2012 CES CoverageNetflix co-founder and CEO, Reed Hastings, sent out an early morning message to apologize to Netflix subscribers about the handling of the recent price increase (video below). He also announced a more formal splitting of the DVD-by-mail and streaming businesses. The DVD business will be renamed to Qwikster while the streaming business will continue to be called Netflix. For customers, there will be two separate websites, two separate queues and two credit card charges.
The move doesn’t surprise us and the Hub sees this as yet another stick to beat customers away from DVDs. In that post, we stated how Netflix thinks the future is in streaming and is doing everything they can to get customers to discontinue the use of DVDs. The latest move move may signify Netflix wants to spin-off Qwikster. Alternatively, maybe the impetus was from the studios themselves, who put pressure on Netflix to get out of the DVD business. My gut is that licensing streaming content is more lucrative for them instead of having Netflix buy a bunch of DVDs.
While Netflix is attempting to spin this as a positive change, it doesn’t feel that way from the customer’s point of view. The change brings the loss of convenience and therefore, value. Now, a customer has to look for titles on two separate websites. In a related move, Netflix also has started to hide titles from customers’ instant queues if they have expired and the visibility on which titles are about to expire in your instant queue. As our friends at the Streaming Media Blog just pointed out, Netflix has once again told us how the loss of functionality is actually good for us. What was an opportunity to lead customers to the DVD-by-mail business, has turned into an annoyance.
If Netflix wishes to reorganize itself internally, so be it. However, there’s no reason why Netflix can’t provide a single easy-to-use interface to its customers. Unless, of course, Netflix wants out of the DVD business.
Related Posts:
Netflix’s Growth Challenges
Netflix’s Price Increase is the Stick after the Carrot
Roku 2: The Best Netflix Player?
That may be the case. I’d had enough of it so I cancelled my
subscription. I’m actually an employee and subscriber of DISH Network, and
although I get most of my entertainment through my satellite dish I still
enjoyed the convenience Netflix provided. I looked at it as kind of a
supplement to my regular channels. But fortunately there’s something even
better now. I was psyched when I heard about the Blockbuster Movie Pass, it’s
similar to Netflix (or what Netflix was, rather) in that I get dvd’s/blu-rays
in the mail (although better because there’s the option for in-store
exchanges), there’s a ton of streaming content, but there’s also 20 premium
movie channels and the ability to rent games! So it ends up blowing Netflix
away. And it’s only $10 a month. Plus if you sign up for DISH now you can get
12 months of Blockbuster free. I can’t wait until it starts on October 1st.
Check out the details here: http://bit.ly/pzsPYW
Dish,
I definitely encourage folks representing companies to participate in the blog's conversation. However, Dish employees posting these boilerplate postings from your marketing department (usually coming from the same set of IPs) is getting ridiculous. Please pass this on to your company and kindly ask them to stop.