We can stop holding our breath in anticipation now—Blockbuster has made its video streaming set-top option available.

We learned about this possibility a couple of weeks ago, and today Blockbuster and 2Wire jointly announced that 2Wire’s MediaPoint digital set-top box is now available for people to purchase, and then rent on-demand videos from Blockbuster.

They want you to put the MediaPoint digital player to good use right away, too—you can buy the player “free with the advance rental of 25 Blockbuster On-Demand movies for $99” as the initial offering.

After you tear through those 25 titles, you can start renting others for “as little as” $1.99 (read: catalog titles for $1.99, new releases probably for a dollar or two more is our guess).

The features include player dimensions of 8 x 8 x 1 inches, a power adapter, remote control, AAA batteries and composite A/V cable. The player will also support (and you’ll have to buy separately):

• Component
• HDMI
• Toslink (digital optical audio)
• Ethernet
• Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)

Guess this is more of what 2Wire had up its sleeve as well, when they made some rumblings earlier this month. So welcome to the set-top box video service, Blockbuster. We’re looking forward to seeing how the market fight between this and the likes of Vudu, Apple TV, Netflix/Roku and other streaming devices plays out. What do you guys think?

Arlen Schweiger - Managing editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen contributes product news items to electronichouse.com along with his role on the print publication. Got a tip? Send it along!