Sonic Solutions partnership could bring Blockbuster VoD to Wii

Blockbuster announced this morning that it has partnered with Sonic Solutions to deliver its video on demand content to a wider spectrum of connected devices.

Sonic Solutions and Blockbuster will bring the streaming video on demand service to PCs, portable media players, Blu-ray players, DVRs, set-top boxes, mobile phones, and connected televisions, including devices already supporting Sonic's CinemaNow. Earlier this month, the company announced that CinemaNow content will be available on LG's network Blu-ray players and on Fujisoft-enabled Nintendo Wiis in Japan. "Everybody's Theater" for Wii is expected to launch in Japan on January 25, and allow users to rent OVA titles for between 300-800 Wii Points.

Blockbuster's main competitor Netflix has taken its streaming content to dozens of places already, and has consistently done so first. In a panel discussion at CES last week, Tom Adams of Adams Media Research called Netflix "omnivorous" in its approach to licensing, and said that it has the best chance of turning streaming media into a commodity. Blockbuster's streaming on demand set top box came out several months after Netflix, and was received with much weaker fanfare.

However, despite the fact that it's not a 1080p device like its competition, the Nintendo Wii could be the vital inroad for Blockbuster. With Netflix instant streaming now available on the Xbox 360, the second most popular video game console worldwide (approximately 27.54 million sold), a Blockbuster presence on the number one selling Wii would put some 45.84 million devices at the company's disposal.