Blockbuster And TiVo Join Forces

The New York Times is reporting that Blockbuster and TiVo will announce today that they are teaming up "to deliver Blockbuster’s digital movie library over the Internet directly to the televisions of people with TiVo digital video recorders." The deal apparently involves no money but will see TiVo customers have access to Blockbuster's library and Blockbuster offering TiVo devices from it's retail stores. “We are excited to be teaming with TiVo, the company that created the DVR, to make Blockbuster’s entertainment content readily available to their millions of subscribers,” Jim Keyes, chief executive of Blockbuster, said in a statement. “Ultimately, our vision is to work with TiVo so that their subscribers can access movies not only through our On Demand service but also from our stores and through our by-mail service as well.”

YouTube And MGM Strike Deal

Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios (MGM) will be the first major movie studio to post full length feature films on YouTube. MGM will start off with some classic movies such as "The Magnificent Seven" and 10 year old television shows like "American Gladiator". The move would appear to be a good one for each side with YouTube trying to play catchup to Hulu and MGM struggling for it's very existence. “We believe in comprehensiveness, and we want to have deals with everybody,” said Jordan Hoffner, the director of content partnerships for YouTube. “We want to be able to give users the most content possible.” For their part, MGM's co-president Jim Packer says “We will have some long-form videos up on YouTube, but I don’t think that’s the platform to have 30 or 40 movies up at once,” and “I feel much more comfortable doing that on a site like Hulu.”

I must say, I'm a little excited to think that I might get to see some classics from my childhood but American Gladiator? Really?

NYTimes and CNet.