuster's total sales.

While hundreds of their stores closed recently, Blockbuster has announced plans to renovate and update their remaining stores, including plans to increase the number of in-store downloads kiosk. Come on, you knew we had to mention downloads one more time.

What Blockbuster has over other services is that even customers who typically order through the mail have an option of returning a movie to the store or just pick up something if what arrived at home doesn't suite the mood.

What does Blockbuster's CFO have to say?

At a consumer conference this week, Tom Casey said, "Most people read a lot of interesting headlines, and we enjoy the headlines about Netflix, Amazon, Apple, so forth. But what you need to understand is we really have a market that we address that's nearly $36 billion in size. Video-on-demand is actually pretty small."

There are also plenty of folks who don't have mail subscriptions, who just say, "Hey, let's rent a movie tonight." Mail-order doesn't really allow for spontaneous movie-night, now does it? -Leslie Shapiro

LA Times