Netflix to offer streaming vids!
 

Seems cool, but I bet the speed won't be that great. They plan to offer up to 48 hours of free viewing on your PC for TV shows and Movies.

Netflix on CNNhow

id love to get their encoding job.....

Who wouldn't like it???

'while those with the full $17.99 a month plan that allows them to rent three DVDs at a time will be able to watch 18 hours a month online'... still not bad :)

sounds great :thumbsup

too little too late

blockbuster has conquered this market for now, we switched about a month ago and will never look back

we get 3 in the mail, we finish those and take them to blockbuster for 3 FREE rentals and our queue in the online part gets updated immediately and new movies mailed

we have a system down right now, we are watching 9 movies a week on average right now

with netflix we got put into their "frequent renter" queue, and some of our movies were starting to take a week to get here, and somehow movies would take 4-5 days to get returned

they throttle people that return movies to quick, they suck

pretty cool :thumbsup

9 movies a week? wtf?

we watch a LOT of movies...haha

haha, more "fine print" from netflix

I wouldn't say Blockbuster has conquered the market just yet. Blockbuster just announced it had around 2 million subscribers while netflix has somewhere around 6 million.

The reason I stay with netflix is that I like a lot of the independent and hard to find movies and they don't have those in the blockbuster store so being able to take them back to a store and get more movies really isn't a big deal to me. It is a nice feature though. However, for people like you that watch 9 movies a week I wonder how long that will last until Blockbuster starts to "throttle" you back. If you are averaging 36 movies a month at $18 per month you are paying around 50 cents per rental. They won't stay in business too long at that rate. They may let it go depending on how many "heavy renters" they get, but if they get a lot I would imagine you see some kind of throttling put in place.

I watch 3 movies a week. I watch them over the weekend then mail them out on Monday or Tuesday and have new ones by Thursday or Friday so for me netflix is great.

that sounds pretty cool :thumbsup

the only thing is, since all this netflix drama has started (about a year ago), their traffic has been constantly in the decline

I would say in a year from now if everything continues it's course, netflix will be hurting pretty badly

even if blockbuster did start throttling, it is stil a FAR better deal than netflix

as for the hard to find movies, we don't generally watch that type of stuff, so it doesn't affect us

I agree. Having tons of stores nationwide really does help Blockbuster out that is for sure. I would also agree that Netflix needs to do something to counter the moves by Blockbuster. If they can do streaming movies and make them fast and look good and provide them at no extra cost, that could help them a lot. Still, watching a movie on your computer isn't the same as watching it on your TV. I had read a while back that Netflix was working with Tivo to offer streaming movies that you could download to your Tivo and watch on your TV. I think the next year will be critical to Netflix survival. If they can come up with something decent that counters Blockbuster (or Blockbuster falters) they will be fine, if not they could be in trouble.

man, if they did the tivo shit I would honestly think about switching back, that would be rockin

or even have both services, blockbuster and netflix

Fuck, I just started the free trial with Netflix and I know it will take longer since I'm in Puerto Rico...I'm on the Blockbuster Movie pass for when I'm back in the states also...If they fuck up, I'll see about the blockbuster online thingy because I paid for it but never activated it with the scratch off thing on the card they gave me.

They announced it a while back. Here's a story on it. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5915470/site/newsweek

I don't have Tivo, but would consider getting it if this option was made availible.

as far as entertainment goes, there are 2 "extras" I can't live without...my online movie rentals and my tivo, LOL

But Blockbuster censors. :Oh crap They claim they do not censor, because they do not do it themselves, but that's semantics. They will not carry any NC-17 or unrated equivalents so, to get their videos into Blockbuster, studios must provide edited copies. Then Blockbuster sells you these edited versions without revealing that fact to the customer. I consider that dishonest. Unless you'd seen the originals, you may not realize they were doing it. This is most evident in indie/foreign films, not pre-neutered for the MPAA / US theater distribution network; if infact Blockbuster will carry these titles at all. If all you want to watch is the same stuff they're playing in the mall, fine, but IMHO you're missing out. :2 cents:

I heard the service at BB is getting much better than when they first started. I used Netflix before but I'm no longer a customer. I didn't experience the throttle, but if you get 3 at a time... you should be able to get up to 12 movies a month right? That's watching one movie every 2 days or something.

I think throttling movies happened due to cost of movies + cost of postage + cost of operations. If they throttled the mega users, regular users wouldn't be affected. And no price increase would be necessary. However it's not right if you get 3 movies every 12 days. That's about 6 a month when you pay for the bigger plan.

I was thinking about signing up for a program. Problem is I can't find the crazy f'd up Japanese movies at Blockbuster. So I might end up getting Netflix. Time will tell...

And I don't care about downloading the videos to my computer, I'm in front of it enough. I want to watch movies on my TV.

By the way I just found a one month free code for BB
Link: http://www.blockbuster.com/bbfamily
Code: 2143TA

they USED to censor a LONG LONG time ago, but they now carry the same movies you buy anywhere else

great idea, I am trying to decide which one to do. Definably a factor.

It's been a couple of years since I rented from them, the last time was a heavily butchered (no pun intended) version of Ichi The Killer, so if this practice has changed that's great. But I wonder, unless you're renting the same movie from both places, how would you know? I just see the same old complaints when I try to goggle for info on the subject. To further test, I did a search on both sites for the worst movie I could think of. Pink Flamingos. Netflix has it available. Blockbuster does not.

I signed up for BB and just rented Visitor Q. I've seen the full version, so if it's chopped in any way I'll know.

I bought a dvd last summer from Blockbuster in the States and it was edited to the point of being unwatchable. Their UK arm doesn't do that and their netflix type service is great.

any tried http://www.vongo.com ?

damn geo check doesn't let me sign-up for trial as it's only for US only, and proxies are too damn slow

more and more people are getting broadband, good idea :)