From what I've seen so far, Netflix is attempting to nudge - perhaps more like ram! - it's customers away from physical DVDs and BluRays, and more toward streaming video content. It's true that Netflix carries a number of movie titles, "on demand," but it seems that the movie selection is much more limited than what you can get on DVD; also that they don't seem to get very good streaming rights to the movies, leaving a limited window in which people have to find, queue, and watch the movie.
The customers are putting up a fit, as they learn of the changes. People like getting that Netflix envelope in the mail. They like being able to add a movie to their DVD queue quickly and easily - but Netflix is deliberately making it harder to do. They like to watch their movies on their TVs - but Netflix is limited to computers, some handheld platforms, and some gaming platforms, seriously limiting many people's ability to watch a movie with the entire family.
"But wait, there's more!"
Here in the United States, we have a pretty decent broadband internet network. It's not anywhere as speedy as, say, South Korea's, but it does us okay. The question we have to ask, is, can our (somewhat) creaky broadband network handle the kind of high-bandwidth usage that Netflix is encouraging? In this writer's opinion, just watching a TV show on Hulu is sometimes difficult enough, and that's not trying to watch at Blu-Ray Hi-Def settings, either! It seems doubtful that, if we replaced every single DVD customer with a high-speed internet customer, anyone would be able to watch much at all!
This writer lives alone, so doesn't mind watching movies on his computer, or android device, most of the time. But if I get a date for a "movie night," I'll definitely want to pop in a DVD and watch it on the TV, to share the experience.
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