I don't understand the anguish over a 28 day delay. Actually I don't even understand the interest, beyond how it relates to the eventual take-over by streaming.<p>You had a chance to see the movie in theaters. You either saw it or you didn't. The DVD comes out for sale. You either buy it or you don't. 28 days later the movie is available for rental, however long after the theatrical release. It just increases the wait time from the theatrical release by 28 days. ?<p>By the author's own definition, if you're renting at all instead of buying, it's crap. It's OK to wait 28 more days for crap. I may have even said this to my 12 year old in another context.<p>It's an amazing amount of text for such a trivial issue. What am I missing?<p>[Edit: added 2nd to last paragraph; the "crap" paragraph.]
<i>"More importantly, they’ll have more streaming rights for the content from these studios under this deal."</i><p>28 days is a small price to pay for an improved streaming selection. Especially with Warner Brothers who has a massive catalog of titles. If you're not seeing it in the theater, not buying the DVD, chances are you really don't <i>absolutely need to</i> see it in the first 28 days either. Pretty good deal by Netflix.
I was trying to think of the properly inflammatory headline when I submitted <a href="http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/01/netflix-and-warner-bros-have.ars" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/01/netflix-and-warner...</a> (a far better writeup). I should leave it to pros like TechCrunch.
Netflix's on-demand selection does need drastic improvement.. One can find some gems here and there but overall it doesn't touch their DVD selection and we all know that's b/c of the studios.<p>Yes it is too much work to walk down to my mailbox and wait 2 days for my damn DVD when the technology is there to deliver it straight to my TV in seconds.<p>Of course this all would have to come at a price but I would gladly pay 20 or 30 and possibly even 40 bucks a month to have unlimited access to their full DVD collection on-demand.<p>Shelling out 20 bucks for something you'll end up watching once or twice 95% of the time is throwing away your money. So until they (the studios) stop attempting to rip us off like the greedy bastards we know they are then I'll get the new releases elsewhere for free.<p>There is an ideal price to be set on the curve where everyone wins it's just that the aging execs in charge can't change fast enough to keep pace with their consumers changing preferences. Time to get someone new in charge..
For me, not that I use netflix, the 28 days doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. If I really want to see a new release it will be in the cinema which is a much better viewing experience unless you happen to have an expensive home theater, if I didn't see something while I was at the cinema your already waiting a couple of months, I just couldn't see to many situations where I have no interest in the movie at the cinema but could wait the extra 28 days.<p>I don't know if this increases piracy because most of the time you will be able to get a DVD quality download before it's even been released to rent and buy.
"More importantly, they’ll have more streaming rights for the content from these studios under this deal. This is the key."<p>Um, I'm not currently a netflix customer because of how small their streaming selection is.<p>I'm going to say, the fact you can't get new releases anyway ("long wait"), means they're basically vastly increasing their offering of streamed movies....something they have unlimited capacity to do, while decreasing a service that sucked anyhow and was virtually useless.<p>I don't see why they're doing something bad here.
iTunes proved that people are willing to pay rather than pirate if you make purchasing more convenient than pirating. The movie studios seem almost to be begging their customers to steal content.