This entry originally appeared on January 27, 2009 (before I installed WordPress).
Netflix, in announcing their latest financial results, revealed that their subscribers who use Instant Play to stream movies via the internet rent fewer DVDs than those who never stream. This is a bit of a surprise to some who thought that physical media would be king for a long time to come. I admit I’ve been highly skeptical of the rate at which streaming feature-length films would be adopted over discs—broadband access in the U.S., even in our most wired cities, is just not fast enough to allow streaming at anything better than DVD quality (if that). But what I’ve come to realize as I myself have shifted towards using Instant Play more and going through fewer discs, is that the question is not whether the quality can match DVD or Blu-ray. The question is, “does it meet a minimum standard of acceptability?” For the average viewer, the answer, I suspect, is “yes.” Of course I love watching a great film on Blu-ray, in crystal-clear quality. That’s going to be the optimal way of experiencing it until the next format comes around¹, and for the films I truly adore I will seek out that experience. Yet, for most films, and especially for films I haven’t seen, Instant Play’s slightly sub-DVD quality meets my minimum standard of acceptability to introduce myself to these films. I didn’t think it would. I scoffed when they introduced the feature. It was foolish of me. I can say, with certainty, that the only thing keeping Instant Play (and its competitors) from being the total death of rental discs is the limited catalog. If they expand it to all the films in their library, I’ll empty my queue and be in film heaven.
¹ Yes, I do expect (in spite of increasing broadband speed and penetration coupled with adoption of streaming services) that there will be at least one physical successor to Blu-ray. At some point there will be a disc or memory card with the capacity and bandwidth for uncompressed 4K video, and there’ll be at least a niche market for it among film and home theater enthusiasts.
