Will Blockbuster’s new set-top box be selling its stock in the bargain bin?

Everyone remembers The Dollar Store. You could buy anything you want as long as it was under a dollar. That now includes Blockbuster’s stock, which has fallen off a cliff this morning, down over 23 percent to near 75 cents a share.

Let me repeat: 75 cents a share. This is the company that was once the absolute power in home movie rentals. Now its stock is cheaper than any movie you can rent in the store. Several times cheaper in fact. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a Blockbuster (which says something in and of itself), but I last recall that older films were around $3 to rent while new releases were something ridiculous like $5.

Six shares of Blockbuster stock or a couple nights with The Bucket List — it’s a really tough call on which one I want less right now.

Scanning the financial news, it’s not entirely apparently why Blockbuster’s stock is crashing so badly today. The broader markets are down, but only around 3 percent. Last week the company posted a third quarter loss, but it was a narrower loss than a year ago.

But it’s pretty apparent that Blockbuster’s assurance that it would have a set-top box option for its movies transferred over the Internet in time for the holidays is not reassuring shareholders. That statement was curious because it goes against chief executive Jim Keyes’ comments made just in August that there was no real urgency to create a set-top box.

Blockbuster’s market cap now stands at a paltry $153 million. Maybe Apple should use a sliver of its $24 billion plus cash on hand to buy up the company and turn its stores into Apple retail stores. DVDs are recyclable right?

At least Blockbuster dropped the ridiculous bid for Circuit City that it made earlier this year. That company is now in bankruptcy.