Starting on Nov. 5, Netflix customers who rent Blu-ray movies will have to pay an additional $1 per month, Netflix informed its customers via e-mail.
"As you may know, Blu-ray movies are more expensive than standard definition movies," a Netflix e-mail to all customers said. "As a result, we’re going to start charging $1 a month (plus applicable taxes), in addition to your monthly membership charge, for unlimited access to Blu-ray movies."
The extra dollar will be automatically added to a customer’s bill, and those not interested can edit their account on the Netflix web site.
The pricing change was announced a couple days after Netflix announced its fourth-quarter subscriber and revenue outlook is declining. Netflix will likely end 2008 with between 8.95 million and 9.25 million customers, which is slightly below the anticipated 9.1 million to 9.7 million.
The lower number of subscribers means it will miss out on around $14 million. Netflix attributes the decline in subscribers due to the slumping economy in the United States, which has forced many Americans to cut back on entertainment spending.
Blu-ray is a small portion of Netflix’s rental business, with DVDs still the most popular format rented by subscribers. The company is expanding the amount of content available for download, as Disney and CBS recently were brought on board to expand Netflix’s online download library to 12,000.
American consumers purchased 8.8 million discs in the first nine months of 2008 — higher than the 5.6 million sold throughout 2007 — but still only makes up eight percent of the video market.
This strong push towards downloadable content has created speculation that Netflix may begin to charge customers additional money for receiving regular DVDs in the mail. Not publicly confirmed by Netflix, it would make sense for the company to charge more for DVDs that are physically sent out as opposed to digitally downloaded.
20 Comments
- guest
- Posts: 15288
- Posted on: 09 Oct 08 15:18
Lets do a bank raid take out all your money then I wana see who really has the power.. You or the banks..
We need another depression.. simple we need it to clean up the garbage society that is lazy does not want to work and all they want is to sit and play consoles.. Eat your console mofo!!!
Well, they're saying nothing is wrong because they're trying to contain the panic. However, they're not doing a great job at it. I just renewed my mortgage yesterday and they quoted me 5.35%. I said that I got a quote last week from the bank manager for 5.15%. So they get back to me and say they'll hounor the quote, even though rates have gone up (for 5 year fixed). Funny that the rates for variable went down yesterday by 0.5%. What a nutty world.
I don't know what Netflix is worried about. I would think with winter coming and people not going out as much because of the recession/depression, they would stay home and watch more movies. I guess we'll see.
- guest
- Posts: 15288
- Posted on: 10 Oct 08 00:58
I myself find blue ray equipment to be very expensive I sure wish I had the money to buy it .
- guest
- Posts: 15288
- Posted on: 10 Oct 08 15:51
Hope that helps :P
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