The Official Wirewize Blog

When Sony’s Blu-Ray technology won the format war over rival Toshiba’s HD-DVD disc, many industry observers responded with a shrug.  Who cares about discs, went the argument, when movies on demand are just around the corner? While we’re certainly not at the point where discs are going away any time soon, we’ve definitely rounded the corner on the idea of instant home movie delivery for the mass market.

Sure, your cable provider now has a few dozen titles they’d be happy to let you have on demand.  They’ll even let you watch it day and date with the movie’s DVD release – provided of course, that you pay for both the disc and the VOD.  We regret that we weren’t asked to participate in the focus group for that idea.

DirecTV says it’s got over 700 movies on demand, but if you subtract the duplicates and the titles that aren’t really movies, like “About Inside NFL”, the actual number is much less impressive.  Fortunately it’s not as disappointing as Dish Network’s paltry selection, which constitutes a smaller movie collection than we have on our own DVD shelves.

The company that’s really breaking through in new video delivery is the one that’s done the best job in old video delivery – Netflix.  While we wish someone would arrest the company’s ad department, which has been clogging our monitors with unwanted popups for way too long, we have to hand it to the guys with the red envelopes.  People love their service, which is cheap, reliable and fun.  They’ve become more than a household name, they’re now a verb.  And they’re about to do to the cable companies what they did to Blockbuster – hand them their lunch.

At the recent CES Expo, LG announced it will market a TV that has the Netflix “Watch Instantly” service built in.  Which in essence is nothing more than an Internet connection and a simple user interface.  The company had already introduced a Blu-ray player with the Netflix service, and Samsung has done the same.  More Netflix on demand is available with the Xbox and through TiVo, and through a relatively cheap add-on box by Roku.  With any of these “solutions” you’ve got access to what Netflix claims as 12,000 movies and TV episodes.  Ok, so a lot of that is dreck you didn’t want to watch on TV for free, never mind through a paid download.  But it’s still a much better library than anything else that’s out there and legal.

We’re not saying it’s game over for Time Warner, Comcast or Cablevision. But how much do you want to bet that the experience of selecting and purchasing movies will be better with Netflix than it is from your cable or satellite provider? Engadget did a nice job comparing the current Netflix players; we wish they would have contrasted them to the lame, slow-as-a-pig interfaces we’re all used to from the cable or satellite company.

It’s going to take some years before all the necessary technologies improve with Netflix and other on demand video services.  For now, Netflix movies sans disc are stereo only (no Dolby Digital surround), and even when titles are available in high def, the video quality isn’t always what we’d expect.  That’s what puzzled us about the Blu-ray not mattering argument – if BD is viable for only 10 years, it’s still a hit, and it’s been with us 2 years already, with all its growth ahead of it.  Consumers obviously prefer the best quality to feed their fancy new HDTVs, and until there’s more 1080p content from the satellite companies, BD is still the best game in town.

But not everyone cares about 1080p and ultimate picture and sound.  A lot of people prefer convenience over quality (hence the iPod), and in that respect, Netflix is just what the doctor ordered.

Now if they’d only leave us alone with the popups.

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