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Netflix Will Delay Renting New WB Releases
DesertBlade tips the news that Netflix will delay renting new releases from Warner Brothers for 28 days, and adds "Luckily I am so far behind in my movie watching that I will probably never catch up anyway." "It's part of a strategy by several studios to create staggered releases of DVDs so that the most profitable transactions are available first and cheaper rental options take effect further down the road. The move could be copied by other studios, forcing consumers to wait nearly a month if they want to rent popular movies from Netflix. ... The studio is hoping that the four-week window will push consumers interested in watching movies at home to buy the DVDs or pay a premium to rent them from stores like Blockbuster or from Internet and cable video-on-demand services. Warner Bros. already imposes a 28-day window on $1-a-night kiosk firm Redbox."
Artifically deny your customer the ability to buy your product. They'll love you for it!
Feh.
Living With a Nerd
If I really want the movie on dvd I'm gonna buy it anyway. If I was just gonna rent it when it comes out on dvd what makes you think I'll want to buy it instead of waiting 28 extra days? Or at worse one could always pirate it since I'm sure there will be dvd rips on the net. Anyway, this isn't all bad... more streaming stuff :)
How is it a hassle? It IS a delay, but as Netflix is the only place I use to check new releases, it's one I admittedly won't notice. In return, we'll get way more instant-watch movies available, which I don't have to wait for and can watch on my laptop or two of the three consoles in the house.
It's hardly an anti-customer strategy when they make the same choice I'd have asked them to, given the option. The only thing currently stopping Instant-Watch from being really awesome is its subpar selection. And really, if I cared about seeing the movies from Netflix soon after they came out, I'd have seen them in theaters.
It might be risky, but I think his assessment of the average Netflix customer is fairly accurate. At least is describes me, a Netflix customer, accurately. Typically, when you hear of a movie coming out that you want to see, you add it to the queue. It's not out yet, but once it is sitting at the top of the queue ready once it becomes available. Except that movie is in high demand, so it says "Long wait" next to it. The second movie in the queue comes instead. But you don't really care, because you still want to see that movie. It's not like I'm a seven year old that has to see THAT one NOW! It will come when it's ready. In the mean time, I have a long list of movies that I have already said I want to see that will ship in its place until it is my turn. At a certain point, you stop paying attention to what's next, and you just accept what arrives in the mail. Any movie that I really really want to see, I would have already seen in the theaters. Avatar was a good example. Wanted to see badly and also appreciated the big screen experience.
The thing that bothers me a little is how Netflix is being prioritized by the studios due to the fact that they are cheap. The article mentions the same with the RedBoxes. Both are far cheaper for the consumer than in-store rentals or on-demand from Cable/Satelite and they get the worst priority. It's as if the studios resent those customers for finding a great bargain and want to take out their anger on them. But again, if seeing that movie right away is that important, you can pay the premium to do so.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That's movie-studio thinking. And yeah, on the face of it, it does make sense - break the law, commit a morally wrong act for the sake of 28 days?
But that forgets what movies have become. Torrents being free is only half of it - the other half is service. Piracy is fiercely competitive on service: they are quire remarkable in getting whatever you want, however you want, as quickly as they possibly can. The studios have taken some steps towards competing: cinema releases are increasingly worldwide and DVD releases have a shorter delay. But they're not really close - it's like the big airlines trying to do the low-cost airline thing, they just don't have the mentality for it.
It's why some people pirate despite having their cinema card, a Netflix sub and shelves of store-bought movies. It's not that they aren't prepared to pay, it's just piracy is the better service. Sure, plenty of pirates are doing it just because it's free, but there's a big chunk of people with a range of different reasons. Each step the studios take towards competing with piracy is a chunk of people for whom paying becomes their better choice. Each step away from competing with piracy, like delaying Netflix for 28 days, a bunch of people turn on the torrents. Many will actually be annoyed about not being able to get what they want by paying for it.
I'm not trying to defend pirates, I've never illegally downloaded a movie in my life (though I'll not pretend to having never watched any). But there's what's right and there's what is. Quite basic market forces.
Bingo. I wanted to watch Inglorious Bastards. So, I head off to Netflix and it's not on streaming and the DVD is on wait. Lets ignore for a moment that we live in time where we shouldn't need physical media AT ALL in order to rent something (or even buy for that matter). Next I go to the xbox movie section and I see IB. I think good, I can rent it here. Nope, it's only for purchase and it's only SD. I'm trying my hardest to give someone money to rent their content and they won't let me! At some point more and more people are going to say f' it and just go straight to TPB. The hassle of finding it to rent just isn't worth it when I can find and download it in minutes.
BTW, I think the music companies have started to learn this lesson, even if they were pulled along kicking and screaming. Look at Amazon and ITMS now. No DRM, Amazon has a great changing selection of $5 albums, and both make it easy to find whatever you are looking for and purchase for a fairly reasonable price. Why can't movies follow suit?
I'm getting closer..... Just rented Pineapple Express from Netflix. Pop it in the player and wonder of wonders, ten minutes of stupid shit Sony adverts. No way to get around them.
Pop it out of the player, pop it into the Mac, copy and rip the files to the hard drive, pick out the movie and copy it to a fresh DVD. Nice clean movie. Still a bit of a pain and getting closer to just downloading it from a torrent site.
Keep going Sony. Nice work. Alienate even more people. You do this enough and folks that shy away from torrent sites because of legal concerns or moral concerns will find that paying you less and less gets a better product. Amazing.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!