The current marketplace as a whole may be shaky, but while others are hanging their heads as they mumble about Q3 downfalls,
Netflix is grinning from ear-to-ear. Citing lower subscriber costs, the rental outfit proudly announced a 30% increase in profits today while slightly reducing its Q4 revenue estimate. During Q3 2008, the company earned $20.4 million compared with $15.6 million a year ago while revenue rose from $294 million to $341.4 million. In related news, it also said that it "expects about 500,000 of its 8.7 million subscribers [to] be
Blu-ray subscribers in the current quarter," meaning that around 5.7% of its customers would be voluntarily paying the
$1 monthly premium to keep BD flicks coming. Good on you, Netflix.
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Read - Netflix quarterly earnings
Read - Netflix Blu-ray subscribers
posted October 20th 2008 11:30PM
I've been 1 of those. And I only rent Blu-ray out of principle. No DVDs in my queue!
BD will be the only format in 2010.
This is probably because of the HUGE added value of 'watch now'.
It is way cheaper than cable and for most people (especially with a system that can stream to TV) good enough. As an AV snob i won't do it for movies... i need my AC3 audio.
But i wonder if people are 'tightening their belts' and choosing netflix over going to the theatre. Taking your girlfriend to the movies (you know she wants some candy and a diet coke) once a month covers netflix for 2-4 months!
$1 extra per month and Kill Bill Vol 1 is still at "very long wait" 3 weeks after it came out. I can't imagine how few people want to see this movie still, so I figure Netflix must have very few copies on hand.
Why am I paying an extra $12/year if they're going to do such a crappy job on this?
I dumped the BD option the instant I got the email notification from Netflix. Just not worth it yet.
Kill Bill just went from "very long wait" to "Unavailable" on my queue. WTF Netflix!
i went from 3 movies at a time to 2 movies at a time.
Same here. It's now unavailable (although it says it was moved to the saved area, but wasn't).
I'm going to send them feedback.
So I called them (866-716-0414) and talked to them about it. First, I don't like their lack of contact options, they clearly are trying to discourage us from giving feedback.
But you do get a human rather rapidly if you do call.
I said I was very upset they would charge extra for BluRay, and then really you don't seem to get anything you used to get for no extra charge. That they needed to service BluRay better (presumably meaning buy more copies). They did say that by the movie becoming unavailable and popping out of my queue it actually set some kind of flag in their system that they need to buy more copies and helps them gauge how many to get. So hopefully they will do that better.
I should have mentioned that they need to reorganize their categories on their website. Having "BluRay" as a category no longer makes sense. Because they view categories as exclusive to each other. So that means I can't find "Western" BluRays or "New Release" BluRays easier. I shouldn't have to go to highdefdigest to find the list of new BluRays and then cross that to netflix and type it in there.
Thank you to Netflix for keeping the profiles around. Blu-ray on mine, none on the wife's.
Sounds like an extra $500,000 per month for Netflix for so-so BD service.
This is garbage.
They cite increased costs associated with BR and jack you another $12 a yr and then report 30% rise in profits?!?
Nice work jackasses. They better fix this BR shortage and roll out HD streaming to BR subscribers first if not only... and that should be sooner, rather than later. What the hell are we paying extra for if we can't get any movies?!?
While not nearly on the same level, this reminds me of the oil companies record profits from "needed" increased prices...
Exactly!
Two months ago:
"Boo hoo, BD costs us more and we cannot feed our employees if we don't charge a premium for BD."
Today:
"Woo hoo! 30% increase in profits!"
So they covered their so-called "extra costs"... and then some. Way to go... and yet they still have back-log on their BD movies.
I'm curious whether this increase is because of a rise in subscribers or because of the BD premium.
I'm one of those likely "new" blu-ray customers...though I'm really a 'return' customer having been a Netflix sub way back when they first started up. I was a huge early supporter and DVD enthusiast...and now I'm all about the blu-ray.
I took a 'time-out' on Netflix/disc rental to allow for there to be enough disc-based HD content--went whole-hog into satellite/cable premium HD content subbing the past couple of years. Now that blu-ray releases are ramping up--time to go back to Netflix and scale back on my monthly cable bill.
Netflix rocks!
I dropped Netflix after the 1 premium was added, it lost the value and hit my imaginary price point of value. Starz was a nice addition, if they add HD streaming I will pay the extra buck... Short of that I will go to the supermarket and pay the 1$ rental per movie and watch in upconverting dvd... I knew their premium markup was a scam- I think they are trying to find out what people will pay by trying a dollar markup, if they see a mass exodus they would try different plans scenarios. Blockbuster or some competing movie place needs to step in and say hey we will let you have blueray and not charge the 1 extra... I'd switch.
Perhaps, I'm one of the few lucky ones, but I recently signed up for Netflix last month specifically for Blu-ray rentals. I have received every single movie in my queue (all Blu-ray) within 2 days of sending out my last disc. For the 1$ extra a month, I have managed to watch about 12 HD movies in the past month. Granted, some were not so pretty looking on the bottom, they all played flawlessly in my PS3.
I guess it all depends on your distribution center and where it is located. It seems everyone else I have spoken to has long wait times, scratched discs, and refuses to pay one dollar more.
So, it's what $15.99 a month or so for the 2 movie at a time plan, and I rent 12 movies. Thats $1.34 per rental for glorious 1080p quality with little wait time.
Yeah I haven't been having problems getting bluray movies either. Today I just received The Incredible Hulk and The Strangers. Both new releases.
Hey folks, relax. It's only a dollar more, and certainly nowhere near the increases that TWC (pick a city) foists on subscribers every six months
or so, with lovely taxes and surcharges on top of that. I also like the idea of renting Blu-ray movies before making a commitment to buy them
at retail or online, no matter how high profile the release.
Too bad NetFlix doesn't offer the option to buy Blu-ray movies at a discount like GameFly does with games. Then again, if they're having
trouble filling subscriber queue requests, perhaps they can only afford to buy so many copies at a time right now.
On another note: Hey EngadgetHD webmasters, could you re-encode the comments box so that text automatically breaks at the margin?
As it is now, there is no margin, and copy continues into the sidebar lists if you don't break the line.
Funnel some of that profit into beefing up your video servers Netflix! Based on recent posts from themediamall.com/PlayOn - the only possible reason I keep getting stutters in my stream is on your end!
Hoping maybe the Xbox 360 Netflix streaming coming next month is a better experience.
people still rent Blu Ray discs?
What are your other choices for highest quality HD movies AND extras?
I use movie download services for rental, too...but ideally, you want to see certain films as good as they can be viewed and with all the bells and whistles. When, exactly, will VOD or downloads offer what Blu-ray can in that department, I wonder?