Dish Integrates Blockbuster DVD Rentals, Adds Streaming
SAN FRANCISCO -- Dish will introduce a new Blockbuster-branded movie and game rental and online video streaming product to its subscribers Oct. 1, executives said Friday. The service, at Blockbuster’s lowest tier of one disc out at a time, will cost existing Dish subscribers $10 a month. New subscribers to Dish’s America’s Top 200 tier will get the Blockbuster Movie Pass service included in their $40 monthly subscription for a year. “Dish and Blockbuster are uniquely positioned with a consumer friendly platform to launch our own streaming service,” CEO Joe Clayton told reporters Friday. The announcement comes about five months after Dish acquired Blockbuster.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
When combined with Dish’s existing VOD offerings, customers of the new service will have access to a library of more than 100,000 DVDs and Blu-ray discs, 5,000 movies and TV shows streaming directly to the TV set through Dish’s set-top boxes, and access to 10 premium movie channels, said Vivek Khemka, vice president-consumer technology for Dish. For now the product is limited to Dish subscribers, but Blockbuster President Michael Kelly said the company is working on a new version of the service that will be available to all.
Limiting the customer base to Dish subscribers helps it license content from its programming partners, said Dave Shull, senior vice president of programming for Dish. “There’s certainly a benefit launching with Dish customers,” he said. “I think we have very good relationships with most of the national programmers that are out there.”
It also gives Dish a customer-service leg up on online video competitors such as Netflix, said Ira Bahr, Dish chief marketing officer. “We have thousands of customer service representatives, network technicians and installation vans to ensure the in-home experience is perfectly suited” to a customer’s home, he said. Plus, it allows Blockbuster and Dish to consolidate billing and the website logins, he said. For instance, Dish customers that also subscribe to the Blockbuster Movie Pass can manage their DVD-by-mail queue through Dish’s website. Those factors could help Dish in a maturing market for pay-TV distribution, he said.
Starz, Epix, MGM, Sony, and PixL are among the pay-TV networks contributing programming to the new service, Dish said. More than 3,000 titles will be available to view on TV sets through Dish’s set-top boxes, and more than 4,000 will be able to watch more on the company’s website, Clayton said. Customers will also be able to go into any Blockbuster store and exchange one of their received-by-mail DVDs for a new title, he said.
The service is designed to attract new subscribers to Dish and possibly upgrade some existing subscribers, Clayton said. And the announcement Friday is “just the beginning of integrating the Blockbuster brand and opportunity into our own business model,” he said. Higher-cost tiers allowing customers to keep two and three discs at a time will cost $15 and $20 a month, the company said.