I posted this on their blog before I saw the thread here:
Remember the quote by Henry Ford? It went more or less like: "If I asked customers what they wanted, they'd have told me a faster horse." The truth is, all the customers here -- myself included -- are probably the least qualified people to say this is a bad idea.
I do think that some communication between the 2 sites is important. But it's not as if that's off the table. Once they get around to developing it, it won't be hard to have an "Available On Netflix" link beside entries on your Qwikster queue. In fact, doing so would be effective cross-promotion.
The truth to me seems to be this: These really are very different businesses. And it's true streaming is the future. I expect Blu Ray to be the last optical disc player people ever buy. From there on, it's all streaming.
A future we could've faced is one where Netflix devotes more and more resources to streaming license fees and data centers, they close regional netflix warehouses, dvd delivery goes back to 2+ days instead of the 1 day it currently is for most the US population. In general, the DVD service is choked of leadership talent within the company and capital improvements.
Now, there's a CEO of DVD's by mail. A man who has full budgetary powers over just the DVD business. A business NFLX KNOWS how to run profitably and repeatably. It's a franchise. They've got that stuff DOWN.
I'm not an apologist. I currently opted to pay for both services and I'm not happy about the price increase. But, I'll wait and see. In 6-12 months, if we don't see some big improvements in stream selection, I'll probably chose to cancel that side of my account, and use Hulu Plus and Amazon instead. But for now, I respect the hard decisions businesses make when they see the need to pivot.
Remember the quote by Henry Ford? It went more or less like: "If I asked customers what they wanted, they'd have told me a faster horse." The truth is, all the customers here -- myself included -- are probably the least qualified people to say this is a bad idea.
I do think that some communication between the 2 sites is important. But it's not as if that's off the table. Once they get around to developing it, it won't be hard to have an "Available On Netflix" link beside entries on your Qwikster queue. In fact, doing so would be effective cross-promotion.
The truth to me seems to be this: These really are very different businesses. And it's true streaming is the future. I expect Blu Ray to be the last optical disc player people ever buy. From there on, it's all streaming.
A future we could've faced is one where Netflix devotes more and more resources to streaming license fees and data centers, they close regional netflix warehouses, dvd delivery goes back to 2+ days instead of the 1 day it currently is for most the US population. In general, the DVD service is choked of leadership talent within the company and capital improvements.
Now, there's a CEO of DVD's by mail. A man who has full budgetary powers over just the DVD business. A business NFLX KNOWS how to run profitably and repeatably. It's a franchise. They've got that stuff DOWN.
I'm not an apologist. I currently opted to pay for both services and I'm not happy about the price increase. But, I'll wait and see. In 6-12 months, if we don't see some big improvements in stream selection, I'll probably chose to cancel that side of my account, and use Hulu Plus and Amazon instead. But for now, I respect the hard decisions businesses make when they see the need to pivot.