Netflix, Blu-ray and the Future

How Netflix and Blu-ray can coexist and why it will be a banner year for the format.

Netflix is out to own your television.

The Internet rental service has been gradually taking over set-top boxes in living rooms throughout America, incorporating its streaming content solution into any device willing and able.

The list of Netflix-ready Blu-ray devices, which now includes the PlayStation 3, is rapidly growing. Coupled with an outstanding rental delivery service, the Los Gatos-based company seems poised to turn the movie industry upside down again.

Yet, despite bloggers’ concerns that its online streaming strategy and Blu-ray surcharges are part of some nefarious plot to prematurely kill the Blu-ray format, Netflix insists it’s all about the customers.

“Everything we focus on is customer satisfaction,” replies Steve Swasey, Netflix VP of Corporate Communications, “If we can’t say, ‘How does this get back to customer satisfaction?’, we don’t do it.”

And to Netflix’s credit, the company has ranked on top the ForSee survey results for customer satisfaction nine years in a row. Stateside, the company is almost unanimously loved with a subscription base that has swelled to over 11 million.

Still, there are Blu-ray and audio/video enthusiasts that claim that Netflix is inadvertently destroying the fledgling format with its streaming service. A service which now streams select titles at 1080p, and while nowhere near the quality of a Blu-ray disc, may prove ‘good enough’ for mass consumers.

Netflix doesn’t see it that way; streaming video is merely a natural evolution for a retailer determined to avoid the same fate as its predecessor, Blockbuster.

“Netflix changed the way Americans rent movies ten years ago, when it offered the subscription DVD-by-mail service,” remarks Swasey, “But the vision all along has been that we were going to be doing it over Internet, and that’s why the company is called Netflix and not DVDs-by-mail.”

Should you start pawning off you Blu-rays immediately, or is the crisis overblown?

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8 Responses to “Netflix, Blu-ray and the Future”

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