Tag Archive for 'lovefilm'

04
Feb

LOVEFiLM takes over Amazon’s DVD rental business!

By David Ryan 1 Comment
Categories: Rumors and inside LOVEFiLM

LOVEFiLM .com have just announced are taking over the user base of all of Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de DVD rental service.

A press release from LOVEFiLM has just announced that LOVEFiLM have acquired Amazon’s DVD rental business and customer base. In the deal Amazon has now become the largest shareholder of LOVEFiLM for an undisclosed amount of cash investment.

This take over by LOVEFiLM of a part of Amazon’s service is likely to send ripples throughout the entertainment and internet industries, as it is the 1st time that Amazon have sold off part of their business. LOVEFiLM will now be shown to be one of the major leaders of the Entertainment sector in the UK and Germany.

The switch for Amazon customers into the new LOVEFiLM customers is rumoured to be in the next 2-3 months, all DVD rental’s for both companies will go on as usual till this point.

So what for the future?.. Well now that LOVEFiLM is going to take it’s UK subscriber base from an estimated 500,000 to 900,000 no doubt they will be looking to break the 1million mark. LOVEFiLM have been the number one online DVD rental store in the UK for a couple of years now, so where does this leave Blockbuster in the next few months?.. I would hazard to guess that LOVEFiLM will either buy them out or just take them out of the UK for all entertainment rentals.

Full press release below.

LOVEFiLM to Acquire Amazon’s UK and German DVD Rental Business;
Amazon to become largest shareholder of LOVEFiLM

Luxembourg, February 4, 2008 – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and LOVEFiLM International (www.lovefilm.com), today announced that LOVEFiLM will acquire Amazon Europe’s DVD rental business in the United Kingdom and Germany. As part of this transaction, Amazon Europe will also make a cash investment and become the largest shareholder in LOVEFiLM International Ltd., and finally, the two companies will enter into a multi-year marketing agreement in which Amazon Europe will promote LOVEFiLM’s services on its sites for UK and German customers.

Completion of the deal is subject to regulatory approval in the UK and Germany. Following completion of this deal, the new LOVEFiLM subscriber base will total over 900,000 customers predominantly in the UK and Germany, but also in the Nordics (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark).

“As one of Europe’s largest online DVD rental businesses, LOVEFiLM is well established to serve customers’ increasing demand for entertainment,” said Greg Greeley, Amazon’s vice president of European retail. “Our investment will enable LOVEFiLM to grow the business further and we are excited to be part of their future.”

Simon Calver, CEO of LOVEFiLM International said, “Customers are faced with an astonishing array of choices in the entertainment world these days. LOVEFiLM International will ensure that Amazon Europe’s customers get the best possible DVD rental service. We will be delighted to welcome all Amazon Europe customers to the LOVEFiLM service. This new, bigger customer base will give us an even better position from which to build LOVEFiLM as the best place for customers to find film.”

Amazon Europe will continue to operate the DVD rental business on behalf of LOVEFiLM for a period of time following the close of the transaction to ensure an efficient transition and smooth customer experience. No staff reductions are planned at Amazon’s German or UK operations as a result of the business transfer.

Download the Full LOVEFiLM-Amazon-press-release

I will bring you more news on this story throughout the coming months.

Read more on LOVEFiLM taking over Amazon DVD rental

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03
Feb

How LOVEFiLM works: a video review

By David Ryan 0 Comments
Categories: LOVEFiLM Customers

Petimi from Pi ImageDesign is a new customer to LOVEFiLM and has made a funky video to show how easy to use the service is.

Click here see the full post and to watch the video on how LOVEFiLM service works.

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03
Feb

Slogger competition - Win a Sony Bravia TV

By David Ryan 0 Comments
Categories: Competition

Slogger logoI received an email from Jason Norris [Affiliate Manager of LOVEFiLM] promoting LOVEFiLM’s latest competition. I was delighted to see that rather than the normal ‘answer a daft question’ style of competition LOVEFiLM has created a great little flash game to play called Slogger which is in the style of Frogger, the classic game from the 80’s.

The objective of the game is to control Eric, who has a DVD to return to the video shop before he encours a late fee, but the path to the store is a minefield of cars on a busy street and speeding trains on the railway (don’t try this at home kids!).
It seems LOVEFiLM is showing that having to deal with late fees and the extra journey to the store is a pain, when you don’t have to with their rental system.

The prize is a Sony Bravia 40 inch LCD Television, and 10 runner up prizes of cinema tickets. All you need to do is enter your email address and get to the end of the game in the fastest time. The competition closes on the 29th of February.
Screenshots and list of items in game after the fold. Click to read more.

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21
Nov

William Reeve interview - [e-consultancy.com]

By David Ryan 0 Comments
Categories: inside LOVEFiLM

e-consultancy interviewed William Reeve, Chief Operating Officer for LOVEFiLM.

There are some nice topics discussed about the business of DVD rentals, movie downloads and an internal Hackathon.

Here are some snippets from the interview, ending with some questions from myself.

William on the LOVEFiLM Hackathon

We see you recently held a Hackathon to generate new ideas for the business. How did it go?
It went really well. I read something about Facebook doing a Hackathon and looked up what it was on Wikipedia, and we invented a way of doing it ourselves.

When do you plan to hold the next one?
We have a code freeze at Christmas and we’re going to do use that time to do another one.

I think we’ll aim to do it roughly quarterly from then on. We got some really good quality ideas and everyone that did it enjoyed it.

Q What else was made during the Hackathon, and will the public ever get to see the products even just to have a vote to say if they go live?

Q The first Hackathon and the next one seem to be an internal project, will LOVEFiLM take the example of Facebook and open up the Hackathon to the public developers?

William on movie downloads

How is your download service going, in terms of subscribers?
It’s going. The issue is that we’re not offering as good value on it as we’d like to. We’re all about convenience and good value. Although it’s competitively priced, it’s not something I could tell my friends they should use.

Q With the download to own not going so well, why promote and use it, will LOVEFiLM provide a service like Netflix’s watch instantly?

The questions are probably some of many that William Reeve gets everyday, so i didn’t want to go overboard and there is a fair chance he won’t see this post to answer them, but if you have your own questions then please post them below. Maybe they will get an answer.

Read the full interview on e-consultancy.com, its a nice insight into a growing company, now at 500,000 subscribers, thats a lot of movie watching!

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19
Nov

LOVEFiLM new website design - first thoughts

By David Ryan 0 Comments
Categories: LOVEFiLM updates

The guys at LOVEFiLM have finally caught up with the rest of the web and updated their homepage and done a little clean up of the navigation.

For those who can’t remember, or haven’t see it before the homepage was in two variants, one for when you are not signed in (Visitors) and a completely different page when you do sign in. The Visitors page was more of a advertisement page, where you don’t get to see any of the goodies inside the website till you sign up.. shame on you LOVEFiLM.

lovefilm new design screenshot signedoutOld LOVEFiLM Visitor page - click to viewlovefilm new design screenshot signedoutNew LOVEFiLM Visitor page - click to view

Now after a while the powers that be inside LOVEFiLM towers have decided to show what is inside the site for all to see, this is great exposure as DVD rentals are only the tip of the iceberg (the interviews, competitions, trailers and reviews were always too far down the navigation for me).

So lets look at the new design.

lovefilm new design screenshot signedout

Continue reading ‘LOVEFiLM new website design - first thoughts’

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10
Nov

New LOVEFiLM TV advert - Competition

By David Ryan 0 Comments
Categories: Competition

I posted before that LOVEFiLM had a new advert coming with Ray Winstone doing the voice over, now it is confirmed.

With the launch of their new advertisement LOVEFiLM have also launched a competition to win 6 months of free DVD (and possibly video games) rentals, all you have to do is watch the TV advert and name all of the movie and television clips shown. I wont give it away by naming them all, it is pretty easy. The competition page is here.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

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04
Nov

New LOVEFiLM advert starring Ray Winstone - Rumours

By David Ryan 3 Comments
Categories: Rumors

LOVEFiLM have leaked that they are to start a new advertising campain this month, Jason Norris (affiliate marketing at LOVEFiLM) said on affiliates4u.com “we are doing a new TV advertising campaign this month”.

LOVEFiLM’s adverts have always been of the same format, with clips of movies segmented inbetween computer generated letterboxes with slogans about their business, this has recently been voiced over by actors such as Ewan McGregor and Bill Nighy.

After a bit of digging the rumour is the next ad is of the same format but this voiced by none other than the East London hardman Ray Winstone, who has just finished filming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and also has been named for the Richard Harris Award at the BIFA this month. It also seems that the advert is moving from just trying to attract DVD rentals to a more broader use of their website.

I havent seen it yet, so i cant confirm the rumours, but as soon as i can get a copy i will post it up on here, so check the RSS feeds to see the advert first.

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04
Nov

Hacking LOVEFiLM - the beginning

By David Ryan 1 Comment
Categories: LOVEFiLM General

So what is LOVEFiLM and why have i started a blog called ‘Hacking LOVEFiLM’?

Well if you are not in the UK or you dont know, LOVEFiLM* is an online DVD, Games and Download rental store, if you are from the USA then you might be aware of Netflix, LOVEFILM is the UK, Scandinavian and German equivalent. They have been going for about 4 years and although they are not as big as Netflix they are growing fast and soon might catch up.

The hack.. well the word ‘hack’ is used in the media to mean to gain entry or steal using technology, the ‘Hacking’ in the name of this blog means to gain more information about the company and the services they do by anyway i can. (how i came to this name is below) Mostly i am going to ask the users of LOVEFiLM and the readers of this blog to pass on their knowledge and stories to be published. I will also be looking at the media as well as my own findings and reports as a daily user of the LOVEFiLM website.

This blog isn’t here to take down LOVEFILM or to slander it in anyway, there are lots of forums and blogs out there that love to dish the ’so called’ dirt and i wouldn’t want to take their place, i personally have had nothing but great experiences with LOVEFiLM, but im sure that there are areas that they can do better in.

So what now?.. well i don’t know really, there is no plan to this blog, hopefully it will run its own course and shape itself out. Hopefully i can put forward some areas or ideas to make mine and your subscription money work better, maybe even LOVEFiLM will be reading..

If you want to contribute by sending me your ideas, stories or rants about LOVEFILM then please use the contact form, but do remember i am not part of LOVEFiLM’s customer service or am i able to help you out with any problems you have with LOVEFiLM.

* Yes that is how they spell their company name, all of the letters are upper-case except for the ‘i’.

The name isnt something that i came up with, i have been reading Hacking Netflix for a while now, and as it is a great blog i wanted to start one on LOVEFiLM, the name ‘Hacking LOVEFiLM’ seemed to suit as well as it does with ‘Hacking Netflix’ - thanks Mike

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