Skip to main content

How Blockbuster could WiMaximise their distribution

I last wrote about the developing business cases for WiMax, on of the favourites in TV over WiMax.

The bandwidth and transmission distances make this technology, in many peoples eyes, a good platform for IPTV. The UK is in the stages of going digital anyway so most people will have to get used to the idea of some form of set top box, might as well be some form of WLAN modem.

The pressure that Cinema is facing, see the plea from Mark Cuban, to try and get some form of ROI in the film business is in large part down to the challenge that home entertainment lays down. The convenience factor of being in your home with your widescreen TV, DVD player and Home Theatre with full Dolby support means that the effort required to pull people out of their LazyBoys and head in to the cinema is large. As Mark mentions during a first weekend a typical distributor can end up paying $12 per head in advertising to get them to come and buy a $5 cinema ticket.

One of the leaders in the home entertainment enablement has long been Blockbuster. With operations in US, UK and Australia to name a few there are already re-engineering their business model as they come to terms with the inconvenience people feel on heading down to the shop, getting the rental and having to return it to the shop on time.

Their unlimited buffet of movies allows you to order online, build a queue of films that you would like to see and sends the media to your door. You can then return it to them in a postage paid envelope.

To me it would seem to be a simple step to adopt WiMax technology to transmit the film over wireless broadband and save the media costs.

The strength in the business model today is the knowledge that they have of the customer. They have a wish list of films, they have the customers history of not only genre of film and/or actor but spending patterns as well. This is the sort of knowledge that the telco's are going to have mine in order to transition their businesses successfully in the new emerging technologies, but more of that later.

The ability to browse, select, order and watch a film in my home over one technology is a real pull for many end users and will put Blockbuster in the same domain as cable operators.

The other benefit for them would be the softening of the impact on technology choice. They will soon face the same problem they had in the Betamax and VHS days. The different and conflicting formats of HD DVD will mean the will have to double on stock or be ready to upset some customers. Going to wireless delivery will mitigate the risk as IP is IP. There are different technologies and vendors in the WiMax loop but the packet based streamed delivery is the bit that Blockbuster have to worry about.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

PC over IP - The Teradici Effect

Teradici are hoping to blur the lines between PC and Data Centre. Their solution allows a use to view multiple screens and control the blade PC over IP. This is kind of like the dumb terminals with a new edgy deployment. The intention is that all of the computing power is performed offsite in a centralized area, the Data Centre, and this will save on power and maintenance costs as the engineers are co-located with the hardware and therefore don't have to go out to the client site for basic maintenance. The Teradici Company Article found in the Wall Street Journal

e-Olympics

This year's Olympics should be the best ever for coverage. Fring are looking for onsite commentators and as a means to encourage people are offering a 3.5G phone as your reporters tool. I hope that this will be the games of the micro blog. The potential for services like Twitter or Jaiku to open up access to the games in a way never seen before is encouraging. Essentially there are three dimensions to the games: Nation Event Athlete Typically broadcast of the games ha content defined by the nation. The USA channels closely follow the USA squad, the same for UK, NZ Australia etc. This is targeted at the national pride. For those people who are actively engaged in an event themselves, marathon, it's the event that is king. There will still be an element of "my country" but this is equally balanced by "my sport". The final element is the followers of a specific athlete. Friends, family and fans may elect to follow all of the events surrounding a person. ...

Cashless Society? Micropayments up for disruption

New Zealand, although small, is a long way ahead in many aspects compared to the UK. Some of their new schemes are being adopted by the UK government. What I remember from my first trip here 6 years ago was the impact of the EFTPOS system. Long before the UK was using Chip and PIN New Zealand was moving towards a cashless society with the ubiquitous EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer Point of Sale) cards and terminals. The system is good and robust. But the one place you can't find it for some of those micropayments is on the public transport system. Buses would benefit from some form of electronic payment system. There is one drawback of the system in it's implementation today, the time taking to pay. For small payments, say a Moro (think Mars) Bar at the local dairy (corner shop) is the time taken for the system to recognise the card and for the user to select the account (Cheque, Savings or Card) and input their PIN. This would certainly slow down the boarding process...