It’s been about three months or so since Dish first announced its subscription streaming offering from subsidiary Blockbuster. But in that time, it’s been quietly ramping up the amount of content that its subscribers can access through the service, boosting the number of choices from just 4,000 streaming titles at launch to more than 25,000 now.
Monday afternoon at the Consumer Electronics Show, Dish announced that the Blockbuster service, which had previously been called Blockbuster Movie Pass had massively expanded the number of titles available. Along with the new name, Blockbuster @Home, Dish announced that it hopes to increase its appeal with families through the expansion of new childrens programming. Dish has added more than 3,000 kids titles, including shows like Veggie Tales, Inspector Gadget, Heathcliff and Strawberry Shortcake.
Viewers can now tune into 25,000 titles from their web browsers. Not all of that content can be viewed on the TV, however; only 10,000 of those titles will be viewable on the big screen. Even so, the addition of new content will help Blockbuster @Home to compete with other streaming subscription services, like Netflix or Hulu Plus.
We lamented the lack of programming at launch, but the aggressive growth of Blockbuster’s library means it could become a real contender as time goes on. The only thing holding it back now is that the service is only available to Dish satellite TV subscribers.
Blockbuster @Home is $ 10 per month and, in addition to the streaming titles, offers up more than 100,000 DVDs which can be ordered by mail and exchanged in Blockbuster retail locations. Subscribers can also access more than 3,000 video games by mail through the service. And viewers can tune in not just through their web browsers or TVs, but through Dish’s Remote Access iPad app.
At the show, Dish also introduced its new Hopper and Joey whole-home DVR products. For more information on those, check out this earlier story.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Andrew Levine.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
- Connected Consumer Q2: Digital music meets the cloud; e-book growth explodes
- When video gets democratized, who wins and who loses?
- Connected Consumer Q3: Netflix fumbles; Kindle Fire shines
