Netflix offers unlimited streaming video to members
Posted on January 14, 2008
Filed Under News
It’s widely expect that Apple will begin to offer movie rentals via iTunes later today. This is a smart move for Apple as most people won’t purchase an electronic version of a movie instead of purchasing a physical DVD, the economics just don’t make sense to do so. However, renting is another matter altogether.
Netflix has offered streaming to their membership for awhile now but it’s been limited in hours, 1 hour for each dollar your membership cost per month. So if you pay them $17 a month for rentals, you can stream 17 hours worth of material. In theory going unlimited should give them a good salvo in a rental war against Apple.
There’s still a question of titles, and we all know that content is king and there’s simply not enough to watch online at Netflix to make a difference. Take my queue for example as I have 257 titles in my queue as of this second, and only 7 of them can be streamed online. With a ratio like that I never even bother to see if streaming is an option.
Apple has studios lined up for their announcement so I imagine they’ll have all the major titles available. Plus, they have AppleTV to stream them to so people can watch them in comfort instead of using a computer. Not that anyone owns an AppleTV.
Unless Netflix can get the studios to give them access to the same titles Apple has, unlimited isn’t going to make a bit of a difference other than providing a bullet point for Netflix marketing.
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