Netflix Will Delay Renting New WB Releases 418
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kdawson
from the times-they-are-a-changin' dept.
from the times-they-are-a-changin' dept.
DesertBlade tips the news that Netflix will delay renting new releases from Warner Brothers for 28 days, and adds "Luckily I am so far behind in my movie watching that I will probably never catch up anyway." "It's part of a strategy by several studios to create staggered releases of DVDs so that the most profitable transactions are available first and cheaper rental options take effect further down the road. The move could be copied by other studios, forcing consumers to wait nearly a month if they want to rent popular movies from Netflix. ... The studio is hoping that the four-week window will push consumers interested in watching movies at home to buy the DVDs or pay a premium to rent them from stores like Blockbuster or from Internet and cable video-on-demand services. Warner Bros. already imposes a 28-day window on $1-a-night kiosk firm Redbox."
What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Artifically deny your customer the ability to buy your product. They'll love you for it!
Feh.
I'll just wait longer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Soo all the more reason for me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. They used to wait over a year before you could even get the VHS... and we hated the hell out of that.
Artificial scarcity doesn't work. Period. If only they could learn this.
Re:They are betting that their customers won't car (Score:3, Insightful)
One could argue that ever deciding that the company should make more money is not a "customer first" attitude.
"Customer first" is at best a goal of a company. Most companies want to stay afloat first ... which may or may not be directly tied to a "customer first" ideal.
But to think that companies are actively trying to seek ways to lower their profit in order to put the customer first seems a little idealistic. Sorta like thinking that most customers *won't* choose the cheaper of two products, all other things with the product identical. Some to have a brand loyalty, but I'm not sure most do.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
On the plus side: "Netflix will use the savings to expand its stock of the studio's DVDs and triple the number of Warner catalog titles it provides through its online streaming option."
In other words, you won't have to wait for the DVD so much -- you'll be able to watch it on your computer. Certainly, the newest releases won't be available that way, but still... anything that expands the (legal) streaming movies options is a good thing.
Re:They are betting that their customers won't car (Score:5, Insightful)
How is it a hassle? It IS a delay, but as Netflix is the only place I use to check new releases, it's one I admittedly won't notice. In return, we'll get way more instant-watch movies available, which I don't have to wait for and can watch on my laptop or two of the three consoles in the house.
It's hardly an anti-customer strategy when they make the same choice I'd have asked them to, given the option. The only thing currently stopping Instant-Watch from being really awesome is its subpar selection. And really, if I cared about seeing the movies from Netflix soon after they came out, I'd have seen them in theaters.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes. Rental places tended to do it. I remember being able to rent a copy of Star Trek Generations 8-10 months before I could find a copy for sale.
And I promptly dubbed a copy of it. I suspect that people will do the digital equivalent (grab it off a torrent site) these days.
Companies just don't get it. We have a way to get your shit for free. If you find ANY way to get us to pay for it then count your lucky stars and hope we keep using that method. Try anything that aggravates us though and we go back to getting it for free.
Re:They are betting that their customers won't car (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be risky, but I think his assessment of the average Netflix customer is fairly accurate. At least is describes me, a Netflix customer, accurately. Typically, when you hear of a movie coming out that you want to see, you add it to the queue. It's not out yet, but once it is sitting at the top of the queue ready once it becomes available. Except that movie is in high demand, so it says "Long wait" next to it. The second movie in the queue comes instead. But you don't really care, because you still want to see that movie. It's not like I'm a seven year old that has to see THAT one NOW! It will come when it's ready. In the mean time, I have a long list of movies that I have already said I want to see that will ship in its place until it is my turn. At a certain point, you stop paying attention to what's next, and you just accept what arrives in the mail. Any movie that I really really want to see, I would have already seen in the theaters. Avatar was a good example. Wanted to see badly and also appreciated the big screen experience.
The thing that bothers me a little is how Netflix is being prioritized by the studios due to the fact that they are cheap. The article mentions the same with the RedBoxes. Both are far cheaper for the consumer than in-store rentals or on-demand from Cable/Satelite and they get the worst priority. It's as if the studios resent those customers for finding a great bargain and want to take out their anger on them. But again, if seeing that movie right away is that important, you can pay the premium to do so.
Just Say No to revenue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a great idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'll just wait longer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up.
I don't know anybody (myself included) who actually keeps track of DVD release dates, much less counts down in anticipation of a DVD being released. Pretty much every movie that I rent from Netflix is something that I've decided I don't mind waiting for, and apart from the 2-3 movies down at the bottom of my Netflix queue that say "Releases mm/dd/yyyy", I literally never have any idea when a given movie is/was/will be released on DVD.
Okay, so maybe not everybody is like me in this respect. Maybe there are hordes of people who will now be thinking to themselves "Damn! I just can't wait another month! I guess I'll have to buy that DVD after all." But I just don't see it happening that way. I don't know anybody who thinks that way. I do know a couple DVD junkies who seem to think they just have to own every movie ever made on DVD, but this isn't going to change their habits anyway.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free market at work! (Score:2, Insightful)
I have over 110 movies in my queue and I check the new releases at least once a month and add anything that appears in there that I want to see. With the 3 disk option, I am about 6-8 months behind the "new release" curve anyway. I would find it hard to believe that I am unique in this situation. I mean, I can watch 3 movies a week, maybe 4 or 5 if I really have some extra time over the wekeend. But seriously, if WB wants to make people wait 28 days, good for them. At least DVD release cycles are better than VHS back in the old days (get off my lawn?) of the 80s and 90s you had to wait a year, sometimes two for a movie to get released for rental from the local Erols ...
doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are waiting for the movie to show up on Netflix, it won't matter if it comes out 1 day after the theatrical release, 6 months after, or 6 months +28 days.
I'm perfectly fine living 6+ months in the past for movies, so long as those AAA movies are still making it into my queue eventually.
-Rick
Re:It's a plan (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree on the 2nd sentence there -- I won't buy a movie unless I've seen it. There were 1 or 2 overhyped movies that I bought prior to watching them, and never again. If they are delaying my ability to see it first, they are only delaying my ability to purchase it. And if I've waited a month after its come out already, I might as well wait a few more months for it to hit the bargain bin price. So not only have they lost out on me being able to purchase it, they've lost out on my purchasing it anywhere near the "retail" price. Good work. Epic FAIL.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Netflix agreed to this because they are getting a discount on their DVD purchases and letting them cut costs.
Netflix also doesn't have the same business model that BlockBuster has I pay $x a month and I get unlimited rentals, the less I use the service the better it is for Netflix.
WB's research shows that a majority of their sales take place in the first 4 weeks. I assume that they did an analysis and found out that the discount that they give to Netflix will be outweighed by the additional sales.
Netflix has no risk in this deal, actually they may even have a bit to gain, they only buy a limited number of each movie. If one of Netflix's customers buys a movie because they were too impatient to wait for it to appear on Netflix; Netflix now has slightly better customer approval because there will be slightly less of a wait time on some of the new releases.
Just when you thought they couldn't get dumber... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:28 days later (Score:5, Insightful)
That's movie-studio thinking. And yeah, on the face of it, it does make sense - break the law, commit a morally wrong act for the sake of 28 days?
But that forgets what movies have become. Torrents being free is only half of it - the other half is service. Piracy is fiercely competitive on service: they are quire remarkable in getting whatever you want, however you want, as quickly as they possibly can. The studios have taken some steps towards competing: cinema releases are increasingly worldwide and DVD releases have a shorter delay. But they're not really close - it's like the big airlines trying to do the low-cost airline thing, they just don't have the mentality for it.
It's why some people pirate despite having their cinema card, a Netflix sub and shelves of store-bought movies. It's not that they aren't prepared to pay, it's just piracy is the better service. Sure, plenty of pirates are doing it just because it's free, but there's a big chunk of people with a range of different reasons. Each step the studios take towards competing with piracy is a chunk of people for whom paying becomes their better choice. Each step away from competing with piracy, like delaying Netflix for 28 days, a bunch of people turn on the torrents. Many will actually be annoyed about not being able to get what they want by paying for it.
I'm not trying to defend pirates, I've never illegally downloaded a movie in my life (though I'll not pretend to having never watched any). But there's what's right and there's what is. Quite basic market forces.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's simply wrong. With the exception of "phonorecords", if you buy a DVD, book, video tape, etc, you can rent or give it to others, no special license needed. Copyright law still makes at least a little sense in some areas.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Artificial scarcity doesn't work. Period.
I don't know ... seems to work pretty well for the diamond industry.
Re:28 days later (Score:3, Insightful)
Great comment - you forgot one thing - Pirates can often put out a superior product - i.e. a DVD that doesn't force you to sit through FBI warnings or unskippable trailers. You get the movie you want, immediately.
Redbox isn't doing this (Score:3, Insightful)
Redbox sure isn't waiting 28 days on Warner Brother release (or Universal). I saw the Hangover(WB release) just a few days after the December 18th release from a redbox. From a previous post someone said that their brother works for Redbox and basically buys every copy from every walmart in the area at midnight and stock machines. If you don't sell to Redbox, they basically with use the First Sale Doctrine without you.
Netflix really only has a few reasons for doing this. They know streaming is the future, and they need to reduce costs to be more profitable. Netflix basically don't have much real competition left and have a lot of momentum. So now they are just focusing on profitability rather then growth and competition.
Citation needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:28 days later (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo. I wanted to watch Inglorious Bastards. So, I head off to Netflix and it's not on streaming and the DVD is on wait. Lets ignore for a moment that we live in time where we shouldn't need physical media AT ALL in order to rent something (or even buy for that matter). Next I go to the xbox movie section and I see IB. I think good, I can rent it here. Nope, it's only for purchase and it's only SD. I'm trying my hardest to give someone money to rent their content and they won't let me! At some point more and more people are going to say f' it and just go straight to TPB. The hassle of finding it to rent just isn't worth it when I can find and download it in minutes.
BTW, I think the music companies have started to learn this lesson, even if they were pulled along kicking and screaming. Look at Amazon and ITMS now. No DRM, Amazon has a great changing selection of $5 albums, and both make it easy to find whatever you are looking for and purchase for a fairly reasonable price. Why can't movies follow suit?
Re:What a great idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm.
The people in front of me blinding me with cell phones.
The people behind me kicking me as they walk by mid movie.
The people on my row stepping on me and kicking me.
The people 5 seats over talking enough that I can't pay attention to the dialogue*.
The crying baby... at an adult date film.
I usually see films at off times now. I like seeing some movies first showing because people who want to see the movie are there.
People might care about germs in flu season but race? Get real.
* Except now the theatres play the noise at 185db to overcome this.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because there are more vaginas involved in the application of diamond products than pirated movies.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I know that lots of people around here are probably keeping up on all the latest and greatest sources for pirated movies and TV shows, but for most people, it's simply too much of a hassle. I sincerely think that movie studios and TV networks need to learn that ultimately most people aren't really willing to pay for "content". Rather, people are willing to pay for convenient, easy, and reliable access to that content. If they make it as more of a hassle to get the content legally as it is to get it illegally, and too expensive to boot, then they'll lose out on that revenue. I don't say this as someone who approves of pirating, but sometimes it doesn't do you much good to disapprove of reality.
But anyway, I'm just not sure it matters. I don't even know when DVDs are released most of the time. I only know when Netflix tells me that the DVDs will be available. Move that date forward a month, and I probably won't notice.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well its not like I can download diamonds by bittorrent - yet.
Re:Awesome job! (Score:5, Insightful)
Pop it out of the player, pop it into the Mac, copy and rip the files to the hard drive, pick out the movie and copy it to a fresh DVD. Nice clean movie. Still a bit of a pain and getting closer to just downloading it from a torrent site.
Keep going Sony. Nice work. Alienate even more people. You do this enough and folks that shy away from torrent sites because of legal concerns or moral concerns will find that paying you less and less gets a better product. Amazing.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only are there those issues, but the fact that every single refreshment costs five times as much as it would at a store for no more convenience or taste. I mean, I don't mind paying $3 for a really good burger because there isn't a way I could cook it that way and it would turn out that good. Sure, I might be able to make a burger that costs $.50 but I'd still have to make it and it wouldn't taste as good. With popcorn it takes what? 2 minutes in the microwave (less time than you would be waiting in line) and costs five times less. Same with drinks, I can get a 2 liter of soda for $1 or so, it costs more for a small drink at the theater.
If I'm paying $15 per person to enjoy a movie (ticket+popcorn/drink), it better be high quality enjoyment. That means A) Very high definition B) Great sound system C) People actually acting decently. Because, really the masses have determined a view of a movie in standard to be worth $1 for a family (look at how successful Redbox is), plus with a DVD you can pause, rewind, skip through boring parts, etc. that you can't in the theater. But instead when you pay $5 per person for a ticket you get generally pretty low quality, a sound system that is only focused on being LOUD, terrible people, terrible options for refreshments, and when you have to pee midway through the movie there is no way you can get them to pause/rewind it for you.
No wonder piracy/rentals have taken up the way they have.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not legally they can't, unless they have some existing agreement specifically allowing them to do so
Incorrect. see NEBG v. Weinstein.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
What movie house sells 3$ burgers?! For a good burger (better than I can make myself) around where I live, I usually pay 7$. But I guess that's city life.
Re:Soo all the more reason for me (Score:2, Insightful)
He said he buys them, legally, on disk, but used in the pawnshop for much closer to what they are really worth. I do the same thing, because I know what digital copies on a piece of plastic cost. I am perfectly willing for them to charge a full doubling of their actual digital copy costs, a 100% markup, but I won't pay thousands or tens of thousands of percent markup. So, I wait until I get them used or severely marked down in the bargain bin.
If the big studios and distributors would just stop price gouging, and really make copies impulse purchase cost, they would sell billions more copies a year to people. But see, they are fixated on "per unit" pricing that reflects copy production costs from like 30 years ago, something like that. They refuse to drop their prices down "enough" so that people are willing to buy them in larger quantities.
At 20 bux, I buy zero DVDs, I don't care what movie it is, that's a price gouging level, a serious one. At ten, I start to think about it,but resist, because it is still way too high for a dime's worth of plastic and some printed cardboard, at five, sometimes I buy one out of the bargain bin at importmegamart. At 4 or lower, I pick some up used, pawnshops, yard sales, etc. I don't pirate any, but I also refuse to pay their obvious cartel full ripoff pricing model either.
These guys could probably make MORE money by seriously dropping their prices, from much larger volume sales. I know I have paid as little as two dollars brand new at the store for some older titles, just the disk in a plain paper sleeve, printed, no fancy box even. If they started doing all releases like that, I'd buy one or two a week, as it is now, I buy a couple disks a year new, but only severly marked down, or used, and zero at full retail. They just annoyed an old faithful customer who started paying for entertainment media in the 50s, and now I just can't stand their ripoff prices. I'm not cheap, I just hate getting gouged, and there is a difference.
If you go back and remember, when downloading/pirating really took off seriously, with Napster, it was about exactly the same time that home CD recorders became more or less affordable, and people started buying blank CDs by the millions. This hit huge mass consciousness as to just *how much* they were getting price gouged for digital bits on a plastic disk. This caused a profound seachange in the mindset towards the music industry, and now the movie industry. People just drop most "moral qualms" in circumventing annoyances when dealing with ripoff scammers, and the traditional distributors sure as heck have been engaging in this blatant price gouging for a long time now. It USED to cost quite a bit to make a "copy" for sale, when I first started buying it was music vinyl and expensive to make a single copy for sale, so you expected to pay a lot for a copy, but once it got to close to zero to make copies, which digitally it is today..people reacted accordingly, they stopped being so interested in paying the same or similar prices as before.
There's obviously a nice market for music and movies, just "official" prices don't reflect a true market level, the "black market" level is closer to a real price. The old "AllofMP3" was much closer to a real/rational market level that would have been fair all around, to both sides of the transaction.
Something is needed that would encourage people to outright buy, and discourage not paying a penny/pirating, and that "something" is extremely easy to see, and that is drastically reduced "legit" copy prices.
The ball is in the producers and distributors courts now, they can see this is true, it will be up to them to adapt to a more fair and much cheaper price that reflects bona fide modern tech advances. Their costs dropped dramatically, they need to pass similar savings along to their legit customers. Until then, all their schemes and plans will get ignored by a large amount of the public as they will take the "black market" price instead, given the option and opportuni
Re:What a great idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Do people even buy movies? Your typical WB movie is a mild distraction over the weekend. Its not fine art. Its not something you ever need to watch more than once. Without the spectacle of the big screen, the allure of fresh popcorn, and THX sound, its really not much else. Its like TV. Entertainment for the lowest common denominator. Watch it once and forget it about. This is why people gravitate towards rentals and on demand.
What great gems does WB think we're all going to rush out to buy? I just went to their website and heres a list of the items they are showcasing:
The Book of Eli, Terminator Salvation, The Hangover, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Valentine's Day, Final Destination 3D, Whiteout, Sherlock Holmes, Gossip Girl, The Invention of Lying.
Wow, I want to see maybe one of those and only in the theater. The idea of owning any of that is pretty silly. WB, your products are a commodity. Theyre chewing gum. We chew them for a short while and we spit them out. Get on the rental bandwagon and give up your fight to sell me 30 dollar bluray discs of your junk.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
As a nearly-tone-deaf person who reads lips, even I found the volume excessively loud.
The tickets cost me $36 just to walk in the door -- the 15-year-old was an "adult" according to Muvico. It was a noontime movie. 3 sodas, a popcorn, and a couple boxes of candy was another $24.
No thanks, we will stay at home next time and rent a movie. We can order pizza and breadsticks and still save $35.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
They are not *letting* Redbox (nor anyone else) rent DVDs. They have no say whatsoever about someone buying their product and then rending it.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_sale_doctrine [wikipedia.org]
These issues (as well as "rental" discs) are VOLUNTARY agreements between the companies and the movie companies, presumably in exchange for lower costs on the rental places' end.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know ... seems to work pretty well for the diamond industry.
Artificial scarcity works for physical products that are hard to manufacture, not for items that can be instantly replicated by anyone with a computer.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:1, Insightful)
In the end we have a move that harms consumers for the benefit and profit of a company making a retarded level of profit already. Sounds like the only people getting fucked over are the people who are paying for the entire damn thing. News at 11.
If anyone from WB is out there reading this, please note: I will never watch one of your movies in a theater. I will never buy the DVD or BluRay for one of your movies. I will never directly give you a single penny. But when you go and work out financially beneficial deals for you to continue racking up insane profits while fucking the actors, directors, and other hands in the production of your movies over that essentially forces us to wait longer to see anything you might produce, only one outcome will happen: If I'm forced to wait another 28 days to rent the movie, I can wait for the few hours it takes for the first BD rips to show up in the private communities to which I belong. Further, if I don't want to wait for the DVD/BD disks, while you're fucking us over once again to make profits from your theater showings (do realize in a little more than a decade theaters won't be a profitable business anymore, and your sales will plummet so far you'll be FORCED into adopting technology and doing what your customers have demanded for years, demands that fall on deaf ears, or rather ears so full of money that they just don't give a fuck), I can watch a CAM for free on the internet. Yeah, it's shitty quality but I see your movie. If I really like it, I'll download the BD rip. In any case, you're not going to make any money from me anyway because it's already far too inconvenient to deal with you.
Welcome to the 21st century. You're still trying to live in the 18th. Fuck you.
(For the record, the money is not the issue. If you put 1080p quality downloads directly from you at a reasonable price, say $15/download, released THE SAME DAY you would release the movie in theaters, I would gladly download straight from you. I will guarantee you so would hundreds of thousands of others. Offer people the download of DVD quality, BD quality, or streaming, priced appropriately. Cut out the fucking middle man, stop screwing us over, and we'll gladly pay you. The issue is trying to continue a practice that is reminiscent of times before modern technology while simultaneously trying to squeeze record profits out of your customers: the same exact suggestion that the ISPs get from us applies to you, upgrade or GET THE FUCK OUT.)
Re:What a great idea! (Score:1, Insightful)
Thanks for the unfair generalizations. I used to pirate games pretty heavily, until Steam proved a convenient legal venue. I haven't pirated since I started using Steam, and my legitimate collection now numbers in the hundreds. Provide me with a venue that is just as convenient and reasonably-priced for HD movies and TV or for lossless music and I'll go legit there, too.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet I'm not generally willing to pay for non-physical media. I know the iPod generation is throwing wads of cash at Apple's music store, but they're stupid.
You can sell me an object, with some objective value, or you can sell me a service, such as Netflix. With Netflix (mail or streaming), I'm not paying per movie. Sure, there's a floor to how cheap it can get (about $1), but ultimately I'm paying for access to their library, as fast as I can personally consume it.
Paying for digital copies is the great boondoggle of the 21st century. Mostly because the prices are too high. I'll pay $0.10 for an mp3 but not $0.99. That's just nuts - it's probably cheaper to get the CD. With the artwork. And the CD itself. And the packaging. And the receipt. And the experience of going to the store.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly! You know what RedBox did? Rather than buying from the studio in bulk DVD's in sleeve's for a very slight discount they are buying all their movies at walmart retail then having an employee go through and pull the DVD's out a the boxes and stick them in a sleeve. This hasn't stopped Redbox and won't. Netflix agreed to comply so they can get the license to stream the movies digitally because they are making more money on the streaming than the rentals.
All this is going to do is make RedBox more powerful and give them a bigger market share. This is very foolish of the studio's because Netflix is more on their side then RedBox is.
Re:What a great idea! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Awesome job! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm no fan of those pre-DVD-movie ads either, but how much time does it take to put the DVD in your Mac, rip it to the hard drive, burn a new DVD and then play that one? Wouldn't it take less time to watch the 10 minutes of ads (or go to the other room and do something else while they run)? Especially if it is a rented DVD that you'll be sending back in a few days.