The Death of Blockbuster
Here's some fascinating news on the home entertainment front. People in the consumer electronics industry have been predicting the death of the movie rental market as pay-per-view has continued to expand into people's living rooms. However, PPV has been most popular with two-way cable TV, and less so with satellite receivers, given their one-way nature.
Now that PVRs are making huge inroads into the home, Rupert Murdock (new owner of DirecTV) has come up with a novel application. He wants to deliver movie content to DirecTV customers while they sleep and have it stored in a protected partition of the PVR's hard drive. Customers can then elect to rent or buy the content that is already loaded on their box. In fact, he is so sure of the idea that he's ordered 20 million DVRs for his customers!
One of my favorite blogs has a short writeup about it, while Slate has a more extensive article.