blinkbox rebrands as TalkTalk TV Store
David Farnor | On 06, Jan 2016
blinkbox has changed its name to TalkTalk TV Store.
The TVOD service, which offers movies and TV shows to buy and rent, was bought by TalkTalk almost exactly one year ago. The telecommunications company purchased the site from Tesco, after the supermarket faced financial difficulties.
The deal was designed to boost the company’s TV package, which offers a range of movies to rent to existing customers through its service called TalkTalk Box Office. The acquisition of blinkbox gave the company a way to reach non-customers also looking to buy or rent new home entertainment titles. The service was swiftly rebranded as “blinkbox from TalkTalk”.
Now, though, in a move that rivals the renaming of “LOVEFiLM” to “Amazon Prime Instant Video”, TalkTalk has scrapped the blinkbox brand altogether, opting instead for the far less catchier “TalkTalk TV Store”.
The rebrand, though, is something of a work in progress: the site has updated its logo, but the domain name is still www.blinkbox.com.
The blinkbox app, meanwhile, will be renamed TalkTalk TV Store on Android devices, but will be given a different name (“TalkTalk TV Player”) on iOS devices.
Neither, however, should be confused with TalkTalk Box Office, which remains a separate service. In other words, existing TalkTalk TV customers who rent titles on their YouView box cannot access them through the site formerly known as blinkbox – and vice versa.
If customers would like to watch a movie in both places, they’ll need to buy it twice.
“We’re working on improving this in the future,” says TalkTalk TV Store, which says that it plans to merge TalkTalk TV accounts with TalkTalk TV Store in the future.
What does this mean for blinkbox account holders? Not very much, although TalkTalk will start to appear on your bank statement instead of “blinkbox”. The site’s digital library, meanwhile, will remain the same, so that any movies or TV shows you have purchased or rented will still be available to watch.