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Amazon set to acquire LOVEFiLM movie rental

Amazon set to acquire LOVEFiLM movie rental
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This is an odd one, Amazon is all set to buy LOVEFiLM, a move Amazon is making to get ahead in the European market of DVD/Blu-ray/online streaming services before the American giant Netflix gets a chance. But why is it an odd move?

There have been a number of online postal rental movie services in the UK from Screen Select to LOVEFiLM of which LOVEFiLM has eventually become the biggest, mainly by acquiring all the others, although in reality LOVEFiLM is actually Screen Select, when the merger of the two companies happened the Screen Select management team stayed in place with their systems but they thought the LOVEFiLM name was better.

Included in the many companies that offered online postal DVD rentals was Amazon, a service which was very good, much better than LOVEFiLM, but after only a couple of years LOVEFiLM bought the rental only service from Amazon, but Amazon became a major stakeholder in LOVEFiLM.

Now the whole story has gone full circle and Amazon will own the company outright, what I would like to see is the service integrated back into the Amazon website.

Amazon are making the right move, LOVEFiLM is now streaming on the PS3 and before long I can see it happening on many other devices, Apple TV maybe, Freeview HD boxes, and the killer, directly to TV's, Sony produce a lot of TV's and the relationship is already in play through the PS3.

It's a smart move for Amazon and one, which I am sure, will finally put the old high street movie rental stores into history, sorry Blockbuster we will remember you fondly but I think your time is up.

ABOUT:
Robert Hyde

Robert has been a film buff since he first visited the old Palace Cinema in High Wycome when he was young.

After working for Ritz Video Film Hire, later Blockbuster Express, it cemented his interest in film and gave him the drive to go to university with the intention of working in the industy.

6 years of college/university studying film and Culture and he decided to take a different path, so he taught himself to develop websites.

8 years at Amazon, 3 years at eBay, a year at PayPal and 6 years running his own digital marketing agency and here we are writing and developing saltypopcorn.co.uk.

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