Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Netflix gets better? Not so much.

Let me start by saying we subscribed to Netflix about a month and half ago and absolutely love it. In fact most of our friends and family have heard all about it from us. It seems perfect.

Now, they are making it where you can stream the movies directly to your computer instead of having to wait on the mail. The mail is so last century, after all. The bad part is, it's not open to Mac users. I know you are reading this and thinking "so," because you aren't a Mac user. Well I am, and it pisses me off.

But now that I think about it, streaming anything off the internet sucks. Bad. If I can download it directly to my computer and watch it, that's one thing (though I prefer to watch it on my TV), but streaming is often low-quality, stuttering video. Turns out you can keep your streaming Netflix. I don't want it. Me or my Mac.

I'd have to wonder about the economics of this offer, too. It won't be any extra charge to customers, which means no additional revenue from it (not counting any advertising surrounding the video you watch, which there will be). It surely took a huge investment in infrastructure and technology to make this happen. Does anyone really care enough to take advantage of it? If I can't wait 1 business day to see Weekend at Bernies, I've got issues. Most people savvy enough to take advantage of something like this are probably techy enough to own a very large TV with a nice surround sound system. Would those same people be content to watch a movie in poor quality on a computer screen? I know I wouldn't. With the advent of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc (more on that later) for high definition movies, this seems like a step in the wrong direction. Maybe this will turn out a lot like mobile video.

Via American Copywriter...again.

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