Blockbuster, Microsoft team up on mobile services | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Dallas Business News

Description

Comments | Recommended

Blockbuster, Microsoft team up on mobile services

By ANDREW D. SMITH / The Dallas Morning News

asmith@dallasnews.com

Blockbuster Inc. caught up to the competition last week by introducing a set-top box that brings rentals from the Internet to the television.

Now, the Dallas-based company hopes to pass the pack by teaming with Microsoft Corp. on new mobile services that will let customers watch even more movies on more devices.

"Eventually, we'll give customers instant access to any movie on any device with an Internet connection and a screen," said Keith Morrow, Blockbuster's chief information officer.

"More immediately, we could use this technology to reach into airports. Travelers could quickly download movies from Blockbuster kiosks to their portable media players."

Blockbuster will try to build some of these services on top of the new software platform from Microsoft.

Dubbed "Live Mesh," it uses Internet connections to share data among different devices.

Folks with multiple PCs can already use Live Mesh to do some basic things, such as synchronizing their home and work calendars.

Soon, Live Mesh will work with Macs and Windows Mobile smart phones.

"We've built in the functionality that allows Microsoft programs to talk to each other, but we're also opening up Live Mesh to anyone else who has cool ideas for sharing data," said Jeff Hansen, general manager of Microsoft's Live Services group.

Blockbuster is one of the first companies to try building an application on Live Mesh, and it certainly has some cool ideas.

For example, Mr. Morrow said, once people begin ...

Original URL

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-blockbuster_01bus.ART0.State.Edition1.4a219e8.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-blockbuster_01bus.ART0.State.Edition1.4a219e8.html