“I want my DVDs,” say film buffs to Netflix preparing for extinction of mailed rentals
Sometimes staying ahead of the tech curve leaves loyal customers behind. Online DVD-by-mail rental leader Netflix plans to stave off technological extinction by shifting away from mailbox DVDs and, instead, streaming entertainment directly to set-top boxes, delivering films on demand. With a click of the remote, Netflix subscribers with high-speed Internet connections and the right set-top box get instant cinema … sans storage disk. The good news is that the Netflix set-top box is cheaper than the competition. The $99.99 five-inch square device is easy to hook up and costs less than one-half similar devices from Apple and Vudu.
Also good news: It works Internet-to-TV, rather than forcing film buffs to watch their faves on a computer monitor. The film viewing service, called “Watch Instantly,” is free to Netflix’s 8.2 million subscribers. It will even stream entertainment from a wireless signal. And it rides the Next Wave: streamed media.
The bad news is that some loyal Netflix customers are nostalgic, already, for DVDs. Reactions to the Netflix Evolves announcement include:
· Many are still cable challenged. “People DO still live in the country where ‘high speed’ anything is only a myth. Can’t use streaming …”
· “Bonehead move, Netflix.” (opining that streaming video lacks picture or sound quality of a DVD)
· Not the “Right Stuff” – Netflix offers >100,000 movies and TV shows on DVD, but less than 10% of that is available through streaming. Put another way: Over 30% of Netflix’s DVD rentals are for new film releases, which are not stocked in the “Watch Instantly” library. Ooops, I mean database.
As both a film-loving pack rat and a book lover (remember how all dead tree books and readers were supposed to die off with the dinosaurs and e-Books?), my favorite feedback to Netflix was this one:
“It’s not practical that the DVD will be eliminated as some think. … There will always be a physical medium involved because people need that tangible connection. 0 nad 1 on a hard drive is not tangible nor permanent and most people will want to KEEP copies of movies to share.”
But, that’s when 8-track cassettes rose from the graveyard: “I take it you still have cassette players in your cars …. good luck with that.” This tech evo stuff is sooo tiring.
