Blockbuster, Sonic Team on Internet Movies

Blockbuster is amping up competition with Netflix, partnering with Sonic Solutions to offer streaming movies and other content over the Internet.

Video rental outfit Blockbuster is looking to amp up its competition with upstart rival Netflix, announcing today it is partnering with Sonic Solutions (now part of CinemaNow) to provide Internet-based, streaming access to movies and other video content to computers, mobile devices, set-top boxes, and Web-connected TVs. Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed, but the companies say this is a multi-year, preferred-provider arrangement. Under the deal, Blockbuster will supply the “branded consumer interfaces” while Sonic will power the back end and content delivery.

“We are excited to be partnering with Sonic, the industry’s leading entertainment delivery and technology provider, to make Blockbuster’s digital entertainment service easily and instantly available to consumers through the widest range of devices available in the marketplace,” said Blockbuster CEO and chairman Jim Keyes, in a statement. “Blockbuster is a ubiquitous entertainment presence in the physical world. Through this alliance with Sonic, we plan to become a ubiquitous presence in the digital world as well.”

Blockbuster and Sonic are collaborating with computer makers and consumer electronics companies to integrate support for Sonic’s just-rebranded CinemaNow SDK to push content to both PCs and Macs, as well as portable media players, Blu-ray disc players, DVRs, set-top boxes, and Internet-enabled televisions. CinemaNow already has relationships with manufacturers like Dell and Archos.

Blockbuster plans to offer as many as 10,000 films and as many as 40,000 other digital content offerings via the service. The companies how to have a Blockbuster movie service up and running on a wide range of devices as early as the second quarter of 2009.