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    Blockbuster Strikes A Deal With Warner Bros To Use 28 Day Renting Window For Kiosks

    Joshua Brunsting
    December 17, 2010

    Well I’ll be damned.   Apparently Blockbuster just lost its only trump card.

    With millions pumped into their new advertisements, promoting their slogan of ‘Why wait 28 days for new releases?’, NCR (the operators behind Blockbuster’s kiosk system) have announced that they have agreed to a deal with WB, to impose that very same 28 day window with regards to DVD releases.

    This in turn means that films that would have previously been available at Blockbuster kiosks on street date, truthfully the one major trump card held by the company, will now hit with the same 28 day window as Redbox and Netflix.   This move with WB follows similar deals between NCR and Fox, and Universal, meaning that over half of the DVD market share is now within the 28 day window for Blockbuster and their kiosks.

    Simply put, this is a really poor move by the company.   Losing their one up on both Netflix and Redbox, this is far from the best move possible for Blockbuster, who just filed for Chapter 11 earlier this year.    It remains to be seen what this window exactly means for the company, but it can’t mean anything good.

    What do you think?

    Source: Fast Company

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    Joshua Brunsting

    Josh is a critic, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, a wrestling nerd, a hip-hop head, a father, a cinephile and a man looking to make his stamp on the world, one word at a time.

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    2 comments

    • The 28-day window for Netflix used to irritate the crap out of me, until it dawned on me I had a bajillion (is that an actual unit of measurement, a bajillion?) other streaming and disc options available. Before I knew it, the window was up and the new-release DVD was in the mail. Now I just assume I’ll have a short wait with every new DVD release–and when I don’t, I’m pleasantly surprised.

    • Just go out of business already…..

      Your new releases where $4 anyway at the koisk

      Let Redbox and Netflix get back to giving us movies on time.

      And if the studios think this 28 days is going to work after Blockbuster is dead and buried to make us buy dvds, it won’t and it will hurt Redbox and Netflix all the more

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