With the exception of when they raise prices, everybody seems to have a  major love of Netflix, myself included.  Unfortunately, I think that love affair is about to come to an end.  It was announced today that Netflix has decided to let the greedy people over at Warner Bros. keep Netflix from renting new DVD or Blu-ray releases until 28 days after their release.  So much for Netflix's willingness to stand up to the buffoons at the movie studios.

In exchange for this stupidity, Warner Bros. will open up more of its catalog of movies to Netflix for streaming.  I don't suppose that is the worst trade-off in the world but it certainly hurts many Netflix customers who use the service to check out new movies as they come out.  For the customers that don't do any streaming from Netflix, there is no upside to this deal.  If these deals catch on, not only will it hurt Netflix subscribers, but Netflix itself.  Currently, 30% of Netflix's rental business is new releases, something that this will really cut into.  Hopefully they won't bend over to any other studios if they want to keep that number from going down.  While this appears to be a big win for Warner Bros, I believe it will come back to bite them.

Warner Bros. stands to make a lot of money off of this deal.  A large chunk of the money made from a movie's DVD/Blu-ray sales are made in the first month of release and by taking out a large chunk of the rental competition in the first month, Warner Bros. expects sales to increase considerably.  I, on the other hand, am not so sure of this.  As a usually happy Netflix customer (except when they increase Blu-ray rental fees), I almost never buy DVD or Blu-ray movies anymore.  If there is a great sale on Amazon, then I will buy something but otherwise, if I can't find it on Netflix, I can find it on <insert bittorrent site here>.

This is exactly what many other people are going to be doing as well.  If they can't get a movie from Netflix, they won't want to waste their gas going to their local big box store in hopes that they will have the new movie that they want to watch in stock.  Owning the movie is nice, but unless you know you want to watch it all the time, it makes no sense to buy it when you are already paying for a Netflix subscription.  Paying $20 for a movie when you should be able to rent or stream it is insane.  This is the point where most people will have the thought that going to a bittorrent site and getting the movie the night you want to watch it for free is a lot easier, cheaper and more hassle free than going to buy the movie at the store.  The fact that Warner Bros. doesn't understand this just shows what kind of idiots they have running the company.

In this decade, content producers need to focus on putting their content everywhere and make the money they can instead of putting it only in a few places because all that is going to do is drive more people to piracy.

Netflix, stand up for your customers, not the fools at the movie studios!

By itself, that number sounds significant until you realize that there are 260 million DVD players floating around not counting the ones built into computers and I doubt even counting the ones in game consoles.  Eventually Blu-ray will likely catch up but not anytime soon at the rate they are going.

I have always stated that the problem with Blu-ray is price and lack of advertising and I still stick to that.  As long as Blu-ray movies are 3 times what you can buy a DVD for and players are above $75, they will fail to see big numbers.  Also, there needs to be more of a push to show consumers why Blu-ray is so much better.  The only advertising for blu-ray I have seen is in a movie theater.  If the companies pushing Blu-ray address these two issues, they will soon see a big move in the right direction, otherwise DVD will be hanging around for a long time.  [via Electronic House]

For the past month, maybe more, the local Wal-Marts have been undergoing a major shift.  Nearly everything but groceries have changed their location.  There are now more groceries, less pet supplies, and the electronics department has roughly doubled in size.  Apparently this shift is taking place across the country.  A post on Gizmodo today revealed a change in business at Wal-Mart when it comes to consumer electronics.  It seems they are cutting back on CDs and DVDs to focus on other products such as Blu-ray.

With CD sales down, digital downloads through the roof, and Blu-ray hoping to replace DVD, such a move was destined to happen at some point, I was just starting to wonder when.  With digital downloads exceeding many peoples expectations, it is a matter of time before the CD becomes just another dead physical format.  With stores such as Walmart, Circuit City, Best Buy and others still promoting the latest music in CD format, I had honestly started to wonder just when digital downloads would kill the CD.  I have known for some time that it was coming but haven't seen any sites of a death anytime soon, until today.

With CD sales down 23% just this quarter for Walmart, it is no surprise that they have now started to take away floor space from the CD and even the DVD to give more room for video games, various consumer electronics such as the iPod and Zune as well as Blu-ray.  Such a move is a sign of the times and that death for the CD and DVD formats is nearing.  I expect to see other major retailers follow suit in the near future.  I will admit that with DVD sales still much higher than Blu-ray sales, I was kind of surprised to see this move at this time.  I have long believed that this is necessary for the mass adoption of Blu-ray.  When stores stop selling DVDs, people will start moving over to Blu-ray, just like they did for the transition from VHS to DVD.  Blu-ray certainly has other issues that it needs to conquer before it can truly take the place of DVD, but this is the first step in the right direction.

While I agree with Walmart in their move to replace CD floor space with portable media players, that isn't really going to help them gain market share in the digital download space such much as it does iTunes and the Zune Marketplace.  If they expect to see real success from this, they need to bundle a deal from their new digital download store with the devices.  Walmart must give people an incentive to buy music from them before the customer becomes addicted to iTunes or other download service.  If they did this, they would see huge growth in their new MP3 store while slowing the growth of their competition.

This is a clear sign that these formats are soon going to go the way of the formats that came before them.  While the CD and DVD still have some life in them, if other stores follow suit and this falling sales trend continues, I can easily see the death of the CD within the next 2 years, and the death of the DVD within the next 5 (likely less).

Long live the extremely expensive Blu-ray!

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-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray