Despite conducting a battery of tests this week of its own video-on-demand
(VOD) entertainment service, Blockbuster Inc. Friday killed its exclusive
VOD services deal with Enron Broadband Services.
Blockbuster, the video rental giant that is conducting tests of its service
in major cities like Seattle, Portland, American Fork, Utah, and New York
City, insisted in a press statement that it is far from giving up on the
young niche of on-demand content delivery. In fact, the firm said it will
continue the development of its own VOD service.
Blockbuster will, however, continue to work with the broadband provider
through the end of the trial.
John Antioco, Blockbuster chairman and CEO, said his company will continue
to look favorably on the slowly growing sector, but noted that he
anticipates the technology to evolve to better make VOD services available
at home.
“Based on this, our plan, as the leading consumer-branded
entertainment-aggregator, is to remain technology agnostic and open to all
sorts of alliances,” Antioco said in a press statement.
VOD is a form of streaming media, but unlike live, real-time broadcasts, it
is basically visual content that is available to be beamed via satellite
from a content delivery network (CDN) on call.
Blockbuster, a publicly-traded subsidiary of Viacom Inc., is a leading
retailer of DIRECTV satellite systems and plans to co-brand DIRECTV’s
pay-per-view movie channels later this year.