Articles about Netflix

Christmastime is coming soon, Santa's on his way. As jolly old St. Nick makes his rounds of Silicon Valley this weekend, which tech CEOs will be on his "Naughty" and "Nice" lists this year? We here at BetaNews are secret elves, and we'd like to help out the man in red by giving our opinion on who should get what they asked for, and who needs a big lump of coal.

Some of our picks are pretty obvious, while others may surprise you. Our list is intended to make you think and to spur some discussion on the trends in tech during 2011. Either way, we want to hear from you on who you think deserves to be on this list. We'll follow up Friday with your responses.

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Hewlett-Packard on Thursday announced it will not spin off its Personal Systems group. For the last month, the company has been looking at possible "alternatives" for the PSG -better known as the consumer computer portion of HP that leads the global market- and one of the options the company discussed was turning it into a separate company, akin to what IBM did when it sold off its PC division to Lenovo more than five years ago.

"HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees,” said HP's new president and chief executive officer Meg Whitman. “HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.”

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DVD rental and streaming video provider Netflix has posted its third quarter 2011 earnings, and though the company's revenues are higher than they were last year, decreasing subscriber acquisition and increasing costs of content licensing will have a significant impact on the company's bottom line next year.

If we were to go strictly by Netflix's earnings data, it would look like the company is continuing to do well: $822 million in revenue (49% higher than 2010,) $62 million in net income (63% higher than 2010,) and earnings per share exceeded Wall Street expectations by more than 20%.

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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said on Monday morning that the movie rental company's plan to spin off its DVD-by-mail rental business into a new company called Qwikster has been promptly cancelled.

"This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster," Hastings said in the Netflix blog. "While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes."

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Monday, Amazon and Netflix, two major competitors in the video streaming space announced new content partnerships that broaden their catalogs and represent the next generation of carriage agreements that occur every three years in the cable and pay TV business.

Amazon announced it had signed a licensing deal with 20th Century Fox that would bring streaming movies and TV shows to its Amazon Prime Instant streaming service. It will join CBS, NBCUniversal, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Amazon's other current partners, who now bring a total of 11,000 movies and TV shows to the premium service.

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It's time to ask that question, following last Sunday's stunning news -- that Netflix would separate into two companies, one offering monthly streaming subscriptions and the other by-mail DVD rentals. Actually, I asked the question a few days ago, and 55 percent of you say you will "cancel account". But the number of respondents is too low to be reliable. Additionally, peoples' initial anger might subside after a few days. So I'm reposting the poll, to increase the sample and to measure response after a few days emotional cool down.

Netflix will continue but as the streamer. The core DVD-rental business that made Netflix a household name will go to new company Qwikster. If I still rented DVDs, I would drop both because the companies will bill separately for services that were once one. I started renting from Netflix in February 1999, when watching DVDs, particularly on laptops, was sheer novelty. But long ago I stopped renting DVDs, switching to streaming instead. I'll keep Netflix for that. So there is one person's answer to prime your response to our poll and also to explain your reasons for yeah or nay in comments.

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After taking a serious beating in the DVD rental business by Netflix and Redbox for five years, Blockbuster was driven into bankruptcy and acquired by satellite TV company Dish Network.

But now, Dish and Blockbuster are attempting to gain the favor of disgruntled Netflix subscribers who have faced major changes to their subscription packages as the company spins off its DVD-by-mail rental business.

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At f8, the Facebook developer conference in San Francisco today, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new Facebook "Timeline" layout, and the deeper, realtime integration of third party apps it will bring. This deeper integration is a part of Facebook's new "Open Graph."

One of the premier Open Graph partners is Sweden-based streaming music service Spotify, which launched in the United States just two months ago. Using the new open graph, the music that Spotify users are listening to is posted live to their Facebook feed, and their friends can click that post and join into the listening session live.

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I've got to ask: Has Reed Hastings exhausted his magic? Because suddenly Netflix's CEO can't seem to do anything right. For the fourth time since mid July, investors brutally punished the stock; meanwhile customers rage about major changes to how they either rent or stream movies. Netflix shares closed down 7.34 percent today, at $143.75. The same week in July that Netflix announced a 60 percent price increase for most customers, shares traded for $298.73.

Customers are tumbling, too. On Thursday, Netflix lowered subscriber projections by 1 million for the quarter. Wall Street received the news badly. Shares closed 8.31 percent on Friday, recovering from an early-trading decline of nearly 19 percent. Customer reaction is largely negative to plans announced overnight to split up Netflix into separate streaming and DVD companies -- the latter named Qwikster. For many customers, Qwikster is one Netflix too many.

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Netflix's woes took a strange twist on Sunday night, in an 11:59 p.m. EDT blog post by CEO Reed Hastings. "I messed up", he begins. Yeah, based on subscriber losses and punishing shareholders, Hasting puts it mildly.

The gist is this: After jacking up the price of combined DVD rentals and streaming by an astonishing 60 percent, Hastings presents an unexpected solution: Netflix is splitting its streaming and DVD rental business into two operations. The DVD biz will be called Qwikster. It's totally unimaginative nomenclature and doesn't the least bit describe the DVD business. Shouldn't Reed be fixing problems, rather than be creating more of them?

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In a message to its shareholders on Thursday, DVD rental and video streaming company Netflix revealed that its subscriber acquisition has significantly slowed due to the revised subscription rates it announced two months ago.

Under the company's new pricing structure, its unlimited video streaming feature, which was previously included freely in its DVD-by-mail subscription packages, would incur its own subscription cost for all subscribers. The effect this had on the price at the consumer's end was shocking, and for some subscribers, it represented a 90% price increase in their subscription packages.

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Investors pounded Netflix in after-hours trading today, after Starz Entertainment cut off contract renegotiation. Netflix shares fell by 8.7 percent to $212.99. The stock had closed at $233.27. Starz content is a major anchor of Netflix's steaming service.

"Starz Entertainment has ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix", Starz CEO Chris Albrecht says in a statement. "When the agreement expires on February 28, 2012, Starz will cease to distribute its content on the Netflix streaming platform".

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Damn, video streaming looks good, too, and there are no dropped frames. To critics who have never used Chromebook, I say: Underpowered my arse. This is the first computer I've used that just keeps getting better.

First, I must apologize. Google's PR agency reached out to me late yesterday afternoon about a new update to Chrome OS. I wondered if it was the same update I downloaded last week, asked, and after an exchange of emails assumed that it was. Wrong! Chrome OS prompted for the new update today -- so that's two delivered in less than 7 days. Outstanding!

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Well, so much for the 23 million subscribers Netflix worked so hard to get. Based on Betanews poll results, currently with more than 1,600 responses -- 59.52 percent of Netflix users will "cancel account".

We asked: "Netflix has separated DVD and streaming plans -- raising prices 60 percent for many customers. How will you respond?" The company announced the pricing increases yesterday. Under the old arrangement, subscribers could rent one DVD at a time and get unlimited streaming for $8.99. Under the new scheme, 1-disc rentals and unlimited streaming are $7.99 a piece. To get both, the new price is $15.98, or a $6.99 increase.

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Yesterday, Netflix did something almost unthinkable in this economy -- dramatically increased prices for many customers. I asked for your reaction, and, whoa, did you give it.

To recap: Netflix separated its DVD and streaming plans. Under the old arrangement, subscribers could rent one DVD at a time and get unlimited streaming for $8.99. Under the new scheme, 1-disc rentals and unlimited streaming are $7.99 a piece. To get both, the new price is $15.98, or a $6.99 increase.

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