Movie Gallery online DVD rentals announced
MovieGallery, the USA’s second largest DVD rental store chain, announced yesterday that they have plans to start offering an online DVD rental service. This new service will be in direct competition with Netflix and Blockbuster online. Reuter’s online has more about the announcement, which was made yesterday on a MovieGallery financial results conference call that was open to the public.Chief Financial Officer Thomas Johnson said the company learned from a survey that about 10 percent of Hollywood Video customers and about 2 percent of Movie Gallery customers were renting new releases from its stores, but finding older films through the online DVD rental services.
Movie Gallery plans to make a low-cost version of online rentals available to existing customers and “will not spend outrageous amounts of money” to promote the service or to acquire subscribers, Chairman and Chief Executive Joe Malugen told analysts on a conference call.
Movie Gallery vs Netflix vs Blockbuster
Movie Gallery’s decision to launch an online DVD rental service is partly due to information they collected from customer surveys. The move to online DVD rentals and VOD (Video On Demand) is definitely a step towards the future, but can MovieGallery succeed where Walmart and others have failed? MovieGallery has also recently acquired MovieBeam, a Video On Demand company that was spun off from Disney. I for one will be trying out the MovieGallery online DVD rental service as soon as it launches. If you’re interested in DVD rental services, join us at DVDRentalForums.com to discuss this and other related topics.
