News and Reviews....
Netflix and Microsoft May 2007
By Robert Lieto
Netflix and Microsoft, what's up. In recent news the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, acquired a spot on the Microsoft board of directors. This in itself is not unusual, but speculation has risen as to what the marriage of the computer giant and the No. 1 online DVD rental company could mean. Microsoft having a long rivalry with Apple products figures in, especially due to the fact that Apple's iPOD was met with the Microsoft ZUNE player. We have all seen the commercials showing the PC fellow vs. the Mac cool dude and have witnessed problems associated with PC functionality, lock-ups and hacked software. Is the future of digital delivery going to be thrown into the rivalry mix? During the Netflix's first quarter, the company has brought all of its subscribers on line with its Watch Now streaming service and hopes to have Internet video-to-TV option in place by next year. Does this sound like Microsoft is adding the internet downloading service of Netflix to a propriety add on for your home that will have full control of the internet -to-TV loop by pulling in the X-Box 360 player already in place? What points in that direction, is that Netflix recently signed on to use Microsoft's new Silverlight video browser. The Silverlight provides fast and reliable scalability for DVD-quality movies from Internet to a instant viewing medium (TV, Hand-held, etc) Could Netflix's route to the TV be going through Microsoft?
Comment ..... Whatever your thoughts are on the corporate shifts of rivalry competitors in the fast becoming reality game of internet downloading to TV viewing mechanism, it looks like a two horse race again. The only thing that bugs us is that, once Microsoft takes hold on any process, they try to surround the process in form so that it becomes impossible to break out to other offerings. Despite all the hype and attention about digital delivery, there are few methods (outside free illegal file-sharing) that are truly making a huge impact either in adoption or economics. That will change as the market evolves and the under-30 generation continues to grow up and consume digital content. Right now there is not a model that fully works and it remains to be seen how much tolerance consumers have for all the different variables in digital downloading. It is very confusing and stopping the whole mess from taking off. When people purchase a DVD they are actually also choosing the MPEG-2 codec, CSS copy protection, and a red laser product. All they really know is they are choosing a movie they want to play on their common DVD player. Simple. The digital downloading process is far more convoluted with all the different providers of video content, each with its own set of rules, applications and digital rights management (DRM). It must become easier.
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