Netflix - Not Just DVDs Anymore
posted Saturday Oct 23, 2010 by Scott Ertz
Netflix has been having a good couple of years. They have successfully shut down Hollywood Video and turned Blockbuster into a kiosk company competing with the RedBox. Recently, however, CEO Reed Hastings realized and said that they are no longer a DVD company, they are a streaming company that just happens to offer DVDs almost as a bi-product. He said,
We are very proud to announce that by every measure we are now a streaming company, which also offers DVD-by-mail. In Q4, we’ll spend more on streaming content than DVD content, and we’ll deliver many more hours of entertainment via streaming than on DVD. More impressively, a majority of our subs will watch more content streamed from Netflix than delivered by us on DVD. DVD-by-mail shipments are still growing, but streaming for us is much larger and growing much faster.
For more on Netflix's transition to streaming, hit the break.
This transition is not surprising, however. Since offering the steaming option, every hardware manufacturer on the planet has gotten excited about it. Microsoft announced Netflix compatibility at E3 a few years back when they announced the NXE. PlayStation announced enhancements last week allowing full 1080p and sub-titles and the Wii has a native app allowing for disc-less play.
Add to the gaming consoles Roku, Boxee, Netgear, Samsung, Sony and a host of other manufacturers making TVs, Blu-Ray players and set-top boxes that allow Netflix, plus PlayOn allowing streaming to even more devices, such as phones, and Apple's streaming to iDevices and it is no wonder that over 20% of all US-based Internet bandwidth is used by Netflix.
I know we use Netflix here at the office all the time but do you use it yourselves? Do you like it or is it a necessary evil? Let us know in the comments.
