Apple TV, look out! You will receive a rival from Blockbuster pretty soon as word on the street has it that Blockbuster is working secretly on a device that enables video content to be streamed directly to a TV. Apparently, this mystery device will be launched later this month although very little is known about its hardware specifications, let alone a pricing structure. What we do know, however, is that the available content will be provided by Movielink, a former joint-effort of MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner, which was acquired last year by Blockbuster. Movielink alone has a library of 6,600 movies, so the chances of not having something nice to watch in your living room is virtually nil.

Apple TV isn’t exactly the success that Steve Jobs expected it to be, but apparently the concept must have a pretty sizeable market to warrant Blockbuster coming up with their own device. Perhaps the killer use for such a device has yet to be stumbled upon, but one can see that Apple is more serious this time round by introducing a newer, cheaper version accompanied by movie rentals on iTunes (without much success, I must add). Hopefully Blockbuster’s effort will be able to do better. They will have to gird themselves up though, since Netflix and LG themselves will be coming up with a similar device of their own as well, where Netflix has the advantage of allowing subscribers to stream a selection of films to their computer screens at no extra cost currently. With more than 90,000 titles on DVD and around 6,000 titles via the Internet, their library is definitely a threat to Blockbuster’s aspirations.

So what will it be for you? Streaming video content to your TV directly? Not everyone has a blazing fast Internet connection, so physical movie rentals won’t die out anytime soon but it is encouraging to see a virtual environment gaining more clout among the more developed areas.

Source: eFluxMedia