YouTube is attempting to build upon its popularity by offering full length features on a rental basis. The company has been in talks with several movie studios about potential ways to make this possible. Their biggest hurdle is attempting to get users to pay for premium content when free content is readily available on sites more »

Each day, headlines are screaming about plunging profits and frightening layoffs. However, Netflix seems to be actually making money and has experienced a major period of growth during the company’s fourth quarter. Profits rose 45 percent, a fact that the company attributes to their new streaming video feature, which allows viewers to instantly watch movies over their computer. The company also offers low cost subscription plans that allow you to access their extensive library of DVDs.

I just received an e-mail from Netflix saying that there will be an increase in the subscription fee for unlimited access to Blu-ray movies. The increase is a whopping $1. Assuming they aren’t singling me out, this should effect plenty of Netflix subscribers. This new fee will start on November 5th, 2008. If you don’t more »

Netflix has passed another milestone in the by-mail DVD rental business, they have passed the 100,000 movie mark. In addition Netflix now also has over 8,000 movies and TV shows available to watch instantly along with approximately 7.5 million customers. Netflix has also surpassed rival Blockbuster who currently has just 80,000 movies available for their more »

While Netflix has already announced they will be stopping the rentals of HD DVD titles, they have also announced some good news, but also hinted at some possible bad news as well.

With HD DVD now leaving, Netflix is confident enough to announce they will soon be offering four times as many titles on Blu-ray. This will bring the total of available Blu-ray titles from 400 to around 1,500.

Then in the little hint of posible bad news,

“It seems apparent that content will cost us more,” McCarthy said. “Whether we raise prices will be entirely a function of churn, subscriber acquisition costs and gross margins.”

In the spirit of competition with downloadable movie rentals Apple has announced a special weekly movie rental that will be just 99 cents. The special movies will keep the same restrictions as regular movies to include having 30 days to watch them and 24 hours to complete the movie once it has been started. The more »

King 5 has a nice little video, giving us a brief look into one of the fifty-two hubs that Netflix has nationwide. This location is the Northwest hub and it is just south of Tacoma, Washington. They have 40 employees and can process 110,000 movies per day. At least one employee is averaging around 950 more »

Apple has released the long awaited and once delayed “Take 2″ update for the AppleTV. Current owners can get the download for free by going to Settings, then Update Software. The update took less than two minutes to download and about ten minutes (with quite a few restarts and screen flickering) to actually install itself. more »

It seems the HD DVD camp just cannot catch a break lately, with the latest bad news coming courtesy of Netflix. The announcement means the end of HD DVD rentals as they have decided to go exclusive with Blu-ray. Netflix had been offering HD DVD rentals since they first came to market back in early more »