Slashdot Mirror
Netflix to Offer Movie Downloads
kev0153 writes "Over at CNN Money they are reporting on a story about Netflix offering a video on demand over the web service in '05. They are also eyeing the multibillion-dollar video game market. "We're playing it a little defensively, because if we lose the digital download market, you'll soon be hearing about the rise and fall of Netflix," said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings."
Someone will still be upset about the DRM and decide to crack it. Then again movies are harder to distribute then mp3s. At least high quality ones.
Download speeds for files as large as full games and video are still too slow. Video download services are going to be a niche market until that can be improved. I hope netflix isn't staking their near term future on this.
Netflix doesn't rent porn.
I read an article about 6 months ago where the Netflix guys said they weren't interested in the video game market. I'm glad they've wised up.
In the meantime, Gamefly is an excellent video game rental service. The pricing and service are almost identical to Netflix.
It's an online DVD rental system -- you pick out DVDs to rent, they mail them to you. You can keep them as long as you want, no late fees -- but you can only have three checked out at a time. $20/month, they pay for shipping both ways (USPS first class). Huge selection, lots of hard to find movies, in ~20 warehouses around the U.S.
The article doesn't say that they are going to offer downloadable video games. It just says that they may enter the market for renting them.
Greencine already does this for select films. They do WMP streaming for Video On Demand (FAQ here). I can't say that I've tried it though, since I prefer watching movies on my TV than on my computer.
To be honest, I can't see movies being so much quicker to license these rights to Netflix, even if it is larger than Greencine.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just a bit of information about Netflix, but the whole point of it is that there are no rental times. Currently, one monthly fee (about $20 for three movies at a time) lets you hang on to a set number of DVDs for as long as you want. You get an online queue, and each disc you send back prompts the next one to be sent to you. No late fees, a vast collection (all of Star Trek, M*A*S*H, etc.), I haven't been to a Blockbuster etc. for a very long time.
But if I could make a backup copy...
Rumor has it [cough] that PS2 mod chips work very, very well. And from what I've heard [ahem], you can get a good chip + installation + shipping for about $100. Of course, this is just heresay...
I can think of three companies that are offering, or have offered, major movies-on-demand. My university (Duke) had a distribution deal, no longer in effect, with a company called Cflix last year.
There was also a company that was forced out of business by the MPAA so they could push their own services. I forget its name.
Then there's Movielink, also being heavily promoted on college campuses right now. I believe it was started by one of the major companies.
Of course, I can remember Yahoo! Movies trying to do VOD four years ago, but they couldn't license anything big.
So, in conclusion, this is nothing new, except maybe this time the advertising will get to the people who care (geeks). Most people don't want to watch a movie on their computer and can't figure out TV-out video cards.
What about the boulder that you are under?
Try Greencine. They actualy do have "lots of hard to find movies" (unlike Netflix). They also have a user forum and far more personalized service. Pricing is about the same. Oh yeah, and they already have a small amount of VOD movies.
I use phrases like "darn good" and "rootin' tootin'", but only when there's a darn good, rootin tootin' reason!
greencine > netflix
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
It may actually dramatically increase DVD rentals for a while as people start just ripping DVD's and sending them back/returning them. With a service like Netflix and a careful schedule, you could get movies in the mail, rip them and return them the next day, burn the ripped copies during the mail delay and start the cycle over, getting movies for $1 + your monthly fee. Even with Blockbuster pricing, you could rent a DVD for $4, rip and burn it to an $0.80 DVD-R and have a copy for under $5.
Where this process breaks down is if new DVD's themselves drop below that $5 mark. At that point, it's not worth the effort to make a copy.
I actually feel that way about music and don't download anything off of the p2p services, not necessarily because of any legal or moral issue (though they do exist), but because I can buy used CD's cheap enough that it's not worth the effort. I mean, if I can buy a disc for $4-6 and get the entire album, there's no way I'm going to find all of the songs on the album, consistently ripped and encoded on any of the available services in any reasonable amount of time that compares.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things