Not everybody enjoys competition, but we think Apple is one company that enjoys its standing as one of the most polarised companies in the technology business. It's had enough success in the portable audio and video market to generate a swathe of so called 'killer' devices aimed at knocking it from the top of the tree, but now it has encountered a rather unlikely contender in Blockbuster as a rival to its AppleTV media streamer.

The home video giant is reportedly in the process of developing a set-top box designed to stream films directly to your television, aimed at dragging the company from a run-of-the-mill corner-shop video store into the modern generation by offering access to media content across multiple channels through downloads and portable content enabled devices.

We're still at a relatively early stage in terms of streaming content directly to a television through the Internet, at least in terms of feature-length video, though with most of the technology necessary to make it happen already in place, the buck has now been passed to companies like Blockbuster to make it more accessible to the masses.

The device is thought to be a standalone product in the same style as the Apple TV, and with Blockbuster's stock near an all-time low following iTunes' adoption of a rental model, it appears to be a move that could prove vital to its future stability.