This comes from a statement made by NCR CEO Bill Nuti who told Bloomberg News the kiosk manufacturer was willing to spend millions to acquire third-party digital and by-mail rental properties.

It is well understood that Blockbuster needs to expand out its distribution network in various ways besides their stores such as Kiosks, DVD-By-Mail, and Digital Distribution in order to remain viable. But current financial state precludes their ability properly fund those ventures. As such, they have joined forces with folks like NCR who currently licenses the Blockbuster name for use on its Blockbuster Express DVD Kiosks because of the value of the Blockbuster Brand.

As Blockbuster reported its non-Blockbuster earnings report yesterday, it might open the door for NCR to acquire a business unit, distribution channel, or interest into Blockbuster itself. Gil Lauria, analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles says, “NCR at some point may decide to buy any piece of Blockbuster, depending on what happens to the company financially.”

It is understandable that NCR may be worried that if Blockbuster goes down, the value of that name also goes with it. As such, they are looking at ways that they might be able to both gain another distribution channel as well as bolster that reputation. Those goals might require them to purchase more assets from Blockbuster. As Lauria put it, “NCR is worried about its own business, and they are ready for any [third-party] scenario Blockbuster might entertain. If Blockbuster was to get in [further] trouble, NCR would be able to take some of those pieces.”

So head over to the Blockbuster Express site and reserve your movie tonight!

Last year, NCR acquired The New Release (TNR), the number 2 player in the DVD rental kiosk business, based in Houston, TX. TNR’s primary market was in the grocery market. This continues with those roots as well as being in a Texas grocery chain.

Don Gaynier, Brookshire Grocery Company said, “We considered many of the leading DVD kiosk providers, and we were most impressed with NCR’s rapid growth in the space.”

NCR began deploying Blockbuster Express kiosks in Brookshire Grocery in 2009, with about 100 kiosks installed at the chain at the end of the year.

According to Gaynier, “For more than 80 years, Brookshire Grocery has strived to give our customers a great shopping experience. Through our new relationship with NCR, we are able to give our customers the convenience and savings associated with Blockbuster Express DVD rentals.”

Check out Brookshire Brothers on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BrookshireBros and follow along with Inside Blockbuster Express at http://twitter.com/insidebbexpress

Able to hold as many as 950 DVDs, this weather-protected outdoor kiosk is the most secure and highest-capacity outdoor DVD-rental kiosk in the industry. This will now allow NCR to launch Blockbuster Express kiosks through many more 24-hour smaller footprint locations.

One of the key things that Redbox has been able to do to get a great foothold in the industry is to place the kiosks at key locations outdoors. Now they have 24 hour access and are even more convenient. Its one thing to go to a kiosk where you had to park a 3-4 minute walk away from the doors to get inside your favorite grocery or Wal-Mart, but if you can drive right up in the parking lot right by the kiosk and get out and grab and go, that makes usability much higher.

The kiosk is very similar in design to the kiosks seen in the indoor placements. With a 19″ touch screen display and an optional 26″ LCD signage display on top. Holding nearly 50% more DVD’s than Redbox the kiosks will provide a greater selection for customers renting from a DVD kiosk.

NCR, which operates Blockbuster Express, is even promoting the facility with rent one/get one free deals and having Friday rentals not due back for the whole weekend until Monday.

Perra and NCR are currently researching other locations on campus where at least one more machine can be placed.

With this push to get players into the households, will we see an upswing in Blu-Ray discs? I’m not sure it’ll really jump because of that. I’m finding that in my own household, what is holding me back is the rental kiosks not stocking Blu-Ray.

You see, I don’t feel the need to own too many movies these days, and with Netflix streaming and all of the free Video on Demand I’m pretty much a movie renter these days. Its cheaper to rent the movie the 4-5 times I’ll watch it over my lifetime than to own it. But that’s only feasible when its fast and easy to rent it at only $1 per day.

With all of the rental kiosks near my house (I have 10 within a mile – one of those is Blockbuster Express), I can make a quick trip down the street and pick up most any movie I want to watch. If the movie is one of those that my younger kids might watch over and over, well they don’t really care whether its in Blu-Ray or VHS! So those movies tend to be in DVD format because they are cheap and can be backed up.

So I really don’t have a need for a Blu-Ray player even at $78 because I cannot get the movies from the DVD rental kiosks yet. I realize its a chicken and egg situation. Once the kiosks start making Blu-Ray’s available, I’ll probably get a player. Or I might finally succumb to the Netflix streaming and purchase one just for that and get the Blu-Ray as a bonus.

Meanwhile, I guess I’ll put my HD-DVD player I ran out and purchased early up on eBay .

DVDPlay was the first to market with a DVD rental kiosk back in 1999. Their kiosks were initially used by McDonalds to roll out Redbox. Shortly thereafter, Redbox created their own design and began to have those manufactured by another provider. In October of 2008, DVDPlay received a patent for their kiosk design and promptly sued Redbox for patent infringement claiming that Redbox had infringed on that patent. Redbox immediately countersued saying that DVDPlay was infringing on one of their patents. Both cases were dropped in late February 2009.

DVDPlay currently has 1,300 kiosks deployed across California, Colorado, Illinois, and Texas. Though Blockbuster Express expected to have significantly more kiosks by the end of 2009, this does leave them at 3,800 kiosks owned and operated under the two brand identities.

See the full press release from NCR.

As Blockbuster closes stores rapidly, they are actually turning their efforts back to their kiosks to keep the company alive. Primarily the DVD kiosks are finding themselves in places where people frequent on a regular basis other than a video rental store; grocery stores, convenience stores, dollar stores (which are seeing a huge climb this year due to the economic situation), and even fast food restaurants. People have to make a specific trip to go to a Blockbuster location both for rental and return. It is very common for there to be a Blockbuster Express kiosk in a store within the same complex where a brick-and-mortar store is. It seems like 30% of all the Publix stores out there where kiosks are have a Blockbuster in the same parking lot!

But if you are like me, if I did walk into a Blockbuster store I’d just as soon deal with a kiosk there than deal with the people working there. But from a company perspective, there is no reason to use a kiosk inside a brick-and-mortar store. You have significant expenses in that brick-and-mortar store. But that all just changed.

Now we have the pilot program of the downloadable content kiosks. Because these require a little more than you can do at a simple kiosk, namely checkout of a hardware device, they are being placed in the Blockbuster locations. Right now, when you download content, it cannot be played back with many devices (as far as anyone knows, only one device at the moment). So the stores are providing a device that goes along with your downloadable content that you can hook up to your TV and watch. We can presume that there will be some way to move the content later so that it can be played on the devices that people actually have. For myself, that would be an iPhone, AppleTV, or the Roku player.

So I wonder if DVD rental will also be something you can do at the kiosk and how that will affect the store sales. Leave me your thoughts and comments.

No details have been given yet about what devices the video can be played back on. Samsung and others have announced or released TV sets that have SD card slots which presumably would play the content. Several Inside BlockBuster Express members have emailed or posted wondering whether the content will play on their portable devices. At this point, I haven’t had anyone run into one of these kiosks to determine that answer. If you know of one and can test, please let us know!

The announcement says that the pilot test machines operated by NCR in conjunction with MOD Systems are located in select Blockbuster locations and other retail stores.

NCR has said before that it strongly believes in the digital download model. Its existing Blockbuster Express kiosks are “digital download ready” and NCR plans to rapidly expand use of the technology through its existing kiosk base.

Rentals from the digital download kiosks will be tested at various prices. Similar to rental practices on Cable Pay-per-View and iTunes rentals, consumers will have 30 days from purchase to watch the movie. Once they begin viewing it, they have 48 hours to finish watching it before digital rights management technology automatically locks the content to prevent further viewing.

He sat down with Danny King over at Video Business for an interview. You can find the full text at Video Business Online.

In the interview he tries to distinguish how Blockbuster Express is and will be different from Redbox. By having double the capacity and by working on a future with digital downloads they hope to differentiate themselves.

He also states his understanding that consumers expect them to provide new release movies on the release date but that they must work hand-in-hand with the studios to make that happen. He believes that the DVD Kiosk marketplace has not stolen from the home entertainment pie but has, in fact, grown it.

Check out the full interview at Video Business.