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However, unlike Warner Bros., which announced its deal with Blockbuster two weeks ago, 20th Century Fox hasn’t inked agreements with Netflix or Redbox that would delay their own new release windows. In fact, Redbox is still in the midst of a legal battle with Fox, after the studio sought to keep retailers from selling DVDs that the company could put into its kiosks.

Sony Pictures Entertainment and 20th Century Fox are at the heart of today’s news, which, combined with an earlier deal struck with Warner Bros., will extend Blockbuster’s ability to rent movies on the same day and date that they go on sale at other retailers.

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Hardest hit was feature-film production, which had been steadily falling over much of the last decade as L.A. lost jobs to Canada and, increasingly, other states such as New Mexico, Louisiana and Michigan that offer lucrative tax credits and rebates to filmmakers. California's newly adopted film tax credit program helped to blunt the downturn, with production activity increasing by double digits in the second half of the year. About 50 productions have qualified to receive about $100 million in tax credits since the state program debuted this summer

Warners has even gone further, saying it would impose the same restrictions on Netflix and other DVD by-mail subscription providers unless they agreed to a "day-and-date revenue sharing option."

here's no way of getting around the fact that the studios who are trying to put the muscle on Redbox are making the same mistakes the music business made nearly a decade ago when it attempted -- and failed, quite spectacularly -- to squash unauthorized downloading of music by destroying the dreaded Napster Web file-sharing service.

At some point we'll have a longer, perhaps more intriguing discussion about why so many people have gone from buyers to renters.