Netflix Really, Really Doesn’t Want Your DVD Money

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Since I am a streaming-only Netflix subscriber, I never really noticed this. Honestly, it is astounding how many times a company can shoot itself in the same foot, isn't it?

New subscribers are a different story, though. Netflix exclusively pushes its $8-a-month unlimited-streaming option, on its site and in its promotional materials. You have to work very hard to discover that the company still rents DVDs, and that’s by design.
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With the changes at the post office, Netflix's DVD rental business model is broken, with little way for them to fix it without raising prices. We saw how well that went last time didn't we. Netflix expected for the post office to not change how they did things for the next few years, allowing them to sustain DVD rentals long enough for a more natural migration to streaming only. They also expected the studios to not push back so hard and limit the available streaming library, and they expected people would migrate to streaming only faster.
 
GORANKAR said:
With the changes at the post office, Netflix's DVD rental business model is broken, with little way for them to fix it without raising prices. We saw how well that went last time didn't we. Netflix expected for the post office to not change how they did things for the next few years, allowing them to sustain DVD rentals long enough for a more natural migration to streaming only. They also expected the studios to not push back so hard and limit the available streaming library, and they expected people would migrate to streaming only faster.
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+1 this.


have to agree totally, they will have to some how cut cost at their business model to survive this. Also with all the new competition of red boxes everywhere popping up they might be up a creek with out a paddle.
 
I didn't realize they had a streaming-only payment option... been wasting my money on a dvd subscription
 
GORANKAR said:
With the changes at the post office
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Well there shouldn't actually be changes to the post office in the first place. It's actually doing really well (they make $1billion profit a year), they are just being forced to pre-pay for 70 years of retirement payouts in the next 10 years (which is pretty much unheard of). It's a big scam to force out the Post Office in favor of private companies (FedEx, UPS, etc). Get ready for $5 fees to send a simple piece of mail.

The Post Office is one of the only government organizations that doesn't drain money out of the economy. I guess that's why they want it gone so badly. They can't compete on service/prices, so they get lobbyists in Washington to get rid of it for them.
 
It sucks that the PO is being forced to pay 70 yrs of retirement. Freaking retarded to bankrupt an organization when it was actually doing well...
 
The streaming option has some decent stuff and some fringe material that is good, but really, the DVD option is superior due to selection alone.
 
travbrad said:
Well there shouldn't actually be changes to the post office in the first place. It's actually doing really well (they make $1billion profit a year), they are just being forced to pre-pay for 70 years of retirement payouts in the next 10 years (which is pretty much unheard of). It's a big scam to force out the Post Office in favor of private companies (FedEx, UPS, etc). Get ready for $5 fees to send a simple piece of mail.

The Post Office is one of the only government organizations that doesn't drain money out of the economy. I guess that's why they want it gone so badly. They can't compete on service/prices, so they get lobbyists in Washington to get rid of it for them.
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Not going to disagree, but the changes do effect how fast Netflix can get DVD'd to people and back.
 
It's incredibly cheap for them to stream movies that's why. you could stream a hundred movies a month and they'd still make money if it wasn't for the studios being greedy dicks. I'll go back to netflix when the selection gets better. I just got sick and tired of the limited selection of good stuff to stream. It's doesn't take that long to work your way through their library of good stuff when you start narrowing it down to your particular tastes.
 
bigdogchris said:
The streaming option has some decent stuff and some fringe material that is good, but really, the DVD option is superior due to selection alone.
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I agree. Streaming is only the future as long as content can be acquired at a reasonable cost. The kid likes their streaming selection, and I can find something on there now and then (Senna is available again, for now...), but we're so far behind on movies that I keep our sub alive for the DVD selection.

Just tonight I wanted to watch the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe with the kids. Not available to stream (surprise!). But also not available at Red Box or Blockbuster kiosk. So really for movies like that, my options are only add it to the queue or buy it.

At this point, the DVD option is much more useful to me than streaming.
 
> At this point, the DVD option is much more useful to me than streaming.

I completely agree. I had the streaming only for a few months, and everything in my queue was the type of thing I thought "well ... that might be fun to watch". It took three times in a row going to a movie that I _wanted_ to watch only to find out that it wasn't available for streaming (and it's not like these were recent films by any stretch) that I decided to switch from streaming only to DVD only. Fifteen minutes later I have a dozen movies in my queue, all of which I'm looking very forward to watching.

By splitting up the DVD and streaming into essentially two different businesses, I think Netflix has really screwed up in a big big way. There may be other business reasons in play where it makes plenty of sense, but from a pure consumer point of view, their overall value has dropped considerably.
 
As much as I hate Comcast, they were the only option in this area and I am really liking their on demand app and service, uses none of my bandwidth when i use their HD box and it seems to work just as well as Netflix. Glad I dumped them at the price hike!
 
It seems that NetFlix is forgetting that for those who do not live in urban area; streaming just doesn't work well. In rural areas usually the only option is DSL from some bubba phone company and the service ranges from bad to near dial-up modem fast. Streaming anything is out of the question.
If you like movies and live in the country; NetFlix DVDs by mail is a really nice service to have.
 
travbrad said:
Well there shouldn't actually be changes to the post office in the first place. It's actually doing really well (they make $1billion profit a year), they are just being forced to pre-pay for 70 years of retirement payouts in the next 10 years (which is pretty much unheard of). It's a big scam to force out the Post Office in favor of private companies (FedEx, UPS, etc). Get ready for $5 fees to send a simple piece of mail.

The Post Office is one of the only government organizations that doesn't drain money out of the economy. I guess that's why they want it gone so badly. They can't compete on service/prices, so they get lobbyists in Washington to get rid of it for them.
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Who's gonna offer P.O. Boxes if we don't have USPS?
 
klank said:
It sucks that the PO is being forced to pay 70 yrs of retirement. Freaking retarded to bankrupt an organization when it was actually doing well...
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Instead they should do what we do out here in California, just don't bother putting money aside to pay future pension cost (unlike private companies that are required to fund thier pensions). That way you can have your kids/grandkids pay for the pensions instead.
 
The USPS had been running a deficit for YEARS. How exactly did they make a profit, let alone $1 billion? lol?

Their most recent losses were $2 billion. So...yeah.
 
Netflix DVD and the USPS, both systems in decline.

Regardless of that. That part doesn't and shouldn't surprise you. What you should be pissed off about as a consumer is that we have services that could expand exponentially if the ISP's in America would stop trying to turn the dials on the network to the point where they eventually sell you 1000mbit connection that has a 4 mbit data limit for only $599 a month.

The technology and the desire to move forward by all the giant ISP's and telco's has officially been kicked in the dick, and consumers are doing nothing to counteract that trend. So technology that can move us forward is instead moving us backwards, all the while charging us more.

And we're bitching about Netflix DVD options? The forest...before the trees
 
GORANKAR said:
Not going to disagree, but the changes do effect how fast Netflix can get DVD'd to people and back.
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Yea, it will take an extra day now, big whoop. When I first got Netflix, I never had a one-day turn around from when they shipped and I received it, and it was fine. It was like a year after that I started to see the one-day shipment in effect, so now it's gone, no use crying over spilled milk. I still enjoy my DVD-only service from them.
 
SXO said:
Yea, it will take an extra day now, big whoop. When I first got Netflix, I never had a one-day turn around from when they shipped and I received it, and it was fine. It was like a year after that I started to see the one-day shipment in effect, so now it's gone, no use crying over spilled milk. I still enjoy my DVD-only service from them.
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But you forget, this is America where people are ENTITLED to one day turn around service. If they have to wait an extra day, well that's just un-American.

Spoiled fucks.

Netflix streaming blows dicks. I live in Idaho, where last year we were the slowest state in the nation in terms of internet speeds. Even on cable out here I can't stream and get a decent picture...and I don't have the slowest speed package, either.
 
travbrad said:
Well there shouldn't actually be changes to the post office in the first place. It's actually doing really well (they make $1billion profit a year), they are just being forced to pre-pay for 70 years of retirement payouts in the next 10 years (which is pretty much unheard of). It's a big scam to force out the Post Office in favor of private companies (FedEx, UPS, etc). Get ready for $5 fees to send a simple piece of mail.
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FedEx, UPS, and the other private companies have been kicking the post office's tail for years...;) At one point the post office tried competing with them--overnight, 2-day delivery, etc.--but has mostly retrenched on that front because they can't do it and make a profit (where the private shipping companies have no trouble.) But the real kicker is email. Simply put, email and other forms of near-instantaneous communication like texting have near obsoleted snail mail. Most people don't even use snail mail to pay their bills any longer.

If the post office shows any kind of a profit at all it's only because it is allowed to continuously raise the price of stamps, even as email remains a near-invisible cost to companies and individuals alike. There's just nothing like instantaneous communication that is as close to free as it is possible to get. The post office can't compete with that. Technology, more than anything, is responsible for these trends. I don't think the post office is going away, however. It's headed for more serious downsizing, but it's not going away.

The Post Office is one of the only government organizations that doesn't drain money out of the economy. I guess that's why they want it gone so badly. They can't compete on service/prices, so they get lobbyists in Washington to get rid of it for them.
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Kindly explain who "they" is...;)
 
GORANKAR said:
With the changes at the post office, Netflix's DVD rental business model is broken, with little way for them to fix it without raising prices. We saw how well that went last time didn't we. Netflix expected for the post office to not change how they did things for the next few years, allowing them to sustain DVD rentals long enough for a more natural migration to streaming only. They also expected the studios to not push back so hard and limit the available streaming library, and they expected people would migrate to streaming only faster.
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I'm really starting to wonder about the common sense of Reed Hastings. He keeps talking and talking about how NetFlix wants to move everyone to streaming--because that's the future--and yet, every time we check our streaming Netflix movie selections it is the same thing: 9 out of every 10 movies that we want to see is not available for streaming! The "good stuff"--I'd say fully 90% of it--is available only through DVD rentals. So who is Hastings fooling except himself? Based on the way they are currently breaking down the Streaming versus DVD rentals, there's no way in hell that NetFlix is ready to go to 100% streaming. The way the NetFlix site is currently set up that's not even an option.

It's clear what he's doing--it's a bait & switch. He tells his customers that he only wants to do streaming, that he's only doing DVD mailers under duress, and he advertises $8 a month for unlimited streaming. When the enthusiastic customer signs up he immediately finds that $8 won't cut it because most of what he really wants to see every month is not available for streaming! If he wants to watch what he wants as opposed to what Netflix decides he *can watch*, then he's got to at least go to the $8 mailer option of 1 DVD out at a time, and so instead of the $8 he thought he'd have to pay, the new customer's going to pretty quickly either quit his membership or go to at least the $16-a-month plan for unlimited streaming and one mailer DVD out at the time.

The more I hear from Hastings, the less impressed with him I am. This is common bait & switch. It's very plain to see, based on the movies that are only available through the DVD mailer plan, that Hastings loves DVD rentals and has absolutely no intention of doing away with them. If he did, and he meant what he said about streaming, then every movie on the NetFlix site would be available both for streaming or for DVD rental so that the customer could decide which plan worked best for him--and everybody would be paying $8 a month (or more if you live in an area not serviced by broadband and you wanted more than one movie rental out at a time.)
 
travbrad said:
Well there shouldn't actually be changes to the post office in the first place. It's actually doing really well (they make $1billion profit a year), they are just being forced to pre-pay for 70 years of retirement payouts in the next 10 years (which is pretty much unheard of). It's a big scam to force out the Post Office in favor of private companies (FedEx, UPS, etc). Get ready for $5 fees to send a simple piece of mail.

The Post Office is one of the only government organizations that doesn't drain money out of the economy. I guess that's why they want it gone so badly. They can't compete on service/prices, so they get lobbyists in Washington to get rid of it for them.
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This is not true at all. You're spreading misinformation in a big way.

New Zealand has switched a large portion of their postal delivery to private companies and it's actually lowered the cost of mail delivery and it's more efficient.
 
I only have streaming, so I'd love it if they improved their library of streaming videos. Unfortunately, it looks like it's just getting worse. Once starz is gone, the selection is REALLY going to suck.
 
What I don't get, is why is NEtflix so ANTI-SOCIAL?

INt his day and age, allowing users to be more social on websites is a PLUS and an advantage many companies pay to get.

Netflix actualy worked AGAINST this, removing user reviews names, not allowing see reviews by other people, etc.

Tehy did all they could to make the site less-social then it was and took away thing sthat made it good.


If they want their streaming model to work, they need to get NEW RELEASES on it, the day they are out.
 
DVDs-by-mail is a low-profit business, what with high labor and postage costs (plus the cost of the disks). Streaming is nearly free (other than licencing costs).
 
The USPS has been losing money (in the billions) for years now, primarily because it owes huge chunks of money to funding its defined-benefit-pension plan. The accounting is a bit dodgy at times (as is all governmental accounting procedure - check out how DoD does it for a big laugh), but the fact remains. The USPS does NOT "make a billion in profit." Not when you consider ALL of its payment obligations.

Now, it is true that the USPS isn't funded by federal tax dollars. It's an independent government agency with its own P/L sheet. But what it does do to fund itself is borrow, at essentially zero-percent interest, from the Federal Reserve, something that no private corporation (aside from primary dealers) is permitted to do. Any normal business would have gone into bankruptcy to discharge the onerous pension obligations that the USPS has created for itself and restructured into a more efficient organization.

I will say that the USPS is one of the express functions authorized by the Constitution (even if that piece of paper clearly means nothing to just about every politician out there), so if you want to get rid of it proper, you'll need an amendment. But otherwise it needs to realize that it needs a major makeover. Closing a bunch of branches and processing plants might be a start, but the pensions are the big-ticket item really killing its finances.

I stopped using Netflix when they started charging extra for Blu-ray - ostensibly to keep up the quality of their selections - but it became patently clear that they stopped purchasing most new Blu-ray catalog titles. I switched over to Blockbuster Online. Their mail turnaround isn't nearly as good (3-5 days instead of 1-3), but the selection is way better. Their streaming selection, especially for movies, is terrible. Really, what Netflix has become is old TV-series rerun central. And as studios wise up to their game, content providers are going to charge more, not less, for licensing rights.

In the streaming business, Netflix is the ultimate middleman. They don't own the physical data infrastructure. They don't own the IP to the media. They've merely created a front-end for viewers to access the material. I see cable companies making a strong push to beat Netflix at their own game with new and improved streaming services of their own, leaving Netflix to become little more than a cautionary tale in a Harvard Business School case study.
 
elite.mafia said:
I had it before they started doing streaming and never saw anything about that.
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so you signed up for netflix after 1997 but before 1999 when they started streaming, and never once read a single news article, never once went to the Netflix website, never saw a single one of the streaming specific commercials that have been running a couple years now about how you can now stream Netflix on your Wii and Xbox 360?

um....did you also miss the Iraq war, NFL strike and Anthony Casey? holy fuck!
 
OEM said:
But you forget, this is America where people are ENTITLED to one day turn around service. If they have to wait an extra day, well that's just un-American.

Spoiled fucks.

Netflix streaming blows dicks. I live in Idaho, where last year we were the slowest state in the nation in terms of internet speeds. Even on cable out here I can't stream and get a decent picture...and I don't have the slowest speed package, either.
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That's not the service's fault. That's your local politicians fault. You have shitty internet and you blame Netflix for the shitty service? Stop with the non-sense. I have had it for years now, but I have lived in places with at least decent 10Mbit or better cable broadband and the quality on most of the content has been exceptional. For eight damn dollars a month? Are you kidding?

The selection is very good for $8 a month and the quality is also overall very good if you don't live in BFE.
 
nobody_here said:
so you signed up for netflix after 1997 but before 1999 when they started streaming, and never once read a single news article, never once went to the Netflix website, never saw a single one of the streaming specific commercials that have been running a couple years now about how you can now stream Netflix on your Wii and Xbox 360?

um....did you also miss the Iraq war, NFL strike and Anthony Casey? holy fuck!
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Yes.
 
You know I'm starting to believe that maybe it's NOT Netflix that wants to kill DVD rentals... but maybe,,,,just maybe it's the studios. Copying DVD's or BluRays has always been a problem for the studios. But it's not really a problem for Netflix. You are paying them and they are happy to take your money and rent as many discs as you want. However, for studios they much prefer the 1$ rental (if not more) that's chock full of DRM. So they limit the amount of content Netflix can stream, and hold back the portfolio with a caveat. That they kill their DVD rental business.

So first they try with splitting off the service. That alone would go along way with negotiating if that's what the studios wanted. That didn't work so now Netflix tries to hide the service. Basically they are trying to drive the market to streaming before it's ready. So while no normal business would try to kill a product that generates Netflix 1 billion dollars in revenue, it would make sense if the studios were preventing you from competing with MS, Amazon and others until you killed your DVD rental business.
 
im a bit confused now, guess i need to go back and read the article.....but i logged into my Netflix account, went to my account, and clicked on "change membership" and was immediately offered a couple different DVD by mail options....three clicks maybe....not hidden at all
 
nobody_here said:
im a bit confused now, guess i need to go back and read the article.....but i logged into my Netflix account, went to my account, and clicked on "change membership" and was immediately offered a couple different DVD by mail options....three clicks maybe....not hidden at all
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i should note i am a streaming only customer
 
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