Blockbuster BD rental discussion thread - Page 67

I got No Strings Attached and Blue Valentine in the mail yesterday from NF. My BB account is on hold and it looks like that's a good thing.

I expect we will hear from BB's new management in the not too distant future. Right now, though, they are trying to negotiate deals with the studios for content and renegotiate leases with the landlords of their stores. It's going to take awhile for all of that to shake out. That's why I have not yet given up on BB. As long as I continue to have a number of BD titles in my queue, which are available and I still want to see, I guess I'll stick around.

The delayed titles will keep happening until Blockbuster reaches new agreements and new contracts with the studios. BB is sort of a brand new company now since Dish took over and because of this, new contracts and agreements have to be worked out. I was told that everything should be cleared up and back to normal in early June. They have deals so far with Sony, Summit, and Universal. I was also told that a lot of titles that BB didn't get in for previous months will start to finally become available. Its kind of annoying, but I'm willing to stick with them. If they don't get better by June like they said then I will for sure cancel my membership. With that being said, I do believe, however, that Dish should issue some kind of statement to keep customers in the loop. A lot of people who don't visit forums or don't read the news won't know whats going on and won't know the reason for the titles not being in stock both at the store and at the warehouse. Hell, most people don't even know that Dish owns Blockbuster and some people think that BB doesn't exist anymore.

Yep. In fact, what they'll think each time they visit the existing stores and find nothing to rent is that BB is done. If ya ask me (and no one is) they should have one of those "Pardon us while we renovate" signs in every store.

Lionsgate settled with Blockbuster about the stuff in the past, and I would assume it also includes a deal for the new movies too.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...dispute-183800

Local store manage told me tonight they expect to have all new releases by late next week. I hope for them and us it comes to pass. I want BB to succeed.

Fingers crossed. I also want to see BB to succeed.

That sounds like what the manager of my neighborhood BB store has been telling me. The store got The Green Hornet BD, which was released on Tuesday May 3, two days later on Thursday May 5. She said that the district manager had told her that she should expect to receive Blue Valentine, which was released yesterday, by "midweek." She said she thought that would probably be tomorrow, Thursday. I'll report what I learn in another post.

DJ Matt's analysis, set out in his post earlier today, makes sense to me. BB's new management has already made progress in structuring new deals with some of the studios and is working with the rest. It's going to take awhile but I think it's likely to happen and the discs that we haven't seen yet will start to show up. In the greater scheme of things, Dish doesn't have a lot invested in the BB operation but there is a big upside if they can get it up and running on a solid foundation. These are still very early days but I am cautiously optimistic about BB's future.

That's definitely good news and I truly hope Blockbuster can stay viable as well. I'm not so interested in the store presence personally since I am by-mail only, but someone needs to stick around to keep Netflix honest on the BD disc situation until real HD streaming on the level of BD comes into its own over the next decade (or two).

Redbox hardly even counts in my book, since a physical box with a paltry selection of the 20 or 30 most recently released popular titles doesn't even begin to compare with nationwide warehouses full of tens-to-hundreds of thousands of titles.

I agree that Redbox has distressingly few BD titles now but have high hopes Redbox will become a serious competitor for NF and BB as they get more BD titles. Although it is true that each Redbox kiosk has only a relatively limited number of titles, there are many, many kiosks. For example, there are three kiosks in the shopping center my neighborhood BB store is in. It's easy to plugin your address on the Redbox site and find the closest kiosk that has the title you want to see. So far, of course, the drawback is that there are a bunch of BDs Redbox doesn't have anywhere but that should get better, at least I hope so.

Not everywhere. I'm in NE NJ (a very densely populated area) and the nearest Redbox kiosk is an 8 mile drive each way. Not super-far, but inconvenient.

Yeah, that's not good. It's surprising because you are in the middle of what may be the most densely populated area in the US. I can't imagine that I would be willing to drive 8 miles each way to rent a BD.

I don't know why we have so many Redbox kiosks in OKC but for whatever reason they are literally everywhere. In addition to 3 kiosks in a shopping center that is only 3 minutes away, there are 17 others within 2 or 3 miles and lord knows how many within 5.

I don't think the stores are going to have Dilemma for next Monday. From what I hear now the distribution centers are going to get it on that day. Not sure why they don't just try to cut the DC out and ship directly to the stores in this case, if thats possible. I asked the store manager about The Mechanic and The Roomate since those are both Sony titles so I figured they would at least have those in stock on time and he said he expects them to arrive in store Monday or very early Tuesday before noon, but The Rite will not be in store on time as its a Warner title which Dish still has to work out a contract and agreement with them.

Apparently its up in the air for Mechanic and Roomate to have those titles by opening on Tuesday. I heard today that a lot of stores will be receiving 7 existing titles that were released that BB currently does not have and they expect those to arrive at some point in time next week. I believe that they have all the contracts and agreements in place with most of all studios so we should start to see things go back to normal in 2 weeks or less. Also, BB had flyers today for a huge sale coming up starting next week. I would assume its nationwide. I saw previously a sign for previously viewed Blu-ray's that will be 5 for $20 (titles have to be $9.99 or less). Been waiting for a deal like this!

Although BB got The Green Hornet BD only a couple of days late last week, this week they didn't get Blue Valentine at all. That's a worrisome development. I'll be interested in seeing whether BB gets The Mechanic next Tuesday. BB might get that one because it comes from Sony, who also controls The Green Hornet.

I called a store near me and they stated that they will get Bule Valentine by this Tue, hopefully they will also have by mail. Last week I called and was about to cancel my sevice explain to them that it seems that all the new release were all "on order" they explain that they still working on the buyout and that the new release will start to show up next in a couple of week.. She also gave an half off on my account for the next month. I will give till the next of May, and if things are still the same i am going to cancel my service.

From what I have heard all the contracts and agreements have been worked out with the studios so operations should return back to standard. With that being said, there might be a couple day delay on both Mechanic and Roomate, but this whole thing has not been communicated very well to the customers. The employees are told one thing and they pass it along to the customers and expectations are set for what day BB will get those particular releases and they don't get them in on time. The employees are then getting a lot of slack for it. I just wish they would post flyers in store or tell each customer at the terminal whats going on.

I agree, Blockbuster needed to communicate with their customers about the situation. I've not received one email about the delays or for that matter the ownership change.

I have emailed them about the lack of titles available but their only response is the usual line about how many titles you have in your queue and queue settings. Absolutely no mention of the current situation or even a hint as to when any of the "On order" titles will be available.

I received their weekly email last week about promoting the new releases, including "No Strings Attached". IMHO, that shows that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. To the average joe consumer who goes to the store or website to rent a new release based on that email...it's confusing. To those of us who have tried to find the backstory, it shows a lack of focus, attention to detail and communication between the departments.

When I received an e-mail they mentioned in the e-mail the normal stuff about having enough titles in the queue, but they did briefly touch on the situation the company is in. It was 2 very brief sentences. I guess it depends on who gets your e-mail. You think something this big they would have had a standard response. Dish is a smart company. I am very shocked by how this is being handled.

I am willing to cut Dish some slack while they continue to try to hammer out new deals with the studios. All of that involves delicate negotiations with multiple parties, which by their very nature must be kept confidential. I suspect the picture will become dramatically clearer in coming weeks.

Same here, I just wish they would have let us know that there may be a delay with most titles for the coming weeks. The good news is that I got Mechanic on Blu-ray shipped out to me as well as The Hit List on Blu-ray. The Roommate is in my queue and is listed as available. The Rite is listed as on order, but I suspect BB will get The Rite along with many other titles in the coming 1-2 weeks since the studio agreements and contracts are now all there and in place. We should start to see the turn around now.

The Illusionist is still on order even though it's a Sony title.

Probably because its a smaller release. I think all the major releases should be on time now. That title could fall under a different branch of Sony as well.

the Blockbuster acquisition represents myriad new points of purchase opportunities for consumers. He said Blockbuster By Mail and Blockbuster On Demand offered tremendous brands going forward.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/blo...-studios-23824

Is "tremendous" brands a euphanisium for ordering blu-rays?

Euphanisium?

The article describes two execs saying different things. The CEO is excited about the brand-recognition. The President said "We bought the company for basically its liquidation value" and now they gotta figure-out what has real value and what has not.

IMO their Movies by Mail business would be the last to go, because they have tons of discs with little resale value, and "by Mail" can be kept going with very little overhead (a few dozen warehouses nationwide).

OR maybe they'll just up-and-sell that to Netflix or Redbox.

The Illusionist shipped to me this morning.



I suspect you're right about the mail order business, and we'll continue to see it going forward for the time being. Highly doubt Netflix would want it anyway, as they're actively trying to get away from that part of their business model right now. An interesting related note I heard on the news this morning, Netflix streaming is already accounting for 30% of total network traffic during the prime TV viewing hours at night now... For comparison, total combined web browsing only accounts for 17%.


ron

The animated movie?