After carrying DVD in selected locations for well over a year now, Blockbuster today announced that it will introduce DVD to almost 3,800 of its U.S. corporate stores by year’s end. Additionally, the company will also offer DVD in approximately 1,000 of its international stores.

According to Blockbuster Chairman and CEO John Antioco, the national introduction of DVD will put the product within easy reach of most American consumers since about 60 percent of U.S. households live within a three-mile drive of a Blockbuster store. “Now that DVD is about to go mainstream, we want it in all our stores so that this exciting product is easily available to the public. And, of course, as demand for this product increases, we believe that consumers will think of Blockbuster to satisfy their DVD needs just as they do for movies on VHS.”

Initially, Blockbuster stores will feature at least 200 titles for rental in the DVD format with additional titles being added each month. While this move is of course great news for the industry and more importantly for the format, it could have been made a long time ago to help the studios’ efforts to take DVD to the mass market instead of taking such an opportunistic stance.