Originally Posted by kane

I just did a little looking around. You are right. They didn't lose 2 million members. They have lost around 1 million since the announcement of their price increase and expect to lose another 600K or so this quarter so it looks like they lost, or are expecting to lose, around 1.6 million.

The thing is, exactly how has Netflix "done was is necessary" to get more newer movies on on streaming? The way I see it they are actually staring a decline in streaming movies in the face. The deal with Starz gave them a decent number of newer movies on streaming, but the problem was many them were only for a limited time and now that entire deal is in jeopardy of going away. If they do lose that deal they will need to spend that money somewhere to get more newer content or they will see less available to customers not more.

I'm not saying Netflix is a bad service. For me the price is fine. I end up getting 3-4 DVDs per month which would be $9-$12 per month if I got them at blockbuster. I could save a few bucks by going to redbox, but chances are I would end up keeping them a few extra days and spend the same amount. I also watch a decent number of streaming movies and TV shows so it is well worth the money I pay for it.

That said, it looks like their might be more competition on the horizon and to me splitting it into two sites with two accounts and not being able to have them interact (IE seeing if a movie you searched on DVD is available on streaming without having to go to the actual streaming site) might drive some people away. They have said that they see the future as just streaming so I guess it makes sense that they will split them and eventually sell/close the DVD group, but it just seems to me like they are going about it in a strange way. I have always thought the idea was to make things so that your customers had do to as little work as possible and got the most value possible and it seems Netflix is kind of going away from that. At least for the moment.