Boy, this sure contrasts the way studios did it back in the VHS days - when you could ONLY rent most movies at first, and not buy them until down the line (usually by the time rental stores would dump extra copies in the pre-watched sale bin).
How does this benefit anyone? Does Warner really think that people are gonna buy their DVD/Blu-Rays if they can’t rent them ASAP? I can’t even remember the last time I BOUGHT a DVD for myself…it might have actually been the 4 disc version of Return of the King…
As it is now:
Joe Netflix is walking through the mall and stops by the Suncoast to check out the new releases. “Oooh,” says he. “Confessions of a Shopaholic is out on DVD! As soon as I get home I’m putting that in my queue!” Joe continues with his mall shopping without buying a DVD. The Suncoast employee sheds a single tear.
As it will be:
Joe Netflix is walking through the mall and stops by the Suncoast to check out the new releases. “Oooh,” says he. “It’s Complicated is out on DVD! …But it’s not on Netflix yet…oh, what the hell.” And he enters the Suncoast with his woodland friends, where the smiling employee stands ready to Serve The Customer!
Obviously not everyone enjoys the company of woodland friends. (You monsters.) But every extra sale the studios can squeeze out of that month of no Netflix is a win for them over the current situation.
People that use Netflix (myself included) don’t seem to me to be the type to buy DVDs, ever. The people that want to rent as opposed to buying, and don’t want to be delayed, will probably hit up the local video store, or just pirate the damn thing from someone else that rented and ripped it.
I don’t think Netflix made a very good decision here.
I still do some of both. Mostly renting, sure, but I buy movies that I believe are almost necessary for me to own. When I got a Blu-Ray player over the holidays, I immediately bought the new Star Trek, because dammit, I just can’t not own it.
This is going to cause me to take a serious look at Blockbuster again. If they’re not delaying access to the discs in a similar manner, I’ll probably switch to their service.
ETA: a quick look at their offering reveals they’re not charging a BS fee for access to Blu-Rays, like Netflix does.
The quality is adjusted so it can play without having to stop to buffer. So if you have very little throughput it will not be very high quality. At my house it streams from my Blue Ray player and appears about DVD quality to me. It might be measurably lower but from my personal perspective I’d say it’s about DVD quality. On the other hand, it’s not like if you had sufficient bandwidth it’d be high definition. But if you’re getting VHS quality video it’s because of your throughput limitation.
In my experience, old movies and old TV shows look a little rough, but newer movies look pretty good, even on our big screen TV. But not Blu-ray quality, no.
One Saturday night a few months ago we had a problem with the movie locking up repeatedly, but otherwise it has been very smooth.
It doesn’t really bother me because usually new movies take a long time for me to get from Netflix anyways. Either there’s a long wait for it or I don’t realize that the movie is out on DVD because Netflix certainly doesn’t offer up new movies as a suggestion until they’ve been out for at least 6 months.
Warner Bros. has a similar deal in place with Redbox- one that Redbox is suing over. The Warner Bros. films Redbox carries don’t feature the official box art and rather a poorly-made graphic in place of it on the displays and don’t carry the studio logo- the films seem to come out on Redbox the day of release though, so I assume Redbox is paying for them out of their own pocket, similar to what rental stores that aren’t Blockbuster have to do with Weinstein Company films. (Fox and Universal also have Redbox delays, and their films also have the same thing as Warner’s- poor makeshift graphics without the studio logo, but their films appear to be available on the proper day as well.)
I’ve got a 20MB connection to the intarweb. I use PlayOn to serve up the stream. It’s piped through 80MB-max ethernet over powerline hardware to a switch that sits behind my PS3. Not sure where the lag could possibly be, unless it’s in PlayOn.
I’ll have to try watching streamed stuff on my PC directly to see if PlayOn is perhaps squishing the content.
Doesn’t bother me at all. Like some others have said, if I’ve bypassed the theater and waited 6 months to see something, what’s 1 more month? Plus, whenever I add a new DVD to my queue it starts at the bottom of, oh, 200 or so. I may move things around from time to time based on my mood and current interest, but I’ve got movies in my queue that were at one point “new releases” that have been there for a couple of years. I’ll get to them when I get to them.
Most of my interest is not Hollywood new releases anyway (and those that I know I’ll like I just go ahead and purchase rather than rent). At least 75% of my queue is older and foreign films and esoteric stuff.
Well then I must not be a “typical” Netflixer. I’ve been a member for aobut 4 years but still have a largish DVD collection. I like collecting DVDs and have no interest in “streaming content.” (And I wouldn’t even know how to pirate or rip a DVD even if I were so inclined).
I started buying DVDs in 2004 and have close to 800. (More than half are imports from Asia). So if in a given week I watch 4 movies, it works out to 1 Netflix DVD and 3 off my shelf. And if a particular Netflixed movie turns out to be awesome, I’ll go out and buy it for my collection.
My backlog in Netflix is such that I rarely want watch new movies from them; the theaters near me are $5 M-Friday afternoon, but if I want to see it “soonish” - like in that 60 day time frame - I’ll go to the $1 theater near me that shows second run movies.
I’m all for a greater delay if it means more streaming content.
I signed up for Netflix a few months ago (after getting fed up with Hulu and Redbox and not finding enough to DVR) and the SO and I have been thrilled. He finds more streaming stuff than I do, but it’s a good deal for us. I have never been a music or movie purchaser, always a renter; he was until he went to college and obviously had to cut back on discretionary.
The studios seems delusional, as always, trying to control content. Hopefully overall this is a net win for Netflix.
I think this is probably OK and is simply a considered approach to serving an already segmented movie market. There are essentially 4 types of movie watchers:
Regular theater goers; people who prioritize seeing movies in the theaters and make it a regular activity and don’t rely on blockbuster releases as motivation.
New movie watchers; people who track release dates both in the theaters and on video and divide their dollars according to their lifestyles and budgets. These people tend to see the biggest releases in theaters but spend most of their money on rentals, especially families with kids and people with pimped out home theaters.
Movie catalogers and hobbyists; people who watch a ton of movies from all genres. They tend to watch new releases and old/independent films in equal measure and probably don’t focus too much on release dates and marketing since there’s always a dozen other films on their queue.
Casual movie goers; people who like movies and take them as they come. They’ll go to a theater, rent or buy movies ad hoc as they tickle their fancy. They have little strong preference and are likely influenced more by impulse and circumstance than anything else.
A new business model where each market segment is served and the priced are tiered accordingly is a good thing for everyone I think. By manufacturing a third release date with an according third price level it should help everyone involved. This new set up would create the following price tiers.
Theater price.
DVD and New Rental price.
Discount Rental and discount DVD price.
Studios will be able to charge one price for the theaters, nothing will change there. However it will allow them to create a firm middle tier were new movies are rented and sold at a premium to serve those folks that are eager to buy and view movies immediately. There are probably a lot of families and home theater people who are very eager to see new releases but for whatever reason cannot or will not go to the theaters. Previously those people were basically getting a free ride from Netflix and Redbox. Conversely the movie hobbyists were paying extra for low demand movies and indie films in order to subsidize those middle tier viewers. Buy building this system they’ll be able to capitalize on all three markets and theoretically pass savings along to the hobbyists and mass movie watchers by lowering the price that Netflix, Redbox and the cut rate DVD stores will have to pay.
As it stands a 30 year old Kurosawa movie costs the same as a new Michael Bay movie right now. That’s kinda dumb.
ETA: Incidentally, the creation of this third tier might help speed movies onto DVD. So in the long run you might not end up waiting that much longer for it to come to Netflix. If studios can get a higher return on rolling out new DVDs they might be more motivated to get them into the market sooner, meaning the discount tier will kick in that much faster.