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In yet another major technology-driven move in the movie rental industry – which in the past week has seen Warner Bros. introduce a made-to-order DVD service and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd United Kingdom open a virtual mobile movie store – officials at a Dallas-based entertainment giant say they’re launching a DVR campaign.

 

Blockbuster Inc. is joining forces with Alviso, California-based TiVo Inc. in a move that will see the movie rental giant’s library of digital movie titles come directly to TiVo’s (News - Alert) DVR boxes.

 

Blockbuster’s chairman and chief executive officer, Jim Keyes, said he’s excited to team up with the company that invented the DVR.

 

“Ultimately, our vision is to work with TiVo so that their subscribers can access movies not only through our OnDemand service but also from our stores and through our by-mail service as well,” Keyes said. “Regardless of a film’s availability – through VOD or on DVD – we want to work with TiVo to provide their subscribers unprecedented access to movie content.”

 

Here’s how it will work. The service – to be called “BLOCKBUSTER OnDemand” – will integrate into TiVo Series2, Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL DVRs. 

 

The companies expect the new service to be up and running later this year.

 

It’s been a big week for the movie business.

 

As TMCnet reported, eyeing a plan to boost slumping DVD sales, one of the world’s largest film and television entertainment producers this week opened up its movie vault to archived works that span more than a half-century in the industry.

 

Officials at Burbank, California-based Warner Bros. say consumers now can go here to purchase DVD and digital downloads of more than 150 titles for the first time. Each month, the company says it will make about 20 films and TV shows from its archive available for purchase through a DVD-on-demand program – a move that analysts say eliminates the problem of making more products than consumers want.

 

The news followed a direct challenge from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices, as it launched a service that will allow customers to buy or rent TV shows and movies for download on their mobile phones.

 

Samsung (News - Alert) United Kingdom officials say their virtual mobile movie store includes more than 1,000 movies and shows from Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal and Momentum Pictures, and that the company will expand the service to notebooks as well as mp3 and mp4 players and Samsung TVs.

 

Many of these moves are being fueled by the relative success of the world’s largest online movie rental service. Officials at Netflix, Inc. say that subscribership grew 26 percent year-over-year from the fourth quarter of 2007 to 2008, and that they crossed the milestone threshold a little more than one month ago, adding more than 600,000 net subscribers in the first few weeks of 2009.

 

That all adds up to bad news for Blockbuster, which reported last week that it lost $374.1 million in 2008.

 

Officials at TiVo say they’re prepared to be part of the company’s turnaround.

 

According to Tom Rogers (News - Alert), president and chief executive officer of TiVo, the service will make his company a one stop shop of choice for all content through broadband or linear distribution straight to the TV.

 

“When consumers walk into one of the thousands of Blockbuster stores entertainment for the home is on their minds – it could not be more natural to have them exposed to the world of millions of entertainment possibilities for the home that the TiVo Service provides,” Rogers said.