Sekar

Blockbuster's Investment from Wattles: Expect Chapter 11

Blockbuster's earlier CEO John Antioco was one of the biggest corporate idiots, joining the ranks of disgraced and fallen guys like Jack Welch (GE is now $6), Charles Prince, Immelt and numerous idiots. The current CEO (7-Eleven savior) has no clue on how to run this business. Are the board members in a drunk state? Blockbuster will eventually collapse. Hollywood studios are going to realize that their tight grip over content distribution will come to an end sooner than they think. Customers are not willing to pay $4 to rent movies and watch. Movie distribution and consumption will go the way like music has become and no one has time to step into a store to checkout content. How much will I pay to watch a movie? Not more than 50 cents. The studios and their overpaid stars should realize that sky high production costs will eventually kill movie distribution. The entire movie industry requires a shake-out and the time is right now. Look at how many stuios have scrapped costly productions. The country has plenty of talented faces and studios should promote new blood in movies rather than overpaying existing actors. That way production cost will reduce and consumers can pay less to watch a movie. The collapse of Blockbuster will be a death knell to retail movie distribution in US.

Review: Hands On with Amazon on the Roku

Looking at your list of set-top boxes in your living room, you have atleat 6, not counting cable/ satellite receivers. Is someone missing the point here? What do you expect an average consumer to own in the long term? All these boxes and the vendors who back them will realize that this is not the model to adopt since multiple boxes and their user experiences are all different. The market will ultimately drive the need for a single box with a simple user experience and that's years away. TiVo, Roku, Vudu and AppleTV would have disappeared by then. TiVo is on bare life support surviving on patent relief money and dwindling customer base.