Monday, January 14, 2008

NetFlix Makes Themselves More Attractive

NetFlix has announced that they have changed their streaming to unlimited for almost every single plan. I have not switched from BlockBuster Online to Netflix yet, but this makes it even more tempting. Unfortunately, the streaming is only for those with a Windows computer. While, according to the article, they only have 6,000 titles online, there is always Redbox at $1 per night for any movie that I "have to see right away" that isn't online.

On a recent visit to BlockBuster, I asked one of the employees if they were losing online customers. He said that between the price change and numerous other problems (that I hadn't heard of), they are. Seems to me that BlockBuster hurt itself more by operating at a loss than it would have by working with a viable business model.

Netflix announced this to compete against a planned Apple announcement of being able to rent downloaded movies for $3.99.

4 comments:

Sean said...

We switched back to Netflix on Saturday because blockbuster was starting to irritate us - slow to get new movies to us and limited selection.

It works out good for us, since our DVR is a windows pc plugged into our television, so we can already watch the streaming content on our TV. This will make it that much more unlikely that I ever have to watch crappy tv, because there's nothing on ever again. woohoo!

quizwedge said...

Sean, I've heard a rumor that you can set up multiple queues in Netflix (e.g. we'd probably set up one queue for tv shows and one for movies and say send two tv shows and one movie at a time)... can you confirm if this is possible?

Sean said...

wedge, you can set up multiple queues. i've not tried it, but i know that you can do it.

quizwedge said...

cool! Pretty sure I'll be switching to Netflix soon.