Blu-Ray wins Netflix vote

Netflix has announced today that it will exclusively stock Blu-ray high-definition DVDs after a decision by some the world's biggest movie studios in favour of the Sony developed format.

Netflix has stocked DVDs using both Blu-ray and the competing HD DVD format developed by Toshiba since they first came on the market in early 2006.

Four out of six major Hollywood studios have recently decided to publish high-definition DVDs only using Blu-ray. Netflix said that with such a clear signal from the industry, it will only buy Blu-ray discs going forward and will phase out stock of HD DVD by about the end of the year.

Can Lovefilm compete with downloads?

A British firm that rents out DVDs by post has just taken over internet giant Amazon’s service. But can it compete with downloads?

IF you have ever wondered which movies the former page three girl Melinda Messenger likes to curl up with, then Lovefilm.com is the place to find out.

She is one of several celebrities to list her favourite films on the site. The picks are there to provide a little bit of inspiration for customers of the site’s main business – film rental.

In four years Lovefilm has become the UK’s leader in the fast-growing online DVD rental market, and last week it grew by another 50% after announcing a deal to take over a similar service offered by Amazon, the internet retailer, taking the number of subscribers to 900,000. As part of the deal Amazon will take a stake, thought to be about 30%, in Lovefilm, making it the company’s biggest single investor. The deal is reported to value Lovefilm at about £200m.

The service is straightforward. Users create a list of DVDs they wish to rent from the 65,000 or so available (having recommendations on the site helps focus the mind, says the management). For a monthly charge, anywhere between £3.99 and £14.99, the company posts out the DVDs on the list, one or two at a time. Customers return them when they are finished in a prepaid envelope and the next disc on the list is sent out. There are no late fees, and its fans say it is easier and more convenient than going to a video shop. So far the group is in no more than 3% of UK households but it is confident this will grow.

Chief executive Simon Calver has been working on the Amazon deal for several months and believes it is crucial to have as big a customer base as possible because the competition comes not just from other online rental services but also other film sources – high-street stores and subscription-movie channels on satellite and cable television.

“With Amazon we have a better chance of being competitive in that market than as two independent companies,” he said, adding that Amazon’s experience of developing into an internet giant should benefit the company greatly. The US group will have a seat on the Lovefilm board, alongside representatives of the smaller company’s existing backers, who include Balder-ton Capital and Index Ventures, the tech investors.

Lovefilm, which had sales of £50m last year, has been steadily consolidating what is a relatively niche industry. The first site to launch in the UK was Video Island in 2003; Lovefilm followed about a year later and the two merged in April 2006, having between them swallowed a number of smaller rivals along the way. Before the Amazon deal, the business was estimated by Screen Digest, a consultancy, to have about 62% of the online rental market. That has now risen to almost 80%.

Despite this leading position, there is a concern in some quarters that technology could derail the business model. The prospect of internet users downloading movies directly could render the idea of an offline rental service obsolete. In the US last year DVD sales fell 4.5%, as downloading became more popular. Netflix, the US company on which Video Island and Lovefilm are modelled, has 6,000 films available for download. The British company offers just over 800 at present.

Calver believes that the threat should not be overplayed. “Because we are in this market, we can monitor it. Everyone is still learning, and most people are groping their way through digital distribution.

“We are experimenting with downloading, with different price points and business models. But there are still fundamental barriers to downloading, such as the choice of content, the time it takes to download a film, and how to get the product from the PC and onto the TV.”

He argues that there is a fundamental difference between paying to download a music track, which customers might listen to repeatedly, and a film, which may get watched just once. This is especially true in the UK.

Calver said: “People here are used to paying [for entertainment] on a subscription basis; the television licence fee, cable TV. Most digital services are pay-per-transaction. There’s inherent resistance to that in the UK. Digital downloading will be significantly smaller than DVDs for many years to come.”

Calver’s more immediate goal is to reach 1m subscribers and take the business into profitabil-ity, which should be achieved by the end of this year. Lovefilm has been paying special attention to its pricing, increasing the range of packages offered to attract wallets of all sizes.

Despite Calver’s views on subscriptions, he says a new pay-as-you-go service is beginning to attract people who watch films relatively infrequently.

If the group can extend its service further beyond movie buffs and enter the mainstream, it could provide a Hollywood-style happy ending for its backers.

Taken from Timesonline Website by Matthew Goodman

Pirates to outfox movie studios

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it," a famous person once said, though I forget who. Or from whom he probably stole the phrase. But it's a maxim Hollywood might do well to bear in mind as, to a karmic backdrop of Thomas Edison's hollow laughter echoing from beyond the grave, it continues to grapple with the seemingly intractable conundrum of movie piracy, and how to capitalise on the public's burgeoning demand for movie downloads.

But what specific history did I have in mind at the beginning of that paragraph, you might be asking? Well, let's go back to the early 1890s and things should become clearer. Not least, that piracy in the movie industry is hardly something new. In fact, it's something the studios have been profiting from for over a century.

Back in the 1890s, founded on Prohibitionist values, ironically enough, Hollywood was no more than a recently developed residential community. It boasted 320 days a year of sun, and by 1903 enough prosperity to become incorporated. However, thanks to all that sun, it couldn't boast nearly enough water, prompting it's annexation to Los Angeles in 1910. It certainly wasn't yet known for movies.

In fact, the origins of Hollywood as we know it today are actually to be found in the East of America: in New Jersey. It was there that, in Thomas Edison's labs, William Dickson invented the Kinetoscope; and where, in 1893, Edison set up Black Maria, the world's first film studio.

Now, all-round bright spark and seasoned inventor that he was, Edison of course patented his assistant's new moving-picture making device, and set about profiting from it by distributing short films to penny arcades, vaudeville theatres, and fairgrounds. But it was only after the Lumiere brothers' 1895 invention of the Cinematographe system, in France, that movies came to be projected on screens and viewable by more than one person at a time.

Realising the Cinamatographe's potential, Edison and others quickly came up with their own versions, and by 1908, the movie business was booming; mass-produced 15-minute shorts being shown in thousands of movie theatres all across America.

Edison, though, was having trouble enforcing his patents. Even as early as 1898, fearing that other people were profiting from "his" invention, he had begun issuing lawsuits to rival movie producers.

Following a series of fruitless legal battles against, among others, American Mutoscope and Biograph, actually co-founded by William Dickson, and by then a more successful company than Edison's own, Edison changed tactics. In late 1908, banding together with Biograph, and a selection of other patent holders and producers, Edison formed the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), a Trust issuing licenses for use of its members' technology, enforcing its members' patents, and generally attempting to regulate the still nascent motion picture industry. It worked well; at first. But there was still much resistance. Enter William Fox (of what would become 20th Century-Fox).

Hollywood's history has featured many a famous pirate: from Jack Sparrow, to the swashbuckling Errol Flynn, to, erm, whoever it was Geena Davis played in that film that killed her career. So it could perhaps be seen as fitting that Hollywood as we know it today was founded by pirates; independent filmmakers, operating outside the licenses of, and profiting from technology owned by the MPPC.

One of the best methods the independents found of escaping Edison's reaches was to relocate to the other side of the country, where, thanks to California's relaxed laws, and what was then still the necessity of shooting in daylight, Hollywood and its 320 days of sunshine proved the ideal movie-making location. Within two decades, Louis B Mayer, the Warner Family, Samuel Goldwyn, and William Fox had all arrived there.

In 1911, in an attempt to finally break the MPPC's hold over the industry, Fox took the Trust to court. While Fox, in fact, lost his lawsuit, the judge nonetheless found that the MPPC constituted an illegal monopoly in restraint of trade. Various cases and six years later, the MPPC was finally disbanded by order of the American Supreme Court. One band of innovators had given way to another.

Nearly a century later we come to today's pirates: they too may be determining the future of Hollywood; or at the very least forcing it to adapt to the 21st Century.

Granted, there is little doubt that offering copyrighted movies for download is illegal; but, in doing so, quite so successfully, today's movie pirates have pointed out an inefficiency in the market, a desire that is not being met. Undoubtedly some people will always want something for nothing, and will always find ways to get it, but what the public has responded to, primarily, is the convenience offered by pirate movie downloads. While Hollywood's moguls have been snoozing complacently, the market has been changing. The pirates have been responding to its customers' dissatisfactions.

Cinema-goers are fed up of over-inflated ticket prices. People hate waiting months to rent or buy the next big film, or to see it outside of America. Rental shops often don't have what you want, and aren't open 24-hours. Many people balk at spending £15 on a DVD that might not be that great (and let's face it, much that Hollywood has produced lately hasn't been). And what about all those brilliant obscure and back-catalogue films that are so hard to get your hands on? All these deficiencies in Hollywood's current distribution methods, the pirates have responded to: pretty much whatever you want, there's a stream or a torrent for it somewhere. Plus, you can watch it in your own home, at your own convenience.

On the other hand:

You never know for sure whether you'll get a good quality picture, or something grainy recorded from the middle row of a multiplex with people's heads in the way. Downloads can take forever, or never complete. Watching on a computer isn't always that great. And there's always the slight unease that goes hand-in-hand with illegality.

All of which, and more, is where Hollywood should be sensing opportunity. Provide a legal, practical, reliable, convenient alternative to what the pirates are offering - essentially just no-frills movie downloads, film downloads, video downloads, call them what you will - and the majority of people would be more than happy to use the service.

For the most part, of course, Hollywood has instead responded to piracy with all lawyers blazing. There are promising signs emerging, though, that it is at least beginning to adapt to the new competition: studio-backed film download sites, such as Vizumi, NetFlix, and Amazon Unbox, are on the increase. Heck, even BitTorrent offers legal movie downloads these days. The recent news of Apple’s plans for movie downloads will send shock waves across the industry. Can they repeat the same success of iTunes with iMovies only time will tell?

Now, if the studios could just sort out some Digital Rights Management technologies that don't treat it's download customers like criminals, they might actually be on to a winner.

HBO enters movie download war

Time Warner is planning to launch HBO on Broadband that will allow consumers to download movies and its pay-TV shows on the Web it has been report for free.

So another company jumps on the movie download bandwagon but what will it offer that other websites such as Vizumi, Jaman, Cinema Now currently do not?

HBO are a new entry in the 'what you want, when you want it' movie download race. The new service is called HBO on Broadband and while Comcast CEO Brian Roberts mesmerized a recent Consumer Electronics Show audience (BusinessWeek.com, 1/11/08) with visions of TV shows and movies capable of streaming lickety-split across his cable TV wires, the guys from Time Warner are offering what is clearly a work in progress.


First, the basics: You can watch the live HBO feed online, choose from more than 350 movies, and download and store such TV shows as Sex & the City, The Sopranos, and Entourage. It will set reminders for you when things are on, allow you to preset to record movies and TV shows when they air on the cable network, and suggest new stuff that maybe you would like to watch.

HBO describes HBO on Broadband as free. But to get the service, a cable subscriber will need to have already paid not only the $12 or so a month to get the pay channel, but also the $30 or $40 a month to get a cable operator's broadband service. That's right. The free HBO actually costs subscribers $52 or more per month because consumers will first have to dip into their pockets to buy HBO from their cable or satellite provider, and then add broadband service from the same provider. By contrast, a rival pay-TV network, Starz, offers a similar download service for $9.99 a month that doesn't require you to have a video subscription. (Starz says it will soon start offering an HBO on Broadband-like service called Starz Play that will be "free" if you already have a video and data subscription.)
Service Makes Debut in Wisconsin

Sounds great, doesn't it? And technologically, it is first-rate: Downloads are near instantaneous, thanks to buffer technology that allows you to start watching even while the show is being downloaded. Pictures are ultrasharp, even when they're blown up to a full screen from their three-inch by three-inch display box.

So when Time Warner starts to roll out the new service on Jan. 21, why are they only doing it in a single system in two areas—Green Bay, Wis., and Milwaukee—when Time Warner owns 23 systems from Hawaii to Portland, Me.? No, it's not a test, says HBO Co-President Eric Kessler, although he expects some fine-tuning. "We're involved with discussions with other service providers, and we expect to have some to announce down the road," he says.

In fact, Time Warner has been dabbling with HBO on Broadband for more than two years. According to sources, HBO had all but locked up the giant cable operator Comcast, which had been expected to have Roberts announce their agreement during his Jan. 9 speech to the crowds at CES. The deal, according to those sources, collapsed over how much of the operating costs—roughly 50¢ a subscriber—that Comcast was willing to absorb. Comcast was also being asked to front some of the costs to market the service. Comcast didn't respond to requests for comment. HBO declined to comment.

79% of Americans download movies illegally

79% of Americans who are downloading movies do so illegally despite access to subscription based services.

US consumers are still downloading movies illegally despite the growing availability of subscription based movie download services according to a study conducted by Advanis Inc. Subscription based movie downloads have grown in prevalence with companies like Apple Inc., CinemaNow, MovieLink and most recently Wal-Mart offering movie downloads for a fee.

Yet 79% of those downloading movies are still doing so illegally, according to the study and is estimated to be costing the industry $598 million.

"The industry can respond to this stubborn core of piracy in one of two ways," said Phil Dwyer, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Advanis. "It can spend its time and resources pursuing the pirates, and attempting to get them to change their ways, or it can put those same resources into accelerating the adoption of these services by the early mainstream consumers, who are more inclined to behave legally."

"The experience of the music industry, and the evidence of our research suggests there is a hardcore of illegal downloaders who are unlikely to change their behavior. The industry would be better advised to focus resources on migrating new, and legally inclined consumers on to these services."

Downloaders Look For Deals

Despite the convenience of the movie download services, consumers are unwilling to pay a premium for them. In fact, online movie addicts, on average, value downloads at $2.59, while they value a movie bought in a store at more than double that - $5.98.

About this study

Findings are based on a survey of 506 online Americans, fielded between February 5th and 6th, 2007. Estimates are accurate to within +/- 4.6%, 19 times out of 20.

Movie downloads – an interesting debate

Apple CEO Steve Jobs dropped a bombshell on HD DVD, Blu-ray, Blockbuster, Arts Alliance Media (Love Film and Vizumi movie downloads) any everybody else in the movie download business this week.

Steve Jobs announced at Macworld that iTunes will now rent out movies. Users will be able to download movies and watch them on iPods, iPhones, Apple TV or home computers. Inevitably, Apple has the support from all the major movie studios.

So will history repeat itself and Apple repeat what they did to the music industry with iTunes and change the way we watch movies with iMovies?

An interesting battle to come out of this news will be the battle of HD. Movie lovers will have more options than ever on how they prefer to enjoy their movies and no doubts that digital downloads are the future but not overnight. Average Joe isn’t going to immediately throw out DVD player tomorrow to buy an Apple TV.

In the same instance, Blu-ray may never reach mass usage before digital downloads become mainstream. However, physical media will not vanish because many consumers like to own something they can touch and feel so DVDs will still be in demand for the short term. Another thing to support this is that the market is full of DVD players and only in recent year has seen the VHS video disappear from the shelves. And, when up-scaled, many regular DVDs look surprisingly impressive on HD TVs.

One thing against DVD collections is they take up so much room and that is where digital downloads has an advantage. Conversely, you will need a device big enough to store all these downloads and also Broadband that allows you unlimited downloads.

Before Apple announced their movie download plans, many digital movie rental services already have existed. Websites such as Netflix, Cinema Now and Vizumi Movie Downloads allow movie streaming for its users, offering legal movie downloads to own and rent, and importantly backed by film studios.

HD video-on-demand is available from certain cable TV providers. You can download HD movies from Xbox Live but the choice of movies is limited. Downloads can take forever. Quality can be poor and this is frustrating having taken so long to download and although iTunes presence will help movie download rentals forward, home-theater geeks will complain that Apple's HD video quality is only 720p and audio is only Dolby Digital 5.1 which is good enough for the general user.

So what are Apple charging for movie downloads? This is where the battle for movie downloads could we won or lost. Apple is currently offering $4.99 to download a HD movie. Users then have 30 days to watch it and 24 hours after you start watching to finish it. It will be very interesting to see what Microsoft does which already has 18 million Xbox 360s in homes worldwide and also Sony with the recent success of Playstation 3 and also PSP.

Subscription plans are not yet available and users will demand watching HD movies as often as they like with no restrictions.

As for the electronic market, there will be big demand for a combo HD DVR/HD-movie-library downloading unit. One solution would be to merge HD channels, regular TV channels and HD movie-rental services into one subscription package for a monthly fee.

The writing's on the walls of video rental stores such as Blockbuster and I expect they will jump on the band wagon of movie downloads also. Why waste petrol driving to Blockbuster if you can download it from the comfort of your home? Even Netflix seems like a hassle in comparison because who exactly wants to wait hours upon hours for a Blu-ray movie to show up in the mailbox?

One thing is for sure, the movie download market is going to get very competitive which is great for us the consumer as it will bring the best products and lower prices.

Jaman stikes deal with TiVo

Jaman, the P2P Web movie service, has stuck a deal whereby TiVo subscribers will be able to access Jaman’s catalogue of American independent (think Sundance Film Festival) and international film titles directly from their TiVo DVR.

Viewers will be able to rent and buy films starting at $1.99, with a number of shorts and full-length films available to download for free. Jaman uses its own proprietary DRM.

Interestingly Jaman developed an unofficial plug-in for the first version of the AppleTV device which syncs content downloaded via the Jaman player. We’ll have to see if it works on AppleTV II.

Babelgum is closest to Jaman’s model, with it’s emphasis on independent professionally produced video content, but Jaman is about downloading high quality HD film to rent or keep, rather than P2P streaming. Jaman has a lot of competition in the movie downloading market, but most competitors focus on Hollywood movies, rather than the ‘fat belly’ of the Long Tail.

Since 99% of films made do not get theatrical distribution, there is a lot of content out there. Jaman has been quietly building its catalogue of movies and is available on PCs, Macs, SanDisk’s TakeTV and DivX. Founder and CEO Gaurav Dhillon previously co-founded Informatica in 1992, which IPO’d in 1999. Jaman backers include the Hearst Corporation.

Apple maps its assault on movie downloads

The eagerly anticipated MacWorld happened a few days ago and Steve Jobs delivered what Apple plan to do with its movie download business. Movie download services across the board has started to take off in the same way downloading music did with iTunes. Can iMovies emulate what iTunes did to the music industry?

During the 90's, Time Warner spent $10,000 a customer in Florida to show downloading movies over cable lines was technologically feasible. Now in 2008, as more companies jump on the band wagon, movie download services will be widely available from many sources, some legal and some unfortunately not so legal, but movie downloads are sure to part of everyday life before the end of this year experts predict.

Apple's plans at MacWorld will have undoubtedly shaken a few feathers, not because Apple is offering a fundamentally new twist on VOD but because it's Apple.

The movie download market today is very similar to where online music was in wake of the first Apple iPod. Back then, MP3 players were already on the market but were largely niche products and most music that played on them was illegal pirated copies. Apple created the first cool digital music player.

Steve Jobs was also the first technology executive with the heft in Hollywood to actually cut deals with studio executives to allow enough legal content online to create a marketplace and demonstrate that making money from digital music was at least possible.

In 2008, most consumers still aren't all that interested in cable companies' movie download offerings, largely because the studios are so worried about piracy and cannibalizing their existing TV syndication and DVD businesses that they haven't supplied enough product to interest subscribers.

Movie downloads from services like Vizumi , Netlflix and CinemaNow are still largely a curiosity for hobbyists and people who don't know how to download the pirated stuff or using file sharing sites such as Limewire.

Until now, Apple hasn't fared that much better and sold approximately 7 million movies compared to about 4 billion songs and 125 million TV shows.

Once again, Steve Jobs has persuaded the film studios to make vastly greater stores of content available to consumers in exchange for the tacit promise that he can create enough of a market to offset the inevitable increase in piracy that will occur when millions of new consumers realize how easy it is to download and share movies on their computers, iPods and TV sets. You only have to look at the movie piracy rate in Korea, which has the world's most ubiquitous broadband.

Apple's movie rental service could be exactly the spark Hollywood needs to jump start its online cinema business. Or the spark could become a conflagration that devours industry profits. Or it could flop once again, just as so many for-profit video-on-demand ventures have since Time Warner first dipped its toes in Orlando.

The only certainty is the movie downloads, legal or not, are here to stay.

Apple offers £3 movie downloads - Will this spark other movie downloads to drop their prices?

Apple has continued its assault on the movie downloads market with a movie rental service for iPhones and iPods.

Competition in the movie downloads industry is now really hotting up with 20th Century Fox and Disney among the 11 major film studios who have signed up with Apple to provide rental titles.

It will be very interesting to see what Vizumi movie downloads and other players such as Jaman, AOL and Netflix will do in wake of this news. One thing is for sure, it is great news for movie downloaders with an increase in competition leading to reduced prices and better services.

More than 1,000 films, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter and older releases such as The Matrix, will be available to download online through Apple Movie Rentals.

Movie downloads take less than 30 seconds and users have 24 hours to watch rented movies. They can also download them to iPods or iPhones to watch in this period.

The service is available immediately in America, and will be launched in Britain later this year.

Older films cost $2.99 --around £1.50 - while new releases will be $3.99 to rent - around £2.

"I think it is a revolution," Apple chief Steve Jobs told the Mac World conference in San Francisco. "Most of us watch movies once, maybe twice, and renting is a great way to do this.

"People can watch these anywhere - on Macs, PCs, all current generation iPods and iPhones.

Other studios that have signed up include New Line Cinema, Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal, and Sony Pictures.

Digital downloads of movies and TV shows will also come free with DVDs to enable users to view them on their iPods and iPhones.

Jim Gianopulos, chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox, said: "People will still want to buy DVDs, and we don't want to deny them the benefits of this."

Be careful when downloading movies

Movie downloads online is catching on fast across Europe with the total European movie download market estimated to be worth 350 million euros ($516 million) by 2012, up from 17 million euros ($25 million) in 2007.

The youth of today are very tech savvy and are familiar with downloading media files online. By the term 'Youth', I mean anyone below 35 years of age. So that is quite a large population of people who get movie downloads online. Do a search in the Internet on terms like ‘movie downloads’, ‘film downloads’, 'download movies’ and it is quite likely that you will find many related sites. With so many options available, we really need to know what are the factors to consider when we want to get movie downloads.

in this day and age, watching movies is so easy and can be done comfortably within our own homes. I am not talking about buying or renting a movie but downloading a movie from the comfort of our own home without having to queue or drive through stressful traffic.

We all know how popular downloading music has become and revolutionised the music industry in the last decade but now is it the turn of movie downloads? Google results for popular search terms such as movie downloads indicate that 59, 600, 000 people search for this term.

Statistics show that many people now download full DVD movies online. This explains why there are many online movie shops and even the larger studios are putting their movies online for download and purchase. Either you buy each movie piece-meal or subscribe for memberships with the online movie stores.

So if you want to use a movie download website, what should you look out for?

1. Be sure to always check the format of the movie files. Are they compatible with your DVD player or your computer media player? It is always safer to use sites that offer movies in DivX format. This is because it saves you a lot of time to download movies online in this format, and secondly, it is a widely accepted format.

2. Can you burn the full length DVD movie onto a CD or it must be copied onto a DVD after you download movies online? You need to have options since blank DVDs are normally more expensive and you need a special DVD burner rather than the CD burner your computer comes with. But then again, it really depends on what you want. DVDs provide better picture and audio quality so if you are willing to pay more, by all means, burn the movies onto DVDs.

3. Can the site guarantee excellent picture quality? I guess this matter to everyone who is downloading movies online. You obviously would not want a movie download of poor quality which is so bad that you cannot even make out what you are watching. Using 100% safe and legal sites that are backed by film studios will make sure you get excellent quality whilst staying on the right side of the law.

4. Do they provide round-the-clock customer support service? Not every site can provide such service. But if you find one that promises to deliver this level of service, it is worthwhile to give it a try and download movies online there.

So other than leaving your home to rent a DVD or purchase it off the shelf from your local movie store, there is a great choice online but be careful who you chose to download from. Here are a selection of excellent movie download sites:

Vizumi Movie Downloads










Tiscali Movies Now









Empire Movie Downloads









AOL Film Downloads









Net Movie Downloads









Cinema Now









Movie Flix









EZTakes










Jaman








Downloads Super Site

Netflix to offer unlimited online movie streaming

Netflix will begin offering unlimited online movie streaming from a library of over 6,000 movies to customers on their $16.99 plan starting Monday.

The move is said to be in response to the expected announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo Tuesday that iTunes will offer movie rentals from most major studios. The expected price of the iTunes rented movies is $3.99 each, putting Netflix is a competitive position for high value regular movie watchers.

Netflix has previously offered limited movie streaming to its 7 million + customers, but capped the streaming access at 17 hours a month.

According to AP, the offer will not be available to Netflix customers currently on the $4.99/ mth 2 DVD plan.