Posted on 09/19/2011 12:17:18 AM PDT by Borough Park
Netflix is a company in crisis. Their stock price is plunging and subscribers are abandoning them en masse, in protest of a 60 percent price increase levied against anyone who wants to retain both streaming and mail service.
So Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has come up with a fix that will likely please no one: He's split the two services into two, distinct companies, each with its own name.
Listen closely: From now on, that Criterion Edition Seven Samurai gathering dust on your coffee table for the past three months will need to be sent back to Qwikster, not Netflix. Qwikster is in charge of all your DVD-by-mail needs. Netflix will continue to be your trusted name in streaming of hundreds of TV shows and terrible movies you didn't know existed, plus the occasional decent studio release.
And why Qwikster? From Hastings' letter to subscribers, entitled, "An Explanation and Some Reflections."
We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name "Netflix" for streaming.
(Excerpt) Read more at gawker.com ...
I was thinking the same thing.
It appears that they’ve gone back to the name Amway though...
It makes perfect sense if one doesn't live in a place that has viable broadband internet.
If Reed came to the customers and explained the screws that the studio is putting to Netflix, his customer base would have shifted “the hate” to those who make the movies.I would have started there. A letter to subscribers explaining the studios demands would help ease in any changes. That info has been out there for several years, but most people don't pay attention. Would every customer go along? Nope, but the might be less backlash. Netflix is definitely fumbling the ball, repeatedly, during a critical part of the game.
Exactly!
Have you seen this?
Netflix in the UK, only it’s owned by Amazon. I’d bet my boots that Amazon will let this whole Netflix thing cook for a while than BOOM, drop LoveFilm on them.
We have extremely high-speed internet at home, but I still prefer the quality of the video/audio from Blu-ray discs. Sometimes there’s some stutter with streaming video, and the 5.1 surround sound from a Blu-ray is superior to what I get streaming Netflix.
My wife and I prefer to have both Blu-ray *and* streaming options. Blu-ray is not a “dead tree” media, at least not yet.
Ah, and a lot of programming is only available in disc format, and not available for streaming.
For now. Besides HD quality Video is available for On demand for a majority of the nation. Physical Media is the Buggy Whips of our ERA. It just doen't make sense to waste resources on it when you can Download it and save it to HD. Big Media is pushing hard on Blu Ray but people are not buying in like they did with Video Tape and DVD. Why do so when most can watch HD quality media at the touch of a remote.
Where can I stream movies from the 30s through the 60s? They’re not on Netflix streaming.
We've reached the point where entertainment is a luxury we can't afford at any price. Football, TV, video games, even most reading are all pastimes we can no longer waste time on. Every man, woman and child needs to be paying attention to what's going on in the world. The reality show we are about to witness will be far more compelling than anything on TV.
>>> If you scroll down to July 12, 2011, there are 5000 comments to the posting regarding the price hike
yeah... I just posted there.
Gave them my 2 cents + a little more.
I just removed streaming from my account which means that when this idiocy goes into effect I’ll no longer me a subscriber to netflix.
The bottom line is that there isn’t enough available via streaming and only a very small fraction of that is of any interest to me. Certainly not enough to make me want to go through the bother of wasting my time going to a website looking for them. All but a small number of the movies/tv shows that I’ve watched via streaming I found by searching the dvd catalog and seeing that it was available to view via streaming.
I’m sure that in time I’ll go from blu-ray to streaming but it won’t be for a while and then it won’t be with netflix.
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