The 28-day rental moratorium on Warner Bros. newly released DVDs and Blu-ray discs is a first for Netflix, but it probably wont be the last. Netflix hopes to reach similar deals with other major movie studios later this year, using the Warner Bros. agreement announced Wednesday as a template.
Warner Bros. Home Entertainments scheduled Jan. 19 releases of “The Invention of Lying” and “Whiteout” will be among the first movies that wont be immediately available to Netflixs 11.1 million customers.
The compromise gives Time Warner Inc.s movie unit - and potentially other studios - a chance to boost the sales of DVDs, [...]

It was a close call, but BellKors Pragmatic Chaos narrowly beat out a rival group called the Ensemble for the Netflix Prize, the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company said at an awards ceremony in New York.
For those more excited by algorithms than touchdowns, following the Netflix Prize has been like the Super Bowl. And the winning method could have implications well beyond Netflix recommendations; any business that uses peoples preferences to sell products could learn from the exercise.
Tens of thousands of people have pored over the problem since the contest began in October 2006. At last count, there were more than [...]

The DVD rental company has not yet announced a winner for its first $1 million challenge to improve its system of recommending movies that subscribers may enjoy, but it is already indicating there will be a sequel.
In a post on the Web forum set up for the current Netflix prize, Netflix Inc.s chief product officer, Neil Hunt, said Netflix will announce specific details of a second contest in late September, when it divulges the winner of the first one.
The original contest was launched in 2006 to improve predictions on Netflixs site by at least 10 percent. The idea was to [...]

Once just an incongruous experiment amid the burgers and fries at McDonalds restaurants, Redbox has emerged as the largest operator of DVD-rental kiosks, with more than 15,400 vending machines set up to dispense $1-per-day discs in supermarkets and discount stores.
With Redbox opening an average of one kiosk per hour to lure budget-conscious consumers, Hastings is concerned that this upstart might upstage Netflix, whose cheapest mail-order plan costs $5 for two movie rentals in a month.
“By the end of the year, kiosks will likely be our No. 1 competitor,” Hastings said in a recent conference call. “There are already more kiosks [...]

But the performance didnt live up to the high hopes of investors, causing Netflixs recently high-flying stock to dive after the results were released Thursday.
The company added 920,000 customers during the first three months of the year, boosting its first-quarter profit 68 percent to $22.4 million, or 37 cents per share. That compared with $13.3 million, or 21 cents per share, at the same time last year.
Netflix ended March with 10.3 million subscribers, up from 9.4 million in December.
Revenue rose 21 percent to $394 million.
But Netflix didnt profit from the growth as much as Wall Street anticipated, partly because the [...]

Netflix ended the period with 10.3 million subscribers, the Los Gatos, California-based company said yesterday in a statement. Some shareholders expected more, analysts said.
“Investors are nitpicking,” Michael Olson, an analyst for Piper Jaffray Cos. in Minneapolis, said in an interview. “The stock has had a big run so every metric needed to be perfect. In our eyes every metric was perfect.” He recommends investors buy the shares and doesnt own them.
Netflix reported [...]

The new rates announced Monday are being driven by the growing appetite for the Blu-ray format among Netflixs more than 10 million subscribers.
About 1 million of the subscribers are requesting Blu-ray discs instead of standard DVDs, and Blu-ray discs cost about 30 percent more. That means Netflixs profit margins are being squeezed as it expands its high-definition inventory.
The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company had been imposing a $1 monthly surcharge for Blu-ray rentals since September, regardless of how much the basic subscription plan costs.
Effective April 27, Netflix will adopt a sliding scale that will slap higher Blu-ray fees on plans that [...]

Blockbuster also will sell TiVos DVRs in stores and on its Web site, the companies said today in a statement. Financial terms werent disclosed. The Blockbuster On Demand service, offering film rentals and sales, will be available through TiVo devices in the second half of 2009, the companies said.
Blockbuster and Netflix, its mail-order competitor, are seeking new outlets for movies as more consumers look online for entertainment. Netflix began renting films on TiVo, the Alviso, California-based DVR pioneer, last year and has focused more on Internet [...]

Fourth-quarter shipments fell 32 percent in the U.S. and Canada to 453.6 million DVDs, according to Los Angeles-based Digital Entertainment Group. The drop is the biggest since the industry-funded researcher started keeping track in 1997.
The decline is being fueled by viewer shifts toward rental services such as Netflix Inc., the U.S. recession and technology that makes it easier to stream Web videos to televisions.
“Making a movie just wont be as profitable as [...]