Online Rental Blog

Blockbuster online
Netflix

I’m a huge fan of online movie rentals. It wasn’t many years ago that finding a good selection of DVD’s at a rental store was difficult. Once they were commonly available at stores, they were commonly unavailable by demand. Netflix enters the scene with their online rental service. Never go to the video store again, never wait in the weekend lines, get your movies fast. Of course, I wasn’t ready to give up that local access to movies, so I didn’t venture into a subscription until Blockbuster Online was released.

There are obviously many similarities between the two services, and I suspect that the determination of which service is better for you will boil down to a few simple tradeoffs, or you’ll be attracted to one of the few differentiators between the two services.

Quick Overview of Online Rental Services [Read more →]

Tags: Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

Netflix will begin offering unlimited online movie streaming from a library of over 6000 movies to customers on their $16.99 plan starting Monday.The move is said to be in response to the expected announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo Tuesday that iTunes will offer movie rentals from most major studios. The expected price of the iTunes rented movies is $3.99 each, putting Netflix is a competitive position for high value regular movie watchers.

Netflix has previously offered limited movie streaming to its 7 million + customers, but capped the streaming access at 17 hours a month.

The offer will not be available to Netflix customers currently on the $4.99/ mth 2 DVD plan.

Netflix

del.icio.us tags: Netflix

Tags: Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

we have seen, Netflix and NBC have a very solid working relationship, offering exclusive web content for the site in the past. Today, Netflix announced that it will offer episodes of hit NBC shows, such as Heroes, The Office, 30 Rock, and Friday Night Lights to its subscribers for instant viewing online.

Just to clarify, Netflix has offered instant viewing of various DVDs, including Heroes Season 1, prior to today, but now it will be making episodes that are currently unavailable on DVD available for viewing. This also marks the fourth way that you can see NBC shows online. NBC currently offers its shows on Hulu, NBC.com, NBC Direct, and now Netflix. It’s nice to see that NBC is really forward thinking about Web distribution, now hopefully the Writer’s Guild can get the strike settled so that they will be compensated for this content.

Netflix

del.icio.us tags: netflix

Tags: Articles, Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

I was concerned that Netflix was going to come in flat on the subscriber-acquisition front during the third quarter. After all, Netflix started the period with 6.74 million subscribers and had a target of 6.7 million to 6.9 million users by the end of September.

With Blockbuster raising Total Access prices and more or less warning of tepid growth, I was starting to wonder why Netflix wasn’t raising its guidance to account for the customers that Blockbuster wasn’t claiming.

[Read more →]

Tags: Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

Q Despite recent losses, Blockbuster has deep resources, combining brick-and-mortar stores with online rentals and brand identity. Do those advantages make it an inevitable winner against Netflix?

A I’d like to say they don’t have a chance on the planet, but the reality is they do, and that’s what makes it an interesting battle. They have stores (and) they have a brand that’s known by every American. We’re known pretty broadly and we’re known very well in the online segment, but they have broader branding.

They’re about five times larger than us in (annual) revenue. They’re about $5 billion compared to our $1 billion. So that’s a big benefit also. But we’ve got some assets, too. We’ve got $400 million in cash in the bank and no debt, and they have almost no cash and lots of debt. Their stores are both an asset and a liability, because as people leave stores it starts to be a real problem - what do you do with those leases and those kind of things. And we’re an Internet company through and through.

Our view is that the smart money is that they can’t sustain the battle. . . . Last year they were $251 million of positive free cash flow, calendar year. The first six months year to date, they’re negative $215 million. Big numbers and a big change.

[Read more →]

Tags: Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

The retail giant’s online DVD service offers one great advantage over Netflix: Instant returns at the store. Trouble is, Netflix won’t let you leave.

[Read more →]

del.icio.us tags: Netflix, blockbuster

Tags: Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

Netflix

del.icio.us tags: Netflix

Tags: Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

A federal judge in Houston has ordered a year and a-half in prison for a now-former postal clerk in a DVD-by-mail theft investigation. Authorities accused 53-year-old Anthony Zuniga of Houston of swiping thousands of movies from the mail system. Zuniga was convicted of two counts of mail theft by a postal employee. He also was sentenced Monday to three years probation and must pay a $4,000 fine.

[Read more →]

Tags: Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

In a huge blow to Toshiba, Universal, and the rest of the HD DVD devotees, rental giant Blockbuster has decided to stock only Blu-ray discs in the vast majority of its nationwide locations, although HD DVD titles will continue to be offered online and in the 250 (out of 1,450) stores that have been testing both formats since last year. Blockbuster VP Matthew Smith revealed to the AP that the decision to go with Blu-ray — which will reportedly be announced tomorrow — stemmed from an overwhelming customer preference for those titles in the test markets, accounting for over 70% of all HD discs rented.

[Read more →]

del.icio.us tags: Blockbuster

Tags: Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »

Reed Hastings, CEO of online DVD renter Netflix, has acknowledged that it is only a matter of time before people stop renting DVDs. “Renting DVDs through the mail in 25 years? For sure, that’s not going to exist,” Hastings remarked in an interview with today’s (Tuesday) Wall Street Journal. Hastings acknowledged that the end could come far sooner than 25 years. However, he added, “If one thinks of Netflix as a DVD rental business, one is right to be scared. If one thinks of Netflix as an online movie service with multiple different delivery models, then one’s a lot less scared.” Hastings said that Netflix is “aggressively” investing in its Internet delivery system, putting $40 million into it this year. “We’ll be up to 5,000 films by the end of the year,” he said.

Go to Netflix

del.icio.us tags: Netflix

Tags: Articles, Online DVD Rental USA by freedvdtrials.com
No Comments »