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Netflix May Already Be Killing Blockbuster?
Mattintosh writes "A blogger at C|Net takes a moment to consider the impact Netflix has had on Blockbuster. Some notable highlights include heavy losses ($35 million), job cuts ($45 million worth), and store closings: 'Much like the print media and retail stores refusing to change, Blockbuster has been a victim on an online company finding new and inventive ways of bringing a product to a customer. And due to its size and outdated corporate culture, there really is no salvation for Blockbuster at this point. Try as it might, the future of Blockbuster is bleak, at best. Sure, the company still enjoys revenue that climb into the billions of dollars, but with an ever-increasing net loss and a public refusal to focus on Total Access--the area where Netflix continues to dominate--what is the impetus for us to jump on the Blockbuster bandwagon?'"
Meanwhile, the only thing saving Netflix's ass is the anticompetitive nature of the telecom industry in the US, which causes us to have broadband slow enough to make downloading DVD-quality movies too painful... time marches on.
Blockbuster lost me (and several of my friends' accounts) to netflix when they recently did away with their in store exchanges unless you opted to pay like 30% more for the exact same service. I have to imagine that a lot of people did the same.
It's a subscription service and a brick and mortar blockbuster isn't.
It would be nice if someone offered a service where I could just request a movie, pay my couple of bucks or whatever and have it mailed. If I didn't want anything that month then I wouldn't have to pay.
Gone!
Blockbuster is dead!
We at slashdot are scientists, specialists and kernel hackers. Your FUD will be found out.
I'm a netflix cusomter - 4 CD's in three queues (child, bride, me). As a perk, they also let you have an hour/usd of streaming content each month. For me, that works out to ~24 hours a month. Great, right? Well, it only works in the States, so any gigs in Canada are right out.
The chink in the armor is the selection. While they have a massive collection of DVDs, the streaming selection is really poor. I would not pay extra for it as it stands. At home, It looks about the same as a DVD on a high bandwidth connection - here for example, is a movie getting piped to a TV via my laptop. Bandwidth in hotels works better than I expected, and it is good enough for watching on a computer. I hear Blockbuster might have better selection... they should embrace the streaming!
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Blockbuster's online offering is far superior to Netflix's.
Netflix constantly sent me random movies from my queue instead of using anything remotely resembling the order I'd prioritized them in. IIRC, they were everntually sued for that.
Blockbuster only seems to have tried that twice with me and a single email to their customer care address resolved that and got me an apology along with it.
I can also drop my total access movies off at the local LackLuster and trade them for free in-store rentals. And they ship my next online rentals the next day.
Not affiliated, just a happy customer.
Their website sucks (while Netflix's is fantastic), but they still have a larger catalog. I've never had any throttling problems at all. I hope they don't go under. I have something like 600 movies in my queue and no way in hell to pull it out without some nasty screen scraping...
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
For a minute there I was going to mod -1 overrated but I thought I'd reply instead. Apparently some mods were swayed by your flashing for the cameras and offering up a sound bite.
But as I see it, even if the MPAA *did* blame it on piracy, the article is about Netflix *winning*, so right there is a built in counter-argument. That is to say, "If it's piracy, MPAA, then shouldn't Netflix be eating shit too??"
However, there is the argument that the MPAA is a buncha lying fucks, so in a way you have a point. Don't put anything beyond them, even if there is a possibly logical argument to the contrary.
No sig for you!!
Who could have seen that coming. Netflix is even more convenient (for me) than downloading movies illegally, there's just no way a dinosaur like Blockbuster could keep up. By not actually having a physical location, Netflix can have a MUCH wider selection of titles too, and when your only limit is how many movies you can have out at one time you can watch a lot more content and take chances on things you might not have looked at otherwise. This is why I have no sympathy for the music industry when they say they can't compete with illegal downloads. Netflix does it (and does very well), by offering a better service at a reasonable price.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
First time in my life a subscription service has gotten cheaper.
You're dead one with the comment about selection. That's why, in the end, the in-store exchange didn't matter to us. It took a surprisingly short time to rent every movie they had there that looked interesting. They hardly ever actually had anything in there that we specifically wanted to watch. It shouldn't surprise me too much, after all they're named "blockbuster". Indi, foreign, low budget, old, obscure, documentaries, just plain weird shit, etc etc aren't what springs to mind when that title comes up. Still pretty disappointing though.
Everything will be taken away from you.
What rock have editors/bloggers been living under? This may have been news say...4 years ago. Blockbuster launched a service like Netflix in 2004-ish (that's 3 years ago) and since then, well since then who cares, because pretty much everyone I know switched over to, um, digital downloads.
Seriously, a Netflix PR blog-vert in 2007?
Actually, the netflix settup uses fewer copies of movies, because each individual shipping location covers a larger population than a given brick and mortar blockbuster. Basically, the statistics of it say they need fewer padding copies to cover the (unexpected) surges in demand. This means that even though the same total amount of renting happens, the movie studios see fewer dollars as a result.
I know my statement appeared as a general hatred of the MPAA, without much forethought, but they do lose money with netflix compared to brick and mortar.
This whole argument depends on netflix and blockbuster both having sensible purchasing policies with demand analysis. I don't know that.
My last visit to Blockbuster was about five years ago when I returned a DVD a week late and they charged me significantly more than if I had simply rented the video for that period.
I would think that video rentals would help lead to piracy (renting then ripping - makes it more anonymous as well.)
I rent my videos from Redbox.com. I don't rent enough movies to really justify spending on a Netflix subscription and the idea of depending $4.50 on a DVD rental is absolutely preposterous. For $1 + tax I get to watch a DVD--a just price for someone who watches movies as infrequently as I do.
...and no, it doesn't run Linux...but it could.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I've had Blockbuster Total Access since right before they started the in-store exchanges. Which I love, by the way - I get to watch the movies I can't get in store, and when I want to rent a movie last-minute, all I have to do is take the envelope into the store and get any rental for free. They even give out a coupon every month for a free in-store rental - or a free game rental, which is what I always use it on. But anyway... When Blockbuster started limiting the number of in-store rentals, it was for new customers only. I got a nice letter from them saying hey, we are upping our prices, and putting a limit on in-store rentals, but since you already had an account with us, your price doesn't go up and you get to keep your unlimited rentals. So anyway, thats why I like Blockbuster over Netflix, and why the parent poster should have kept his/her account, since it wasn't affected by the new policy.
If they had a system where the top items in my queue were in the store when I returned a DVD, it seems that would beat the service I get from Netflix. They don't need to always have MovieC in inventory, but if it is near the top of my queue, they can arrange to have it in stock, then after I rent and return it, they can send it off to wherever else it might be wanted. All the stores in a region could share the less popular movies. And I rent a lot of TV series. You don't even need to look at my queue to know what I will want next since I watch each season in order, and if I like the show, I watch the seasons in order, too. A system like that would easily beat Netflix since the transit time would be shorter.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Back in Pullman, WA, I found blockbuster online really helpful. Everything about it was great, and the fact that NetFlix told me Star Trek V (for RiffTrax) was "soon available" and then a week passed without ever sending it didn't help NetFlix's case either. Then I moved to a larger city where all of the blockbusters were franchise within a 100 miles. Their "two night rental" was actually a "next day rental", they had late fees, they stopped accepting blockbuster online's coupons for free game rentals (7.50 to rent a game...), when I did have a free rental coupon, they wouldn't allow me to write down the code and simply present that to them- I had to print it out as well, and finally their selection was worse. When I asked why they were so crappy, they answered "Sorry, you probably were renting from a corporate blockbuster- and all the ones around here are franchise". I quickly canceled my blockbuster online subscription, mostly because I could no longer get a free game rental and because Red Box ($1/night) has come around and proven to both be superior to Blockbuster and Netflix when your primary interest is new releases.
Sadly, within two weeks of showing up, Red Box put the local Movie Gallery out of business, which had been my blockbuster replacement for games. Now I'm not sure where to rent games anymore.
Where do you think the "pirates" get their movies? Netflix makes it cost efficient. Blockbuster does not.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
If the studios/distributors would just get ((*^&^ing real on the cost of plastic disks, they could save blockbuster, make more money, slow down piracy. Switch from elaborately packaged boxed discs,and "renting", go to a burn on demand kiosk mode for cheap. For the same loot, customer gets "rent" and "bring back" or "take home and keep". Which would most people choose, either going to the store or doing it through the mail? Blockbuster has the locations already, they could SELL burnt on demand disks slipped into cheap paper sleeves with the title for what they charge for renting now. Popular disks-latest releases and strong demand items- they could have a lot already made up sitting on the shelves. Throw in a few duplicators in the back room or the back of the store, a few kiosks for ordering and browsing for what isn't displayed on the shelves. They could up their inventory space tremendously by going to digital tech and storing ten times the amount of movies they have now and use the on demand service. They might make less per "unit", but selling a lot more "units" they would make more net profit.
Revenue is not profit, and if your market is a brick and mortar store, there is a limit to how much you can cut costs - you have to stock the store, pay employees, etc etc. Closing stores means losing that market, but I suppose they could simply close all stores operating at a loss... I wonder how many stores they would have left.
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I called their bluff and said fine take me to court over $20.
They didn't get that money, and they won't ever be seeing anymore from me. the SMART business move would be to send me a buy one get one free voucher, stating as a sign of good will we are wiping your late fee's and would love to have your business back. THAT would have probably seen me giving them repeat business. Now they get nothing.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Here is an example timeline of the "No late fees" feature:
* You rent a movie January 1.
* It is due January 8th.
* If you don't return it by January 15th, they assume you are keeping it forever. You get charged the price of the movie.
* If you return it before February 15th, the price of the movie is refunded and you are charged a $1.95 restocking fee.
They make this completely clear when their automated system calls you about your movie being overdue.
I still don't think this lives up to "no late fees," but as they used to charge $4/night for late fees, it could be a lot worse.
(PS. Where is the textile markup option for Slashdot?)
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definitely live in a different area than me. Kiosk at my safeway has under 30 movies, and most are around $3-4. pre netflix I watched 3-4 a month, and had watched every movie I was interested in (that was available) a few years back.
Netflix has a great site, I have rented 300 movies in the last 2 years, and I have 50 movies in my queue. The site has no problem finding new (to me) movies. No more wondering rental stores, or hanging out at a kiosk daily. monthly I visit netflix.com, and imdb.com in seperate tabs, 1 hour max to top off a new list of movies for us. To do anything equivalent at a remote site would require printing the results of the same browsing, and printing the queue, and then hunting for which of them are their.
About a year ago we decided to give the online rental thing a try. I signed us up for Blockbuster and Netflix because they both offered a free month to try the service. Twice the movies and I knew I'd be cancelling one, so that was nice.
Anyway, Blockbuster had the edge in the "return to the local store" policy, but of the dozen or so movies we put in our queue, about half were unavailable through Blockbuster. All were available through Netflix. So I decided we would, for the time being, stick with Netflix.
When I cancelled the Blockbuster account, they requested that I explain why I was cancelling. That's fine with me, because if Blockbuster improved their availability, I figured I could switch over. I spent some time putting together a good explanation of why I chose not to do Blockbuster and what they could do to get me to give them another chance. I figured if anyone read those things, they'd appreciate some good feedback.
Well, I hit sumbit, and got a lovely error message: "Please limit your comments to 255 characters."
That did it. I had spent time trying to help Blockbuster understand what they could do to get me as a customer, and I run into a (heretofore unmentioned) limit in how much text I could send. The limit itself was stupid enough (really? 255 bytes is all you're going to spare?) but after I wasted my time writing something for their benefit I decided they could rot in hell.
Netflix has been just fine for me and they've lowered the price a couple times. I wouldn't have gone to Blockbuster regardless, but the price cut is nice anyhow.
Every time I go into Blockbuster, all I see are a couple hundred copies of the latest straight-to-video abortion. No wonder they're going bankrupt.
Whoever is the first to have a foreign film section which is
a. In native language
b. As complete as Hollywood section
will get my dollars. There is cinema everywhere - Korea, China, Brazil,
Russia - everywhere; but try finding these movies at Netflix. There will
be a few but for instance some of my favorite 1970's French movies are
not there. Many good movies are indies or equivalent - short run, never
been in wide release type. Again, hard to find. Some movies were dubbed
into other languages. Are these dubbed versions avaliable along with originals?
No.
I speak Russian. Can I find Eisenstein movies on netflix? In Russian?
These guys do not want my dollars so they don't get them.
Actually for a pirate, Blockbuster is the better deal (not that I have looked into this. I'm legit. Promise.)
For 17.99 a month you get 3 by mail at once, unlimited by mail per month, PLUS you can take them into the store and trade each in for store flicks, and they STILL mail you your next 3.
A pirate could kick ass on volume with Blockbuster. Not that I would ever look at it that way. I'm legit. Promise.
No sig for you!!
1st.) The highest level tier for both services is basically the same price, However
2nd.) The blockbuster 500 yards from my apartment, will let me exchange my mail order movies for free ones
3rd.) as a result the best value for my dollar come from blockbuster.
Assuming I can get 3 new movies every 4 days via mail from either service I get 21 (rounding down) movies a month. However, with blockbuster, I get 21 more from the store. 42 movies block buster (approx $0.595 per movie), 21 movies netflix ($1.19/movie).
It's obvious which service will quickly fill up your disk drive while giving you an excellent value.
Looks like it is time to replace your Personality Module. You are a bit to clingy, guess I better replace your fuser to
About a year ago, I stumbled into a forum where film makers were talking about current distribution trends. Apparently, Netflix is considered a major distribution venue, and is quite profitable for films that normally wouldn't see a wide distribution. Some independant filmmakers see Netflix as a godsend.
There was some discussion on some of Netflix's constraints; Netflix will only carry DVDs that are at least 1 hour in length. This causes some documentary producers to stick 10-15 minutes of filler into a special edit for Netflix.
No, I will not work for your startup
I like to think there are enough people out there like myself who detest steam. Why do I need to be connected to the internet to play a single player game? Why am I going to pay full price to dl a game? If I'm paying full price I want a disc, manual(preferably color) and some fancy box art.
:)
Do we need Gamestop? Nah. But I'm not paying for digital only distribution. Give me my pretty box and disc please
"There is no real right or wrong, just what the majority accepts at the time."
Their hidebound corporate culture prevents the use of common sense. Several years ago, my wife rented a movie from Blockbuster that she promptly lost. Three months later, she found it again, and we returned it. By that time, our fees had run up to nearly $100. Blockbuster wouldn't allow us to rent again until we paid the fee. So we just switched to a local movie rental store. Two or three years later, I found myself again inside Blockbuster, but again, I couldn't rent a movie without paying the years-old fee. No amount of discussion or logic would sway the manager - that we had made a mistake, we had returned the movie, we had been using a competitor's services ever since, that they could decide to have our future business or send us back to the competitor forevermore, but either way, we weren't going to pay the $100 fee. The manager said that he couldn't/wouldn't dismiss the fee and that we couldn't rent from Blockbuster without paying for it, etc. At that time, Netflix was just gathering momentum. But on that day, I knew that Blockbuster was destined for a death spiral. They could have had our continued business if they had just been willing to let logic prevail and set aside a hidebound corporate policy, but they preferred not to. Even a few yeas later, when they announced their "no late fees" policy, they wouldn't make it retroactive. I wonder how many other stupid policy decisions turned away customers that they so dearly need now.
Media companies charge more for rental copies - usually over $100. So $135 for replacement cost was very likely accurate (although perhaps they should have prorated it since they have to replace worn copies). I don't know if rental copies are specially marked. If not, you could have bought a personal copy and offered it as the replacement.