Oh, I hope whatever exec came up with this idea scores a huge bonus. Blockbuster is piloting a new program that will load a DRM’d movie rentals onto an SD card from a kiosk. The future!
So say you’re at the airport. You want to rent, I dunno, some movie that wasn’t good enough to see in the theater. You just format a spare SD card filled with vacation photos you’d forgotten to back up (it doesn’t appear they give you a card, but I could be mistaken), pop it in the machine, select a movie, pay $4 or so, and then have the film loaded on your card, a la ticking time bomb, with DRM.
And what can’t you do with an SD card? I mean, it plays in my iPhone…wait…I mean my Blackberry…wait…
Mini SD and Micro SD—those are the cards that most of our mobile devices will take (if they take any at all)! In case no one told you, Blockbuster, we can’t play this shit back on our digital cameras.
(Granted, netbook owners and some laptop owners will be able to utilize the standard.)
Ah Blockbuster, you’ve arrived just in time to ignore the growing popularity of iTunes/Zune Marketplace syncing, 3G streaming and in-flight Wi-Fi all while offering your service on a medium less convenient than DVD. But don’t worry, I’m not angry. You’re just hurting yourself. [Fast Company]
