Tesco has taken the diversification to a new level and the grocery chain will now bring not only food for you but also the movies. It
has bought a bucket load of shares in movie streaming firm Blinkbox and that bucket is big enough to hold majority shares. The alliance is all set to meet Lovefilm-Amazon heads on. As a consumer, we say bring it on.
The main difference that you will get to see is that Blinkbox will adopt pay per view model, while Lovefilm favors Netflix's way of charging subscription. Now, which model is better depends entirely on your preferences and movie viewing habits. Blinkbox also boasts of a richer content library. It has over 9,000 titles, all set to be streamed to your browser. The sad part is that Blinkbox is yet to strike any deal with connected TVs. So for the time being, you can only stream the content to your browsers. The one roundabout way to stream content to your TV is to use PS3.
We are liking this growing trend of streaming content, since we do not have to worry about scratched disks anymore. Though, Blinkbox will be offering DVDs as well, in conjunction with streaming services. The new acquisition alludes to the grocery chain's growing digital ambitions. Whether Tesco is planning to be an e-book retailer or would launch its own app store, is yet to be seen. Whatever their plans are, Tesco is remaining tight lipped about them. But it did talk about low resolution streaming for mobile devices.
However, the success of these projects largely depends on the reliability and speed of your internet and of course, on the strength of digital content library. In Blinkbox's case, the digital collection is impressive enough with titles such as Inception and Harry Potter. Last year, Tesco saw more than 4 million of its customers buy 3 or more DVDs. These are the kind of people who would be most interested in on-demand streaming services. And that is a pretty decent subscribers base to start with. However, Tesco has not provided the pricing of its pay per view model.