Blockbuster downloads headed for more devices via Live Mesh

Blockbuster's MediaPoint set-top box which began selling for $99 last week, as a late and seemingly understocked competitor to Netflix's Roku set-top component. Now, Blockbuster's CEO suggests it will add downloadable content to more devices.

Netflix has already found its way onto a host of connected devices -- namely the Xbox 360, TiVo, Blu-ray players from LG and Samsung, and onto the elusive Mac. In an interview with E-Commerce Times, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes said that his company's streaming rental service will go everywhere that Netflix has gone.

"We will have other offerings expanded from this capability. We'll be able to put the same capability into a Blu-ray player," said Keyes, "We'll go into DVRs, game consoles, etc., just as others are doing to make the same capability available through other devices."

The potential adoption of Blockbuster's MediaPoint could be limited in that it isn't a purely streaming service, and requires storage space for its "progressive" downloads. Therefore, the company has partnered with Microsoft to create a Live Mesh application that will ostensibly bring Blockbuster movies to mobile devices of all sorts.

Blockbuster's Chief Information officer Keith Morrow told the Dallas Morning News the download service could be available in such places as airports, where users could load movies onto their portable media players.

This is where the Blockbuster kiosks Keyes mentioned in September would come into play. They would be powered by Microsoft's Live Mesh platform, and allow devices (perhaps the Zune in particular) to obtain Blockbuster's content.

Our love for head-to-head competition also brings the PlayStation 3 to mind. The Gen7 game console already offers rental content through the PlayStation Network, and supplementing with the Blockbuster brand could be a boon to that service.