Nintendo 3DS Gets Netflix Update

Since Nintendo’s 3DS launched back in March, we’ve been hanging on by a thread, counting the minutes until this week’s eShop update. And no, it’s not just because Extreme Hangman 2 is finally dropping on DSiWare: Netflix’s streaming video application will be available on 3DS as well. Finally a chance to bring Agent Cooper on the go and make those smug short-form video users in Europe and Japan quit their braggin’!

Nintendo revealed as much with an early announcement of its weekly eShop, DSi, and Wii Shop updates, also detailing several games that will be available for purchase across the Wii, DSi, and 3DS. We’re particularly fond of the Virtual Console Game & Watch Gallery coming to 3DS, but fans of super old-school sports games may be more excited to hear about Baseball being this week’s other retro re-release.

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Netflix Launching Completely New Price Structure?

Netflix hadn’t hinted at any upcoming plans to change the services it offers, but NewTeeVee spotted an unadvertised DVD-only plan on its site a few days ago, and an anonymous tipster from within the company indicates that’s just the start. The DVD.Netflix.com page offers unlimited DVDs by mail, per month (one at a time) for $7.99, which slots it between the standard DVD & streaming combo plans and a $4.99 offering that gives just two DVDs per month.

According to the tipster we spoke to, Netflix is planning to change its pricing entirely, by also implementing a streaming only plan with no discs for $7.99, and jacking up the minimum pricetag for combined services to $15.98 from the current $9.99 it has charged since November. They indicated the change would take place tomorrow night around 9 p.m., with customers notified by email and no plans to grandfather any of the old pricing setups along.

With aggressive expansion plans pressing forward and its costs to acquire content rising sharply, hiking the price by 50 percent on many of its 20 million+ subscribers could be the easiest way to make the numbers add up, it could be just those subscribers who are left to determine exactly what Watch Instantly streaming (or DVD access) is worth to them.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

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Netflix Streaming Through Your Wii – Coming Soon – Really

Here is a piece of news from the Netflix Blog…

Jessie Becker here from Marketing and we’ve got some great news to share. We are in the final phase of getting ready for the launch of streaming to Wii. Today, we shipped out instant streaming discs for the Wii to some of our Netflix members. Their feedback will ensure that we deliver a great experience to everyone when we launch. Instantly watching movies and TV episodes from Netflix via Wii will be available soon at no additional cost – all you need is a Netflix unlimited plan starting at $8.99 a month, a Wii console and a broadband Internet connection.

If you have reserved your disc already, you don’t need to do anything – we will send you an email as soon as we ship the disc. If you haven’t, reserve your disc today at www.netflix.com/Wii and stay tuned for a launch announcement!

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Netflix Stock Rises On Rumors Of Amazon Acquisition

Stock in Netflix Inc. surged earlier this week on rumors that the online movie rental firm would be acquired by a tech giant like Amazon.com.

So far, the rumors have remained just that. But the speculation highlights how the Los Gatos firm that revolutionized the way people rent DVDs has emerged as a big player in an evolving world of Internet video.

Netflix’s strong suit is that it already has the technology, experience and distribution deals in place to stream movies and TV episodes, said analyst Tim Bajarin.

“One of the things (Hollywood) studios are coming to grips with is that DVD sales, especially through retail, are declining,” said Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies Inc. of Campbell. “The distribution of movies over the Internet is going to increase.”

Amazon and Netflix officials declined to comment on the rumors.

Bajarin also noted there was speculation that Microsoft or Google might make a better partner for Netflix, which has more than 10.3 million subscribers. They rent about 2.2 million DVDs each day online and receive them in the mail, bypassing retail outlets like the once-mighty Blockbuster.

Netflix offers more than 100,000 movies and TV episodes in standard or Blu-ray discs. But since 2007, it has also been expanding its catalog of 12,000 titles available for instant online viewing.

It has secured deals to stream content to a TV monitor hooked to a variety of Internet-connected devices, including Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console, TiVo, a Roku video player and new Blu-ray players from Samsung and LG.

Netflix hasn’t announced how much streaming video it serves up.

However, Microsoft said in February that Netflix members streamed 1.5 billion minutes of content on the Xbox 360 in the first three months the service was available.

Last week, Netflix said Sony will make streaming available on Internet-ready Bravia TVs. Vizio will have similar models for…

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Is Amazon Looking To Acquire Netflix?

Shares of Netflix stock rose five percent yesterday on indications that Amazon may be looking to acquire the popular movie rental service, according to the Memphis Business Journal.

The paper reported Netflix shares (NASDAQ: NFLX) closed at $42.19 on Monday, up 5.29 percent after trading as high as $42.40 earlier in the day.

Netflix stock has more than doubled since hitting a 52-week low of $17.90 on Oct. 27.

Seattle-based Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) offers its own video-on-demand service, which competes directly with Netflix’s online video streaming service.

Neither company would comment on the rumor.

On Slice of SciFi #219 we reported on how Netflix was looking to address the future of the video rental industry when their core business model of delivering DVDs through the mail begins to wane. Netflix was exploring ways to deliver more on-line content but one thing holding them back was licensing agreements with Hollywood studios. If this merger goes through, consumers could benefit from a greater selection of movies offered between Netflix and the Amazon Unbox service.

Netflix Streaming Available Through Sony BRAVIA TVs

Netflix has made the migration as the world’s largest online movie rental service to your living room by partnering with Sony Electronics to enable Netflix subscribers to instantly watch movies streamed from Netflix on Sony’s BRAVIA Internet Video-capable HDTVs. Those who own older BRAVIA models can also use it with Sony’s BRAVIA Internet video link module.

Starting from the fall, Netflix members who are on an unlimited plan will be able to use the Sony BRAVIA Internet Video-capable HDTVs, letting them watch over 12,000 movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix. Netflix members will need to fork out a minimum of $8.99 monthly for unlimited streaming from their library.

Press Release

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Netflix Upgrade Coming This Fall To The Xbox 360

Here is an announcement from the Netflix blog.  The upgrade sounds very cool and I’m looking forward to testing it out.

Hi, Catherine Fisher here from Netflix Corporate Communications. Microsoft swept E3 today with some exciting new ways to experience the Xbox 360. The news we are most excited about, of course, involves Netflix. Available this Fall, if you are an Xbox Gold LIVE member, you will be able to browse and add movies and TV episodes to your instant Queue directly from your Xbox 360 – you don’t have to go to your computer.

And with the announcement of Xbox LIVE Party, you will be able to simultaneously watch movies on your Xbox 360 with up to seven friends – bantering back and forth about what you are watching. More than one million Xbox LIVE Gold members have already enjoyed more than 1.5 billion minutes of movies and TV episodes via Netflix since November 2008, and we hope you are as excited about the new ways to enjoy movies and TV episodes from Netflix on your Xbox 360 as we are.

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Mobile Manager For Netflix Puts Your Movie Queue On Your Phone

Windows Mobile only: There’s no shortage of Netflix applications for popular mobile platforms like the iPhone or Android, but Microsoft has just released a really nice looking Netflix Mobile application complete with streaming movie previews.

Apart from the preview feature—which does set Netflix Mobile apart from its other mobile counterparts—this app handles most of the common features you’d expect, like queue management, search, listings, and ratings.

Mobile Netflix Mobile is a free download, Windows Mobile only—at least for a limited time, according to the download page. Thanks Louis!

Netflix Launches New Personalization Features

Netflix has posted an update to their online streaming service.  The competition is heating up, and Netflix looks like it’s still a serious contender for online streaming content.  With the news that BlockBuster is entering the on demand market, this competition is always beneficial for the end user.

The features include:

Taste Preferences: The ability to set taste preferences across a variety of moods (e.g. feel-good, dark, goofy, gritty, etc.); storylines (e.g. courtroom, dinosaurs, mid-life crisis, etc.); qualities (e.g. critically-acclaimed, visually-striking, etc.); and other category types, on a new, easier, three button system.

Netflix’s Chief Product Officer Speaks About Streaming Issues

This was just posted on the Netflix Blog….

This is Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer at Netflix.

There’s been some blog swirl about Netflix streaming delivery, and I’d like to explain what we are doing to improve our streaming delivery. Our aspiration is to deliver to everyone the best bitrate that their broadband connection can support.

Congestion Could Affect Some Users, But Not Others, at Some Times, but Not Always

Content from Netflix originates on CDN servers that are distributed around the US (just as our DVD shipping centers are) so that the data doesn’t have to traverse the Internet backbones to get to our customers, but instead can usually reach its destination via regional and metro networks that have much higher aggregate bandwidth. This means that if there is any congestion and slowdown, it will be different in different regions (by Internet topology, which isn’t completely tied to geography). Hence some customers may be affected, while others are not. Also, routing to different ISPs in the same region may be quite different, thus performance may also be quite different, even for neighbors, if they are connected to different ISPs. Moreover, congesting points can rise and fall with ISP configuration changes and other conditions.

Different Content, Different Devices, Different Characteristics

Finally, different titles, and different encodes for different playback device types, may come from different CDNs or different servers at a particular CDN, so may have different paths and different bottlenecks. Accordingly, customers may see better performance on Xbox than their PC, or vice-versa. Equivalently, some titles may stream unaffected, while others suffer congestion. There is no purposeful discrimination between different clients – we want them all to perform very well.

Getting to More Consistent Delivery by Routing Around the Problems Read more

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