Netflix Shares and User Base Drops

Since we're on the topic of big brand companies going crazy, we might as well chat about Netflix.  Remember a few months ago when they announced the changes to their service pricing?  And remember a lot of people got pretty upset about the matter.  Then after their current customer's were already rocked by the pricing change; they almost immediately announced that they would be moving their DVD Rental Service from under the Netflix brand to the new Qwikster brand name.  Which seemed kind of crazy, but at least they were still supporting the DVD Rental customers.

And yes, a bunch of customer's got equally upset about the name change to Qwikster as well.  This change meant that both your DVD Rental queue and your Instant Streaming queue would be in two different locations and not associated with each other.  The only thing Netflix was looking to add to Qwikster were game rentals for game consoles (like the Gamefly rental service).

Very shortly after revealing the Qwikster brand, Netflix decided to scrap it's plans to even start up Qwikster in the first place claiming they have listened to their customers.  So for Netflix the last several months have been pretty busy with them running in circles and getting nothing accomplished.

And nothing screams 'We have no clue what we are doing.  But we're doing it like a boss' to your customers than to publicly change your business plan so many times and only end up back where you were to start with and leaving your customer's just as empty handed for all the trouble.  And by the way things look, hopefully they learned their lesson.

It was reported earlier this week that Netflix has lost something in the neighborhood of 800,000 subscribers.  I don't care who you are or what your business is.  But 800,000 subscribers is a metric crap-ton of former customers (and lost business).  And due to the all of the fiasco and canceled accounts their stock prices dropped around 37% on Monday alone.  This isn't good Netflix.

So what does it look like going forward?  Netflix has already announced new content would be making it's way to the service over the coming months.  And a bunch has already been added with them scoring deals with the AMC and CW networks.  So as a current user/customer, I certainly hope they continue to add more content.  Especially since their streaming content is still nowhere as large or full as their DVD offerings.  Maybe with time that will change.  And for their sakes, they need to remember lessons learned from the last couple of months when it comes to them looking to mix things up.

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Netflix Scraps Qwikster Plans

Announced today that Netflix has already killed Qwikster.  Yep, you read that right.  Apparently, they listened to their customers (about freakin' time). That managing two websites with two different movie queues would be too much of a hassle.  So, Netflix decided to pull the plug on moving the DVD Rental portion of their business over to their new brand: Qwikster.

This has got to be one of the quickest company deaths in history (aside from children's lemonade stands), lol

Anyways, existing and future Netflix subscriber's will continue to be able to use and access the queues from the traditional Netflix website as they always have.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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Netflix on the Acer Iconia a500 Works without Root!

It's no secret that the only feature I am lacking in my Acer Iconia a500 is the ability to stream movies via Netflix Instant Streaming.  This afternoon I was doing my usually weekly Google search for a solution.  I was even open to the idea of looking for a way to root my Iconia a500 to get this ability.  But to my surprise, I accidentally stumbled across a great discovery (which requires no root, and since 3.2 isn't easily rooted on the Iconia a500 I figured it was worth a shot).  I will go on record to say that I did not come up with this solution, the hardwork belongs to ezterry and snickle at the XDA Developers forums.

I found a link to the XDA Developers forums which provided a promising solution patched by ezterry and refined by snickle on the forums.

Apparently, ezterry made the initial edits allowing the Netflix apk to work on the Iconia a500.  But according to snickle's post, screen rotation didn't work (I didn't try ezterry's apk first).  So snickle did a little refining to it and got screen rotation to work.  

I can verify that snickle's version of the apk does work.  When I initially ran it, after logging in to the service via the app, I got a white screen with some errors in the top corner.  I closed out of the app and relaunched and it worked just fine on my Acer Iconia a500 running stock (non-rooted) Honeycomb 3.2.

For ezterry's solution:

 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=18058380&postcount=147

And for snickle's solution (the one I tried): 

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1289346

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some old episodes of Doctor Who to watch!

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Why I dumped Netflix' DVD Offering & Instant Streamings Future

A few months back, we were greeted with the headlines and soon after an email from Netflix explaining that current prices where going to be raised for new and current subscribers.  Essentially, the existing offering of 1 DVD rental at a time + Instant Streaming cost user's around $10.00 USD.  With the new price rates, this same plan jumps to a about $16.00 USD.  I, like many loyal Netflix customer's felt this was pretty much unfair and probably uncalled for.  Feeling jilted by a company I have paid monthly subscription fees to for years now, I started looking elsewhere for my source of movies and television entertainment.  After trying several different services and experiencing what content they had to offer, I just couldn't find anything with the same collections of content that I enjoyed as much as Netflix has.

This led me to having to eat some crow, and keep my Netflix sub.  However, I did dump the DVD by Mail offering prior to the date the rate increase went effective.  Instead, my business for DVD rentals will go to one of two places: our local video store or the Redbox DVD services.  I will not be taking advantage of the DVD by Mail offerings.  I am still able to enjoy my Doctor Who back episodes, my Battlestar Galactica and the occassional, cheesy B-Sci-Fi flick.

As you have probably already seen in the headlines today, Netflix is making some internal changes regarding the DVD by Mail offerings and moving that entire offering into a seperate service called 'Qwikster'.  Checkout my article coming later today concerning these changes for DVD by Mail customers.

So what does this mean for Instant Streaming only customers?  Not much right now, nothing is changing regarding that service.  In a recent blog post on the official Netflix Blog; Reed Hastings (CEO/Cofounder of Netflix) ensures us that in the coming months a 'substantial amount of new content' will be hitting the Streaming Service.  Which is great news.  But I beg for one thing, and only one thing.  Please don't get rid of existing content when new stuff is added (unless it's the Starz Play stuff that will be going away next year anyways).

Instant Streaming is definitely the way of the future, as Netflix undoubtedly understands.  With the adoption of mobile devices being ever gradually increased every day and Netflix being a player in the mobile entertainment area with their Mobile app (unless you're on Android which then becomes really, really fragmented as far as Netflix is concerned); it's no surprise to me that they will push heavy in this area of their business.

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