By now, you might have heard that Netflix and Warner Brothers reached a deal this week that will prevent new releases from the studio being available for 28 days after retail availability. Warner Brothers s attempting to increase DVD and Blu-Ray sales by removing all new films from the rental market. Of course, they don't appear to be making a similar deal with Blockbuster or Hollywood video. Perhaps that's because, as I discussed two days ago, Netflix and Red Box are dominating the rental market.
Here's the rub: by not making your recent releases available for a month, I'm less likely to purchase a new Warner Brothers release, and I suspect I'm not alone. Not only will I wait a month and rent other films, but I'll seriously reconsider buying any new Warners release new. Maybe I'll just wait for it to hit the "used" market, on Amazon or at second-run retailers. If they want more money so badly, they made a bad decision by cutting off the rental market.
If you're wondering, "so what? what's another month?", imagine this: if this stunt works, then the other studios are going to follow suit, and assuming that you'd rather drive to Best Buy or Target or Wal Mart to buy a movie you haven't seen. If that somehow works, then they'll start looking at "classic" or top tier titles from the catalog and withhold those, in the hopes you'll pony up another $30-70 for "Deluxe Editions" on top of your Netflix rental price.
I have Netflix precisely because I don't want to buy everything that looks interesting. Sometimes I'd like to rent it first, but if I really like a movie, I'll probably pick it up. If the film is only available to buy, I'll put that film way down on my queue and forget about it. Yes, there are other movies to watch - which is another perfectly reasonable reaction to my grousing - and there are so many of them that maybe users will just bypass Warner Brothers altogether.
For example, there's been a LOT of complaining about New Line (a Warner Brothers subsidiary) deciding to put out The Lord of the Rings films on Blu-Ray in their theatrical cuts, when it's abundantly clear that this is a cash grab. Obviously the extended cuts will be on Blu-Ray some time before The Hobbit hits theatres, so New Line thinks they can sell us both versions when they'd easily fit on the same disc. Now I won't be able to rent them and see if it's even worth the picture upgrade for a month, unless I want to drop $70 for the boxed set. Buyer beware.
This is, in some ways, just a slight annoyance, but it says that the studios are concerned about losing money, and that they're willing to negotiate with the new rental giant to remove films in a way that they aren't elsewhere. Netflix fans are being hosed, Warner Brothers is indicating that money is more important than customer relationships, and the other studios are peeking over the wall to see if the suckers will eat it up. And maybe they will. I don't know. I'm not happy about this at all, because the upside has yet to manifest itself.
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So as to not leave everyone on a sour note, may I present to you this French interpretation of Star Wars.... at least, I think that's what it is...
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