While I'm rooting for Netflix to succeed in the short term, I have doubts about its long-term viability. Currently, in the media-delivery industry, Netflix is elbowing out the un-innovative rent-extracting cable TV industry, which is unequivocally a good thing. Delivering better choices for lower prices, while consigning cable companies to delivering commodity broadband access can only help consumers.<p>In the longer term, however, I fail to see how Netflix can avoid having its product turn into a commodity. Delivery of digital video to consumers will only continue to get cheaper and easier. Obviously Netflix has gotten amazing deals on bandwidth (see their recent spat with Comcast) but other the prices it pays will only continue to converge with the prices for commodity CDNs.<p>The only major part of Netflix's business that's resistant to commoditization is having a huge base of subscribers that allows them to cut deals directly with studios like Dreamworks. Obviously Netflix is trying to position itself as a cheaper, better middleman between consumers and content producers than the combination of cable channels and cable companies. This could be very attractive to studios in the medium-term, but ultimately why not cut out the middleman? When (not if) quick, flexible, and easy online payment comes to the internet, what's stopping Dreamworks from simply charging and delivering the movie to consumers directly?
Well, it certainly is nice to see that Netflix's promise of securing higher-quality content is at least partially coming to fruition.<p>Also, it is nice to see a content creator finally start talking seriously about internet streaming versus traditional cable as a means of content delivery.