Streaming Media Maddness

As we near the end of 2011, I've been reading the news about the status of streaming media. Since Netflix decided to raise their prices on DVD rentals in July, people have been complaining and leaving the service. But, RedBox, one of their competitors, also raised their rental prices by 20% in October. On Dec 8, 2011, Verizon announced that they would be partnering with RedBox on a streaming service. Anyone who produces media is partnering with someone to create a channel for their content. This is all starting to look like a mad rush to get a piece of Netflix's streaming media pie.

The main complaint about Netflix's streaming service is that you basically can't find the latest movies in their streaming library. Their partnership with Starz will be ending soon and the fear is that this will only get worse as the competition from other providers for digital versions of the latest movies increases. I'm sure the rights to stream media is costly for Netflix and they probably decided that they needed to accelerate the transition of their customer base to streaming media. They probably didn't expect this big of a backlash, but renting DVD's by mail is not where the future is at. The problem is that as more companies try to figure out how to make money off of streaming media, it's starting to get just as expensive as a cable TV subscription.

What we want:

• On demand content
• One affordable subscription price for all content
• Streaming media that scales to our bandwidth
• Easy navigation system
• Large media library

Netfix does all of this quite well. Despite the complaints of some, the performance of their streaming network is far better then anything else out there right now. As for their content library, I don't care if they don't have the latest content as long as the selection stays fresh. You are always going to pay a premium for the latest show and movies, no matter what service you have.