(Smile) Oh – yeah – yeah – yeah. I wasn’t complaining..just to let your readers know in case they clicked on the link and it was munged.

“On the store side, it’s a lot easier for a trained Blockbuster employee to rip and burn a movie than most of the general public.”

You’ve been to Blockbuster.. right? (double smile) I do agree with you though. The only sidebar is – I want to cut out the employee that needs to help cut the CD. I’m not sure if most consumers feel that way. IMO – that’s the biggest reason to have a kiosk. The other thing is they would have a super fast burn system.. even with the fastest burner now, it would take a while.

On a side-note. It always fascinates me how quickly a company can be crushed when they loose momentum by not understanding a major shift in the way customers behave. Ala Blockbuster. But some – not crushed soon enough. Hmmmm. (somehow I just heard Greg Gutfeld’s voice in my head when I said that) I know that was an unnecessary reference.. but you know.. stream of consciousness and all.

As far as burn on demand goes, you are right, consumers don’t want it. It’s a pain, plus you’ll need new burners and special (more expensive) DVDs to burn to. I can only imagine what the DRM is going to be like. That is why I am optimistic about how much of an opportunity this is for retailers. The kiosks are designed to crank out the DVD. There is no program for the customer, except picking the movie and putting in their credit card. The technology is here and people have been waiting to deploy it. On the store side, it’s a lot easier for a trained Blockbuster employee to rip and burn a movie than most of the general public. With the right programs and equipment, they could pump these things out pretty quickly. The key will be that they won’t be able to do everything. I suspect that all of the content will need to be in a on location server, in order for them to quickly dispense the technology.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blockbuster stores closing 2007

Also, while I’m fully on board with Kiosks, I’m not sure if burning your own is right around the corner. Just geting my lightscribe burner to turn out a CD was a pain in the .. well. I know you are G blog, but you get the idea.

There are too many writable CD formats – and not even counting the software conflicts the process is way more work than needed. This will make the average consumer really frustrated and more willing to stay with a company like Netflix.