The filing, made to the Securities and Exchange Commission late yesterday, shows that the company is unsure whether it can continue doing business. Specifically, Blockbuster may not survive the months between a planned $250 million loan deal arranged last week and when the agreement goes into effect on May 11. Blockbuster management say there’s "no assurance" the company can meet the requirements of the deal.

In effect, the company is saying it’s within days or weeks of having to close up shop–postal, online and brick-and-mortar. 

The latter of those categories is mostly to blame, of course. In an age when music and movies are easily downloaded at a few moments notice, companies stream content over your phone lines to TV set-top boxes on demand, and even waiting for the postman to deliver a NetFlix envelope with your next DVD is beginning to seem slow, driving to a real store to rent a movie or game just isn’t convenient. Managing and funding the company’s physical assets must have become a real burden as its business eroded. Compare that to NetFlix, which doesn’t have to worry about storefronts with its warehouse-centric distribution model, and online streaming systems like Hulu, which have barely any overhead at all.

Blockbuster’s recent announcements that it would be partnering with TiVo, and get its content onto Apple devices, now just rings hollow. It was the right move, but taken far too late to have the needed impact on the company’s fortunes.

See the full article at Fast Company.

My Series 3 Tivo is like the gremlin that eats after midnight. It’s slow at times, it doesn’t like to multi-task and it’s temperamental. And it crashes — a lot. I’ve learned that if the Tivo is recording two shows at the same time then don’t, no matter how badly you want to, don’t ask it to do anything else. Stop recording one of the shows if you don’t want the screen you see here. What is this screen? Well, it’s the startup screen you see after the Tivo very quietly crashes. No error messages, no clues as to what happened, not even an acknowledgement that something has gone seriously wrong. Just 7 or 8 minutes of time that the Tivo refuses to stay awake for.

I just wanted to watch a rerun of Family Guy. Now I’m writing a blog post. Oh well…