Netflix

[Slamz]

Young people won't pay for content. They'll torrent it or dig around the web for unlicensed streaming sites and view stuff that way.

I would tend to disagree here. I think iTunes and Amazon demonstrated that what most people want is convenience, and there is a price point where even young, tech savvy people will pay for the convenience of finding what you want in 5 seconds rather than having to search Pirate Bay and then risk shitty download speeds, missing file sections, bad quality, etc. How many young people are buying their music through iTunes now just because Pirate Bay is too much of a pain in the ass?

And the bigger the file is, the more of a pain in the ass it's going to be.

Of course, the more it costs, the more attractive piracy will be. For $15 per movie, piracy looks pretty good. What about 99 cents for a rental, though? What about unlimited streaming for $8/month?

And a quick glance shows me they have Tron (the new one), Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass and The Expendables now -- so it's not like it's all movies from the 80's or Thailand. (Still no "Live Free or Die Hard", though.)


In the end, I think movie studios are going to have to come to the same realization as the music industry:
It's better to make some money off of cheap, available, high quality online offerings than to make no money because you have made piracy into a relatively attractive offer.

If Netflix is finished, it will only be because Apple, Amazon or some other player made a big new deal and took the rug out from under them. And right now, there's no indication that this is coming. Apple wants to sell hardware, not movies. Amazon wants it, but I suspect they want it on their own terms and aren't yet up to the task of bending the movie industry to their will. Netflix is still the best game in town.