Netflix Set to Increase Blu-Ray Stock
“The war is over, and Blu-Ray won,” Netflix’s vice president, Steve Swasey tells me, in response to Toshiba’s recent decision to discontinue the production of HD-DVD hardware.
Netflix didn’t drive the nail into the format’s coffin, but its decision to drop support shortly after Warner’s abandonment certainly didn’t help matters. The fact that the world’s largest online movie rental service pulled out right around the same time as retailers BestBuy and Wal-Mart was, in the end, more than the poor format could take.
Prior to its own announcement on February 11–one week before Toshiba’s own resignation–Netflix was positioning itself as neutral, not buying into either side of the war. Of course we follow consumer adoption.
“We were agnostic all the way through until we saw the clear announcement in January,” says Swasey. “Ninety-three percent of the players sold in the following weeks were Blu-Ray. That was pretty clear.”
Prior to the big shift in fortunes, however, Swasey notes that renting amongst early adopters was pretty evenly split between the two camps–though that number was only a drop in the bucket up against the some 7.5 million people who use the service.
“Consumers sat on the sidelines. They did not want to invest in a new technology, especially since only 30 percent of America has high definition TVs. It’s an expensive upgrade,” he says.
The company didn’t provide numbers, but Swasey notes that the amount of next-generation players that were purchased was somewhere in the ballpark of one million–around the same number of Nintendo Wiis that were picked up in the first week of the console’s release.
So, how well was Netflix able to meet the minor demand for next-gen discs? We’d heard a few complaints here and there on the topic, but Swasey insists that the company hasn’t fielded a huge number of complaints on the subject.
“There hasn’t been an outcry,” he explains. “Sometimes we can’t meet the exact demands. We’re like any company–we don’t have unlimited resources, regrettably. Sometimes we don’t have as many copies of a title as are being requested–especially new releases. There’s a surge in demand for those.”
In light of recent announcements, however, Blu-Ray devotees can expect an increased availability of their chosen format. “We have a certain amount allocated for acquiring discs, and when we’re not requiring one, we can put that amount toward acquiring the other. We should be requiring more of the Blu-Ray titles.”
HD-DVD owners, meanwhile, have the slight consolation of knowing that they will still be able to rent titles in their retired format until the current stock is completely worn out.
Original post by Brian Heater