Tuesday, March 21, 2006

DVD Wars - Netflix and BlockBuster

When I was India, I had seen Netflix ads on the internet but never bothered to figure out what it is.A couple of weeks back I got to know about how Netflix has put DVD rental giant Blockbuster out of business in the issue of knowledge@wharton .

At the same time an "NRI"(well he doesn't claim to be) friend of mine suggested subscription to Netflix so I decided to figure out what this Netflix thing is all about. The first stop was their website. It offers 2 week of free trial and unlimited DVDs + no late fees + free both ways shipping. I was amazed at the business model. It seems that Netflix founder got the idea once he had to pay 40$ as late fees to his DVD rental company(which is an obvious reference to Blockbuster).

I checked out their collection and was happy to see a lot of Bollywood movies there.

I was wondering how Netflix is making money! Then I found this from wikipedia.

It was a smart business model but was unfair to the customers. Even now the same practice of 'throttling' exists but it seems they disclose it in their fine print.

Hence finally decided not to subscribe to Netflix!

Blockbuster also decided to open a "me too" DVD rental service, But I don't know if that also suffers from the same "flaw". They are offering one month free trial.

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