If this were true, why wouldn’t they have announced it in the email the other day? All that email did was piss off customers and it left peole scratching their heads as to what the hell Netflix is doing. Netflix is ruining what was a “best of both worlds” product in order to focus on what to many is currently the inferior part.
The only failure in this thread has been yours. Your facts have been wrong, you’ve cited a joke as evidence that Netflix intentionally damages DVDs, only to return with a different cite that also doesn’t back up your point. Did you even read it? No, you didn’t, I know you didn’t because by far most of the people on there are saying things are fine for them or at least no different than before. You say they are selling to Amazon with absolutely nothing to back that up. Before you start accusing other people of FAIL, like some meme repeating parrot, you should probably ensure that everything you’re typing isn’t complete bullshit.
Can’t speak to video one way or another, but yes, for books you can go to a virtual library and “check out” an e-book. I too prefer physical possession of my books, and still do not think that e-books are as easy on the eyes as physical ones, but I wouldn’t have a problem with virtual libraries since you’re never going to physically keep the book in the first place.
You don’t believe…you Netflix / Qwikster shill you! 
I’ve been with Netflix since the 20th century. Sure, I’m no happy with how things have gone down these past few months (they finally killed my grandfathered deal of 4 discs at a time for what everyone else was paying for 3). The loss of Sony movies, and now of Starz completely, might kill their hopes of becoming a streaming company. And the communication about this has been horrendous. Reed Hastings (see ‘between rock and hard place’) has to say something to his customers without pissing off his suppliers.
Let think of some of the things to which Netflix has had to adjust:
[ol]
[li]28-day wait on new releases: Do you think Netflix wants this? Do you think Netflix has to do this? The only reason they agreed is for access to streaming content, and not even the good stuff. They also get the compromised rental discs, with limited or no special features and nearly unskipable commercials from this deal…I hope they are cheaper. No proof, but I bet any third party that sold to Netflix in volume would get the studios withholding new releases (and those that don’t get to brag like Blockbuster does).[/li][li]Loss of Sony movies on Starz: Rather than deal, Sony says “no more”. Theoretically, they are losing money on streaming because everyone would then buy the DVD. :rolleyes:[/li][li]Loss of Starz: Starz just left ~$300,000,000 on the table. Does anyone think Starz can take its content and make that money off if it in some other capacity? If you do, what color is the sky in your world?[/li][li]Separating DVD and streaming business: Despite one analyst saying they might sell to Amazon (possible, but IMNSHO not likely), I think that the studios wanted to charge Netflix per subscriber, not per stream (as posited by another analyst). This means that Netflix would have to pay for everyone who doesn’t stream at all. So they spin off the business, and have to really separate it (separate queues, separate sites, separate charges, etc.) in order to convince the studios that it isn’t a sham split.[/li][/ol]
Netflix came up with a novel service where none existed, and it weathered Blockbuster and WalMart trying to horn in on its territory. They got people to love their product (DVD rental), added a service which was great though limited (streaming), and got the studios jealous because they were only making pennies on Netflix’ dollar. The studios have conspired to harm Netflix, who has little leverage, but people don’t deal with Warner Bros, 20th Century, Sony, Paramount, etc. They give their money to Netflix, and it’s easier to badmouth Netflix than figure out what is really going on (which is also in the studios interest towards their wanting Netflix gutted).
High speed internet is nearing ubiquity.
College students without some form of internet access? That seems a bit unlikely to me given that colleges require a lot more internet research than they used to. Dorms in most reasonable colleges have internet acess, metered and controlled as it may be. Why are we focusing on this anyway?
Physical media in general will be gone soon. Digital delivery will get more robust. They have to strike equilibrium first, though. There’s a lot of corporate BS that has to be cut through before the people who make movies acknowledge that physical disk sales are a thing of the past and find a balance where they can distribute digitally and still feel like they’re cornholing us.
Know how your DVD’s are worth squat when you try to trade them in or sell them? Put that on a massive scale and you have the albatross that’s currently looming over Netflix. If they separate it now and split it off to a limb that can atrophy without killing the whole company when things finally do go down hill, more power to them.
High speed internet is nearing ubiquity for those who have internet access. It’s a slight difference that tech companies always seem to ignore.
Physical media isn’t going anywhere. Movie producers/Netflix like to tout falling DVD sales as proof that streaming is gaining steam. But they ignore that DVD’s growth was spurred on by people purchasing catalog/TV titles on DVD that weren’t available in an affordable way on VHS.
With the switch to Blu-ray, they expected the same re-adoption rate, but it didn’t happen. So now, “physical media is dying.”
I didn’t say it was dead yet, but it is dying. The future we are talking about is still years to fruition, but it is on its way. The big media companies Want to keep the DVD and physical media so they can sell people extra whirlygigs and geegaws every few years with simple repackaging. If you want the extreme example, look at George Lucas. The only thing he does is mutilate his own movies every few years and use the new formats as a selling point.
Digital will be more flexible as far as remastering and formatting goes. If anything, adaptation to new display technologies will be easier in terms of codecs and redistribution will be simplified. The problem is that it will also be easier to get the DVD/Blu-Ray/Whatever extras as a standalone package.
I’m entirely sick of having to get all new hardware simply because my old media wore out. The common PC will always be able to play movies. Physical media does nothing but complicate the process and bind you to only what they market with them.
For now, they prefer to charge you more because you have something in your hands. They will eventually realize that cutting distribution costs and making the price more tempting to a wider range of viewers will be the way to go.
ETA: I do believe that phyisical media will remain, but will eventually be nothing but a backup media, where it belongs.
Not in rural areas. I’ll bet if you drew a map of the US with curb access to cable or DSL broadband, it would cover less than half of the land area. And wireless can fill in some gaps, but not all, and at a much higher cost. Satellite, higher cost yet and inappropriate for some tasks.
Actually, now that I think of it, we are kind of threadjacking here. If anyone wants to discuss this further, perhaps create a different thread.
Have they offered special features on the streams yet? Because, before that happens, I don’t believe physical disks can die. Also, Blu-Ray quality is still superior to streaming. Sure, it’s all 1080p, but the compression rates are different.
And, no, no business is that stupid. Killing off that large a customer base by pissing them off, rather than by selling and getting some money out of it?
Even worse is that we are losing special features on new releases with special ‘rental’ discs (that actually say ‘rental’ on them).
I’m a teacher. I have zero connection to Netflix. What makes you think I do?
I was continuing the thread’s conspiracy theory theme.
That was my assumption. DVD by mail went from $2 a month to $8 a month, which I couldn’t justify. I usually sit on a disk for a week or more before I watch it, and only go through 3 a month. I use streaming a lot more than the DVD by mail servic and there are various venues where I can rent DVDs for $1 each (redbox, blockbuster, the library, etc). There are no video stores where I live anymore though. And netflix DVD had a great selection. But I’m not going to pay a 400% markup, which I guess was their goal. Get people to abandon the DVD by mail so they can expand their streaming. But streaming doesn’t have a lot of first rate movies, new releases or a wide selection of classics in my experience. They have 10k or so movies that are good, but they can’t expect the streaming alone to provide everything. My new releases will now come from redbox and I will have to give up looking for more esoteric or classic movies. Recently I felt the urge to watch the original shining by Kubrick. It is not on streaming. It happens all the time, I get an urge to watch a movie and it is not on streaming. I used to be able to get it via DVD but not now.
FWIW it cost about $0.06 in bandwidth to deliver one full length SD movie, $0.09 for an HD movie. And those were 2009 figures, I’m not sure how applicable they are today. I have no idea how much netflix pays in royalties for the movies themselves.
Blockbuster movie pass,when it is released next month, may be worth looking into. Movies online and by mail for $10/month.
Amazon prime doesn’t offer DVDs, but they have streaming (their selection isn’t good though). And they have free 2 day shipping plus they are looking into loaning e-books on kindle. That might be a good deal if they get that straightened out and expand their selection.
Ah, very well done, then. 
You’re right that it’s the studios that don’t want their stuff made available on streaming. Why would that change now? Maybe in 10-15 years most stuff will be available on streaming, but for the immediate future it seems unlikely there will be any increase from the 10-20% of Netflix’s inventory that’s currently available for streaming.