Somebody credible has been leaking to the
San Jose Mercury News about the imminent arrival of video on demand at Netflix:
"Well-placed industry sources confirmed Friday that the Los Gatos company is close to launching an on-demand rental service that is paired with a Netflix-provided television set-top box.
``We have said we're committed to testing a product this year and we expect the test to be of a very modest nature,'' said Netflix spokesman Ken Ross, who declined to discuss the timing of the launch or the nature of the service."
But don't get too excited.
One industry source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the new Netflix service would be similar to fledgling, studio-supported ventures like MovieLink and CinemaNow. Those services allow people to rent copy-protected movies and television shows over the Internet and watch them on their computers.
Such services struggled because they offer a limited number of new releases. That is unlikely to change, so long as DVD sales and rentals remain the largest single source of revenue for movie studios.
``Given the very limited popular content now available, we don't believe that consumers will find this compelling until that balance changes,'' said Netflix's Ross of a new download offering. ``We don't foresee that changing for some time.''
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