Blockbuster

TiVo on Tuesday set out to reinvent itself with DVRs that blend television and Internet viewing experiences. The TiVo Premiere and TV Premiere XL combine access to cable programming, movies, web videos, and music.

Shrugging off his company's long bouts with privacy concerns, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the weekend that sharing information online is the new "social norm."

"When we first started Facebook in my dorm room in Harvard [in 2004], people asked me why would I want to have any information at all on the Internet," the 25-year-old Zuckerberg said at the annual Crunchies awards ceremony sponsored by TechCrunch. "But the social norm has evolved over time."

Blockbuster Inc. may close as many as 960 stores by the end of next year, shedding more dead weight as the struggling video rental chain tries to reverse its losses and fend off rapidly growing rivals Netflix Inc. and Redbox.

The cuts outlined in documents filed Tuesday would leave Blockbuster with about 20 percent fewer U.S. stores. The previously confidential documents didn't identify the locations of the endangered stores.

Blockbuster hasn't made any final decisions on the possible store closures, Chief Executive James Keyes said in an interview Tuesday.

The number of HDTV sets with an Internet-based movie service increased Thursday with Mitsubishi's announcement that two of its new TVs will feature the VUDU service. The announcement follows a series of similar moves from other TV manufacturers and online video services.

The models are the Unisen Diamond LT-46249 and LT-52249, both 1080p flat-panel HDTVs with a 16-speaker sound system and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround sound. Both come with an Ethernet port for high-speed Internet.

Two Months Included

Palm's road to a comeback is hitting a few speed bumps.

When Palm launched its Pre smartphone on June 6, expectations were high that the long-troubled company could have a hit with the device, the biggest launch by the new management team led by a former Apple executive. Now analysts estimate that Palm likely will sell just 300,000 to 500,000 Pres in their first three months on the market. That's not bad, but it's short of the outsize expectations ramped up by the phone's advanced technology and splashy debut.

In a move to compete with Netflix, Blockbuster on Wednesday announced a partnership with TiVo to deliver its library of digital-movie titles direct to the television set.

Essentially, Blockbuster is integrating its OnDemand service, which offers content to buy and rent, into TiVo Series2, Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL DVRs. The partnership aims to make it easier for broadband-connected TiVo subscribers to download Blockbuster's content through a single remote control.

In a move to compete with Amazon.com, Blockbuster on Wednesday announced a strategic alliance with Sonic Solutions to deliver a library of premium digital content across a variety of home-based and mobile electronic devices.

Blockbuster will rely on its brand name to attract consumers while Sonic works behind the scenes to serve the content. By joining forces, the companies expect to have one of the largest video-on-demand and electronic sell-through offerings on the market.

Blockbuster is finally making an aggressive move against Netflix. The perennial movie-rental chain has partnered with 2Wire to launch the 2Wire MediaPoint digital-media player. It's Blockbuster's version of an on-demand video solution that gives movie watchers instant access to Blockbuster OnDemand content through their television sets.

Microsoft released Silverlight 2 on Monday, the second major version of its platform for creating and delivering advanced multimedia applications and experiences in a Web browser.

The company also said it will continue to back Silverlight-related open-source communities, with funding for advanced Silverlight development based on the Eclipse Foundation's integrated development environment (IDE) and with new controls to developers via the Silverlight Control Pack.

Word of mouth campaigns have occasionally played an important role in the marketing of new entertainment and media (movies, music, books and games), but research to establish the major drivers of success has produced mixed results. 
As a result, social media spend and monitoring is still a relatively small portion of the overall entertainment media spend.