Think back a few months to a fight that took place between Redbox and the major Hollywood studios. Hollywood execs were all hot and bothered about how Redbox kiosk’s cheap $1 movie rentals were cannibalizing new DVD and Blu-ray sales, and decided to order their wholesale distributors not to sell to Redbox for a month or more after the initial release.
Redbox launched some legal action in response and decided to buy directly from retailers to stock kiosks as a workaround. However, that came crashing down for Redbox when Wal-Mart and other retailers imposed limits on the number of units of the same film a single customer can buy from them. Long story short, Redbox ended signing deals with Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. that required a 28-day window before Redbox kiosks could offer new titles for rental.
Paramount however decided to actually test whether or not the availability of new titles from rent from Redbox kiosks affects the sales of new DVD or Blu-ray releases. It signed a deal with Redbox in August 2009 which would allow it to stock new releases on the same day as the title comes out on Blu-ray and DVD. Redbox agreed at the time to share rental data with Paramount so that it could evaluate the potential benefits of a longer-term contract.
Following the 10-month analysis of DVD sell-through and renal performance, Paramount and Redbox announced on Tuesday that Paramount had extended its revenue sharing license agreement, providing Redbox access to Paramount DVD and Blu-ray titles to rent on the same day they are released in the sell-through market.
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Result for: movie release
Blockbuster has announced this morning that it has reached a deal with Warner Bros. to have new Warner releases available for rental day-and-day with release date, and a full 28 days before rivals Redbox and Netflix get them.
The financials of the deal were not released but it is clear that the deal is only for brick-and-mortar stores and online rental and not for Blockbuster’s thousands of kiosks.
Blockbuster has almost $900 million in debt, and analysts have given an “ongoing concern” notification for the company, implying bankruptcy may be on the horizon.
The first movie available because of the deal is “The Blind Side,” available today for rent.
“The studios appreciate that we are the only business that has the ability to offer cross channels,” says CEO James Keyes, via BW. “That enables us to give consumers access to movies when they want it and where they want it.”
Result for: movie release
Sonic has announced that Global Digital Media Xchange (GDMX), an Authoring facility, will be using “Sonic’s Scenarist HDMV and BD-J authoring and CineVision AVC video encoding systems” to ramp up production capabilities for Blu-ray Discs.
The new move will now make GDMX one of the biggest HD production facilities in the world and allow the company to address the huge increases in BD movie releases that will be coming thanks to the demise of HD DVD.
The Scenarist authoring system allows content creators to “automate standard authoring tasks, such as graphics output for menus, buttons, and navigation, which provides more time for implementing advanced-interactivity components in BD-Java.”
“We are delighted that another world-class authoring facility has selected Scenarist and CineVision to increase its BD Title output capabilities,” said Rolf Hartley, senior vice president and general manager of Sonic’s professional products group. “Many more movies will be released on Blu-ray Disc over the coming year and, as we have been through previous packaged media adoption cycles, Sonic will be at the forefront delivering the most advanced authoring and encoding technology available.”
