Barnes & Noble announces Nook Video service

Barnes & Noble Inc., in its bid to keep up with online retail rival Amazon.com, said it will begin offering movies and television shows through its Nook store starting this fall.

The bookseller said Nook Video will sell and rent movies and TV shows from HBO, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Starz, Viacom and Warner Bros. Entertainment, as well as films from Walt Disney Studios. The video can be streamed or downloaded from the Nook store, and deposited in the Nook Cloud so that it can be accessed from Internet-connected devices.

“Our new Nook Video service will give our customers another way to be entertained with a vast and growing digital video collection,” Barnes & Noble Chief Executive William J. Lynch said in a statement.

The Nook Video announcement would significantly bolster Barnes & Noble’s digital entertainment offerings. Consumers who use its Nook tablet already have access to books, music, games and social media apps, but its movies and TV show offerings have been limited to those available through such subscription services as Netflix or Hulu Plus.

Meanwhile, its chief rival in the digital space -- Amazon.com -- has been working aggressively to bolster its film and TV catalog. This month, Amazon announced it had added content from pay-TV channel Epix, which offers movies from Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Sales of the Nook tablet have been dramatically lagging its rivals. Apple Inc. remains the market share leader, with its iPad tablet commanding more than 68% of shipments in the second quarter, according to researcher International Data Corp. Samsung’s Android tablets hold a 10% share, followed by Amazon.com, with 5% in the quarter.

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