Netflix is splitting into two different websites; a mail one + a streaming one

Source.

Hastings chose to cap the week with a post to Netflix's blog apologizing for the way the price hike was communicated—while still justifying that price hike, and mixing in the alarming news that Netflix intends to create a separate company and website to handle its Blu-ray/DVD-by-mail service from now on. The spin-off, Qwikster ("a Netflix company"), will have its own site, which is expected to launch "in a few weeks"; current Netflix subscribers will have to go there to select films, and the site won't be integrated with the Netflix site, which will solely handle streaming content. The bad news for customers is that there will no longer be any crossover between users' disc-by-mail and Watch Instantly queues, ratings, or reviews, so essentially, Netflix is no longer offering a one-stop-shopping simultaneous competitor to the likes of Hulu and GreenCine; it's creating two lesser, separate services, which will bill separately and require wholly separate use.article

tl;dr -- "Qwikster" is going to be their mail service which looks like it might include videogames now. Netflix will be streaming-only. The sites don't communicate with each other. This means if you search for a movie on Netflix and it's not available, it won't tell you if that movie's on Qwikster. You have to open a new tab and search for it on Qwikster to find out if it's there. You'll have separate queues for both sites.

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This comes after Netflix has been losing tons of customers and their stock price is in a freefall. I don't see how this will help their situation. If you don't care about the videogame service, what does this do besides make things more inconvenient?

This is a publically traded company...how much longer are these major shareholders going to stay silent. The price hike is one thing but now the separation of the DVD and stream brands is just asinine. You want to focus on streaming that's one thing, but to split the companies is just a slap in the face to a very loyal customer base. Two companies, two passwords, two queues, two sites that store your cc number....it would make sense if not for the fact that the streaming is still very very unimpressive. Sure they have a few hits but most of it is syfy channel trash, made for tv Steven Segal movies and late night low budget nonsense.mission76

I think they want to split it up because the streaming portion of the business is quite unstable and if it goes bust they want to still be around. Even internet providers areattacking Netflix. They believe they should be compensated for the high use of bandwidth.

Personally, I've had just about enough of Netflix. Even the interface on the PS3 is almost unusable if you want to browse movies.

If this means they will step up on making better titles become available more often on their streaming service, I'm all for it. However, having a price hike and then forcing consumers to be a member of two separate services to get what they used to get from one just seems like a terrible idea.

First they lost Criterion (completely by year's end), then Sony pulled titles for a while, and I believe Starz is about to pull theirs. Come on, Netflix, you were once better than this.

Dumb name, and to me, this is just more evidence Netflix is actively trying to bury their physical media portion of their business.

I will say the move to video games is a positive move. I have been wanting to see that for years.

I'm starting to wonder if Blockbuster might have killed the original CEO and replaced him with a clone. :P

Forget 2012, this is it folks.

This is going to confuse the hell out of people who don't really follow the news about this stuff.

they have almost lost 1 million subscribers. poor decision on their part

One day they will bring the service out in the UK...one day...

Are they deliberately attempting to destroy their business?

I bought a month into Netflix here in Canada and the selection was terrible.

Cancelled that #($# right away

I think they want to split it up because the streaming portion of the business is quite unstable and if it goes bust they want to still be around.

junglist101

Based on what I've read most people think it's actually the opposite. Netflix thinks streaming is the future and they're worried that physical media is dying.

[QUOTE="junglist101"]

I think they want to split it up because the streaming portion of the business is quite unstable and if it goes bust they want to still be around.

JML897

Based on what I've read most people think it's actually the opposite. Netflix thinks streaming is the future and they're worried that physical media is dying.

funny how all this crap happens after all the movie rental stores go out of business :(

I only use streaming so I'm good

Even the interface on the PS3 is almost unusable if you want to browse movies.

What do RIMM and NFLX have in common? Apparently a lot.

I saw it for the first time yesterday after only using it on the PC and 360, and seeing it on my friends Wii when his Xbox Live ran out, the PS3 Netflix is horrible. It started to make me feel sick just scrolling through it.

Legolas_Katarn

Yeah get this, the PS3 UI is actually WORSE then what it use to be.. Thats right they had a way better UI before it.. In giving features that easily allowed you to instantly see movies like the one you have selected with a drop down menu.. I hope this drop in subscribers hits them hard so they could stop half assing the PS3 UI..

I cant believe all their Ad execs couldnt come up with a better name than "Qwickster"

If they can do better than Gamecrawl I'll be all over it. And by "better" I mean " more than a snowball's chance in hell of getting new stuff within a month and shipping that doesn't have a 5-7 day turnaround".

I already trimmed down to streaming only before the hike ( I never watched them ) and went to redboxing or buying stuff I really wanted to see. Would love to get rid of gamefly ( they are god awful in every way sans saving you money ).

[QUOTE="Legolas_Katarn"]

I saw it for the first time yesterday after only using it on the PC and 360, and seeing it on my friends Wii when his Xbox Live ran out, the PS3 Netflix is horrible. It started to make me feel sick just scrolling through it.

sSubZerOo

Yeah get this, the PS3 UI is actually WORSE then what it use to be.. Thats right they had a way better UI before it.. In giving features that easily allowed you to instantly see movies like the one you have selected with a drop down menu.. I hope this drop in subscribers hits them hard so they could stop half assing the PS3 UI..

And it's not even bad enough that they have terrible PS3 UI's but they will randomly change it after you get use to it and it's almost always a change for the worse.

I called to complain one time about them switching me from a half decent one to something I could barely use with almost none of the functionality it had before and they said it was "in response to customer feedback" like ANYONE actually liked it at all.

Its a smart move. They had to raise the price because of the problems with the major DVD distrbuters, and splitting the prices was a better call than raising them as a whole. Blaming netflix is moronic, keeping their original price would have simply meant the death of instant streaming altogether.

Seperating the two seperate companies works out for investments and with it being public wont negatively affect the Netflix brand as a whole if the instant streaming service goes under due to the issues they've been dealing with.

It amazes me how much people **** about CEO's being dumb and making bad decisions when they have such a small understanding of all the goings on of the company. None of us can know, and so to judge so quickly is pointless.

Dislike the name, it'll probably grow on me though; just like with the Wii and Google.

It would work if they actually had a decent selection of movies available on streaming.The-Apostle

Dislike the name, it'll probably grow on me though; just like with the Wii and Google.

[QUOTE="The-Apostle"] It would work if they actually had a decent selection of movies available on streaming.Baconbits2004

What the hell are they thinking? Who is behind all of this? What look like the future is starting to slowly fade away. It's not like I care about this fancy digital distribution thingies, but they are surely making the worst decisions as of now. :shock:

This is a publically traded company...how much longer are these major shareholders going to stay silent. The price hike is one thing but now the separation of the DVD and stream brands is just asinine. You want to focus on streaming that's one thing, but to split the companies is just a slap in the face to a very loyal customer base. Two companies, two passwords, two queues, two sites that store your cc number....it would make sense if not for the fact that the streaming is still very very unimpressive. Sure they have a few hits but most of it is syfy channel trash, made for tv Steven Segal movies and late night low budget nonsense.mission76

What other options do I have then to watch movies? Seriously, no clue how Netflix is screwing up a monopoly :|
They need to just put all their movies on streaming and scrap the renting service.
If Netflix goes bust then I'll have to decide between purchasing everything or pirating.

I find this annoying. The price hike was one thing but to split the service into two seperate sites is pushing it.

Streaming is the way to go anyways... Only if Netflix had new releases like Blockbuster did back in the day then it would be flawless. I'm a current netflix member and I don't plan on cancelling my membership anytime soon.

I'm predicting Netflix will be dead in a year.The-Apostle

It sounds to me that they had planned this split a long time ago and just announced everything bass-ackwards. They should have announced the split first and THEN the pricing change. That could have made all the difference in the world. Hell after hearing about the split, the change in billing makes all the sense to me. But not the other way around.

[QUOTE="The-Apostle"]I'm predicting Netflix will be dead in a year.ice_radon