Comments on: Video stores getting crushed by Web

As a result of heightened online competition, the country's second largest video-rental chain seeks bankruptcy protection

[alexbcnd]

Netflix already does on-demand

"I wouldn't think twice about dumping it the second someone
offers a wide range of films at a good price and then delivers
high quality images to me over my Internet connection."

Netflix started offering "Watch Instantly" this summer, it started
with over a 1000 title, and has steadily increased (current
number over 5000).

It is by no means perfect, but it helps, most of the problems are
caused by our antiquated networks that give us horrible
bandwidth, the day we get at least half of the bandwidth that
Japan or Korea have right now, on-demand multimedia
distribution will be a much more appealing alternative.

We might be able to get rid of our cable subscriptions. Well
that's an idea, I think I'll call it TV over IP (TVOIP). ;o)

[francissawyer]

say bye to quality

Yes, let's all look forward to even more heavily compressed downloadable crap, that you can watch while you're hunched over your keyboard.

Who would've thought that we will soon have generations of people who have never seen a high-quality picture, despite having better TVs than any previous generation.

Not to mention the lack of anything aesthetically pleasing or collectible to accompany movies or music. For your money you get a compressed, DRM-crippled FILE that it's your responsibility to continually back up through the years.

Welcome to the transition of everything to worthless crap.

[Renegade Knight]

Crap is as Crap Does.

Yeah, I know what you mean about internet crap and bad video. I moved to netflix. Most video I see over the net sucks. If someone wants to win over direct rentals they will have to solve the problem. Until then, only the people who like crap are going to buy crap.

[cpto]

Stores - crushed. Downloading - we'll see.

No video store I've seen can approach the offerings of Netflix on foreign and specialized DVD offerings, nor on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray releases.

VOD - at least on my area - requires a subscription to a premium channel if you want to VOD any programs from it.

As for downloading? Maybe when we approach Japanese, Korean, and other countries in available bandwidth. But most downloads I see now are not HD, don't have Dolby or DTS 5.1 (or higher) sound, are not involving media on my computer, and have really lousy picture and sound on my large HDTV set and A/V receiver.

I'm sure that broadband will eventually cause problems for Netflix. But at present, even though I'm retired, there are only so many movies I can watch in a given time. I have a list of about 100 on Netflix, and I typically get about 1 movie a day to watch. That's pretty sufficient for me. I see no reason to order movies on line I don't have time to watch immediately--especially because many of them I've seen give me a limited time to view them. We're talking about their time, not mine.

I also enjoy the fact that I can get some movies in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, although I still buy those that I enjoy and will watch more than once. How many sites will offer HD movies with full sound capabilities? And, will they even make the extra features available? (I don't understand why Netflix just doesn't package the second "special features" disks with the original. I wonder how many people really pay to rent a disk that is not the movie, but merely discusses it, and which is not guaranteed to arrive at the same time as the feature program.

Because the Internet has conditioned all of us to free entertainment I wonder how successful renting a movie will be. I don't think ads will work because they're out of proportion on many sites. For example, is it worth watching a 30-second ad for a one-minute new report? Not to me. The noise to signal ratio is way too high.

Getting around curmudgeons like me may be the biggest obstacle for on-line provision of entertainment. I want to watch video on my schedule. I don't want it to expire before I have time to watch it. I want to be able to go back and review parts I misunderstood or which I didn't appreciate.

I can do all those things above with a DVD, but not with a downloaded file.

[grannie12001]

Movies online?

Its so bad these people are loosing there jobs because of the internet, but I believe there is a couple of places already that you can perscribe to movies over the internet...good quality too.

[xneexx0l2h]

Translated to English

It's so bad these people are losing their jobs because of the internet, but I believe there are already places where you can subscribe to movies over the internet; the movie's quality is good too.

[bvdon]

Long way to go for broadband movies

We have a very long way to go to get high quality over
broadband connection -- unless you want to sacrifice quality.

Sadly, people have sacrificed quality for music. We used to get a
nice vinyl record, then 44.1Khz CDs. Now we get the over
compressed lo-fi mp3 files. I will not buy music online until they
get it back up to the 44.1khz standard of a CD.

[markdoiron]

A Slightly Changed Business Model

What if you take the NetFlix business model, but without the mailing of physical media back and forth? I order a movie from NetFlix, then it downloads over night while my Internet connection is generally idle. I have the movie to watch tomorrow night, which is still quicker than U.S. mail. And the proprietor has saved most of the two-way shipping cost (there's some minor expense for the broadband connection he uses).

--mark d.

[Hanakane]

Better Check Netflix Again!

In view of the author's comments below, he would be well-advised to check netflix.com again! INSTANT VIEWING has been available for quite some time - very nice quality - nice to watch when DVD's are enroute - NETFLIX RULES!!!! BYE BYE BLOCKBUSTER hehehehehehe **Netflix users....but I wouldn't think twice about dumping it the second someone offers a wide range of films at a good price and then delivers high quality images to me over my Internet connection.**