Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO
(Credit: Netflix)Although it has no immediate plans to do so, online video rental service Netflix is hoping to bring its video-streaming service to Sony's PlayStation 3, Nintendo's Wii, and Apple's iPhone, CEO Reed Hastings said in a recent interview with Reuters.
Hastings told Reuters that his hope is that Netflix's streaming service will eventually "be on all the game consoles, all the Blu-ray players, (and) all the Internet TVs." But as Hastings pointed out, his company has signed a deal with Microsoft to deliver Netflix streaming exclusively to the Xbox 360 in the video game space.
The chances of that changing anytime soon are slim, though Hastings said his company is "working in parallel" to achieve his goal of bringing Netflix streaming to all the aforementioned devices. While Netflix is likely to offer such a service on the iPhone and iPod Touch "over time," he said there is little chance of Netflix video streaming becoming available in the App Store "in the short term."
Despite rumors indicating that a Netflix app is already on its way to the App Store, Hastings would not give a timetable: "(With) movie watching, we are not focused on mobile yet, but (instead) on the TV, on Blu-ray, and on the video game consoles. We will get to mobile eventually, including the iPhone."
Hastings also chimed in on the recent announcement that Blockbuster might be closing up to 960 retail locations. He told Reuters that the closures "don't really benefit" Netflix.
Netflix's focus, Hastings, said, is on streaming video and maintaining a big catalog of available titles. Blockbuster, he said, "competes on doing the inexpensive new releases." He said Redbox would be the company that would benefit most from the closure of Blockbuster stores.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
LOS ANGELES--Rather than waging a war to make consumers choose sides between digital downloads and physical media, some content makers are calling a truce.
Instead of defending Blu-ray Disc's longevity as a physical format or predicting when downloads would finally reign supreme, they focused on how the two together can benefit consumers and content makers alike. It's as if two high school girls from opposing cliques just realized that if they team up, they're actually likely to attract even more attention and popularity than ever.
"It's a mistake to think it's either a physical (media) or an electronic (download) business," said Danny Kaye, vice president of research and technology strategy at 20th Century Fox. "That's arbitrary. They will coexist."
Blu-ray players will have their day in the sun before movie downloads become the norm.
(Credit: Samsung)It's been widely assumed that digital downloads will wipe out physical disc media as soon as broadband Internet access becomes ubiquitous. But there are plenty of details to work out until that happens, such as consumers' continuing endorsement of DVD as an entertainment format.
NPD revealed at the DisplaySearch HDTV Conference here Tuesday that while DVD sales are flat, they still dwarf downloads. The old standard-definition disc format still stands tall over Blu-ray Disc, but that will change eventually. What's certain, is that most people who favor DVDs won't be skipping Blu-ray entirely to start downloading all their entertainment.
"Consumer habits change slowly," said Russ Crupnick, senior industry analyst for the NPD Group. "Discs are not likely to go away anytime soon."
The numbers support this. NPD asked 1,500 consumers that own high-definition TVs and subscribe to HD channel services how they spent their discretionary income on movies. Fifty-two percent said they buy movies or TV shows on DVD, 29 percent rent movies or TV shows on DVD, and 6 percent download entertainment, either to rent or own.
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