AfterDawn: Tech news

Netflix CEO predicts streaming video will double subscriber base

Written by Rich Fiscus @ 29 May 2008 1:19

Netflix CEO predicts streaming video will double subscriber base

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings believes streaming video, which is already bundled with their popular DVD rental plans, represents the company's future. At an investor conference in San Francisco he said he considers online video delivery to be a long-term business model which will ensure the success of Netflix following the decline of DVD rentals, which he sees peaking within the next 10 years.
“The market that can be reached through streaming is much larger than DVD,” said Hastings, who didn’t give a specific timeframe for the anticipated growth, but did say “We should be able to get well beyond 20 million subscribers.” He added “We named our company ‘Netflix’ and not ‘DVD By Mail’ for a reason.”



This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's followed the company's recent move toward providing internet connected set-top boxes. In January Netfilx began allowing subscribers with plans for 3 or more DVDs at a time to stream an unlimited amount of video from their Instant Watching service. Since then they've also announced deals with consumer electronics manufacturers to provide set-top boxes to work with the service. Just last week the first such device, manufactured by a company called Roku, went on sale.

Hastings is counting on these set-top boxes to connect millions of Netflix customers' TVs to the internet by the end of next year. It would seem he's on the right track since the journey from internet to TV has arguably been the biggest hurdle online video providers have faced to date.

Unfortunately the other big problem, a lack of popular content, can't be addressed quite as simply. Although Netflix already offers more than 10,000 titles for streaming, but if you're looking for anything recent or popular the selection remains limited to say the least.

Previous Next  
Comments have been disabled for this article.

Latest news

Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets (06 Jun 2023 9:19)
Roomba Combo j7+ is the very first Roomba model to combine robot vacuum with mopping features. And Roomba Combo j7+ does all that with a very clever trick, which tackles the problem with mopping and carpets. But is it any good? We found out.
Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations (02 May 2023 3:38)
Neato Robotics has ceased its operations. American robot vacuum pioneer founded in 2005 has finally called it quits and company will cease its operations and sales. Only a skeleton crew will remain who will keep the servers running until 2028.
5 user comments
How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp (20 Mar 2023 1:25)
The world's most popular messaging platform, Meta-owned WhatsApp has enabled sending messages to yourself. While at first, this might seem like an odd feature, it can be very useful in a lot of situations. ....
18 user comments
How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller (11 Feb 2023 1:04)
Google shut down its streaming game service Stadia late last month and this means that some people have Stadia controllers lying around that seem to be of no use. That is fortunately not the ....
2 user comments
Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account (26 Jan 2023 2:14)
Sharing a Netflix account with a person in a different location is possible and indeed very common, although the company doesn't necessarily enjoy this behavior from their customers. However, ....

News archive