Streaming movie rentals are seen by many consumers and movie rental firms to be the future of movie rentals. The problem is that many movie studios and large rental chains like Blockbuster are slow to support online rentals for fear of hurting their retail rental and sales business.

Blockbuster and Sonic solutions announced this week that they would be working together on a new digital movie service. Sonic will provide the software part for delivering movie content across PCs and consumer electronics devices.

Netflix streaming has made it’s way into everything and people like it. As usual, Blockbuster is behind. But here’s some good news for the company.

According to Chairman Jim Keyes, Blockbuster’s download-to-rent service in a Blu-ray player will be here by Q1 of next year. Basically, if you’re an HD film fan then you’ll be able to rent HD quality films from Blockbuster directly through your Blu-ray Disc machine. No word if this will be in the form of a firmware update for existing hardware or part of a new player, but it’ll need to standout a bit and lower the price in order to compete with Netflix.

This isn’t really a surprise, but if you like you can put your hands on your face and feign shock. Just last week, we were speculating that Blockbuster might launch its video-on-demand (VOD) solution before the holidays. Here it is.

Since the Blockbuster set-top box is official, here are some specs: There are 2000 movies available for a 1.99 rental price. You have 30 days to watch a movie after the order. You have it for 24 hours once the movie has been started. It sports WIFI connectivity and is HD Capable. No word on pricing for the box itself.

Rumor is that Blockbuster could roll out its own set-top box by the time the holidays are fully upon us, which would let users receive Movielink downloads in the comfort of their own living room. There isn’t much info available, but it will be interesting to see whether this rumor pans out or not. Netflix having some competition is probably a good thing, but Blockbuster will have to come up with something really interesting to even compete.

When it comes to getting my gadget or video game fix and I don’t want to wait for something to ship from an online store it’s off to Best Buy or Circuit City for me. I also like to watch lots of movies and I am in the movie store almost every Tuesday looking for something cool to watch and Blockbuster is a store of choice. It seems that Blockbuster and Circuit City could see a merger at some time in the near future.

Blockbuster announced today that it has offered to buy Circuit City for $6.00 per share in cash with the offer subject to due diligence. Blockbuster says that the offer was made in a letter sent to Circuit City Chairman and CEO Philip Schoonover on February 17 on behalf of the Blockbuster Board of Directors.

Blockbuster has been rumored to have been secretly working on some new technology in the works that would allow streaming video content from an online rental service direct to consumers televisions, and could be available as soon as the next few weeks. No information has been given on the exact technology or price but the service could again bring the home video renting giant back up to par and possibly ahead in technology, compared to other rival video renting services from Netflix and Apple.

Netflix would be directly affected by this new service by Blockbuster and has recently upgraded their service to provide unlimited streaming to some subscribers, however it streams to their computer and not necessarily to the living room of most consumers. In order to work their way into more entertainment centers, Netflix is also looking into providing streaming video rentals through Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console.