I still ended up at the kiosk and picked a couple movies out but this experience led me to making a decision today that I’d get my site mobile ready. Yeah, it works already but it could be much more optimized. And with the launch of the upcoming iPad I’ll probably try to put together another site that is optimized for that device as well. So here we are at the end of another workday (isn’t it Saturday) but I have completed getting a mobile theme up on the site. Thanks to the great folks at Brave New Code I have installed, configured, and customized the WPTouch plugin for this site which converts the theme when you use a mobile device.

So those folks out there that are hitting me from their iPhone, Android, Blackberry 9500, blackberry 9530, cupcake, dream, incognito, ipod, mini, webOS, or webmate browsers, you now will automatically get a new mobile optimized site! There is a switch at the bottom if you want to turn that off and go back to the fullscreen site.

So enjoy (I already have been) and please let me know if you find any issues and I’ll see what I can do to fix them up for you.

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.

It has not been announced when the service will be available or on what devices it will be supported. But Blockbuster senior vice president of digital entertainment Kevin Lewis said, “The integration of our OnDemand service into Motorola’s mobile phones will provide access to thousands of movies from the moment someone initiates their service.”

Blockbuster’s OnDemand service, which charges rental fees of up to $3 per movie download or sells movies from $9.99 to $20, gives users on-screen search and browsing capabilities and additional content such as ratings and trailers. This is very similar to what Apple’s iTunes store does for users of the iPhone. Blockbuster’s senior vice president of digital entertainment Kevin Lewis also stated, “People are increasingly relying on their mobile phones to stay connected to the things they love the most, including their favorite movies and TV shows.”

Other details released say that the upcoming application will also be able to choose films for home delivery or reserve titles for in-store pickup. At the moment it doesn’t say anything to link it to Blockbuster Express kiosks.

Motorola is desperately trying to regain handset market share. Once the top dog in the market, it has lost that appeal to Apple and others who are designing more smartphones and mobile computer handsets. Motorola has also signed on to deliver Android phones. Perhaps the Blockbuster app is a part of that strategy.

But with the iPhone, its YouTube browser, and the iTunes and App stores so firmly entrenched, they will have a huge uphill battle. It would be easier for Blockbuster to enable an App on the iPhone which has the market share than to exclusively try to provide this service on Motorola handsets. And with the rumor that Netflix is polishing up its streaming player app for the iPhone for release, they better get cracking!

For those that know me, calling me an early adopter doesn’t quite do it justice. I’m always looking for what will be the next thing and trying to get there early on. I have stood in the line for 3 generations of iPhones, I have pre-ordered the latest OS’s, I have built complex DVR networks throughout my house, I had ISDN for 5 years before broadband made it to my house and I watched them lay the cable and called every day to be the first one with Roadrunner! So when Netflix came out, I was right on board with it. But why?

The main reason was that I wasn’t at the mercy of the video store for what I could rent and when. I could actually login to the Netflix site and find what movies that I might be interested in and reserve them in my queue. And then they just showed up! It was great and it put the power back into my hands. Not only that, it took away late fees! I wasn’t required to return a movie at a certain time, I could keep it as long as I wanted if I kept my subscription paid.

The same thing is true of the DVD rental kiosks from Blockbuster Express and Redbox. Now the consumer is in the driver’s seat again. You can stop by a kiosk on your way through somewhere you typically go (drugstore, convenience store, grocery) and pick up movies that way. But the real power is in the fact that you can go online, find the kiosk that has the movie you are looking for and reserve it. With Redbox you simply show up at the kiosk and swipe the same card you have on file and it then ejects all of your movies for you ready to go. It is simple, convenient, and you are in control of the process. And there are no late fees, you just get charged a daily fee. If you keep it for longer, you know what the fees are for doing so.

And I think that Netflix paved the way in changing how consumers rent movies. By giving us that control over what we could get we have become accustomed to it. Now the kiosks add one more twist to that by giving it to us RIGHT NOW versus waiting for the mail.

It is a great study into the psyche of the consumer to see what we are looking for and the kiosk vendors have done a great job of it. I hope that with blogs such as this that we can keep the companies up with consumer desires and that we can continue forward into better and better products.

Today MOD Systems announced in an interview with Video Business at the Digital Hollywood conference that they were negotiating with three retailers to launch more pilot tests of it machines during the second half of the year. You can check out the full article here.

These kiosks allow you to download content to SD cards. SD cards are the most popular memory cards found in digital cameras today and you can purchase them in very large capacity for $50 or less. Slowly we might see the consumer devices like DVD players, DVRs, set top boxes, and even TV sets that can play the content directly, but today you would likely have to play it through a computer if you were playing it in a home theatre. Presumably the content would play directly on some of the smaller media players like the Microsoft Zune or Creative Zen. I don’t see that they would push the content to work on the iPod or iPhone because Apple is already providing that in such a way that you can just pull movies over the air already and there is no SD slot on an iPod or iPhone.

In my own home theater configuration I could probably make something work if they provided the content in an iPod compatible format or one with DRM that lets me convert it so that I can push it through iTunes to my AppleTV. Otherwise, I just don’t see the SD content thing working. I’d just as soon watch the same thing through my AppleTV, or through Video on Demand on my set top box, or even through a Roku player with Netflix.

How do you see the SD downloadable content working?