Despite the spectre of a recession looming over the US economy, Netflix Founder, Chairman, and CEO Reed Hastings is confident about his company’s position for the remainder of the year. Although he sees slower growth than last year he predicts that recent and future developments will continue to fuel profitability.
One of things Hastings spoke proudly about in a presentation that was part of the company’s third quarter earnings conference call today was the deal struck recently with the Starz premium cable network. Starz opted to close their Vongo service, choosing instead to let Netflix provide internet delivery for them.
He pointed out that one of the biggest stumbling blocks for providing such services is the contracts the big networks have that tie up major studio content, adding “With this new model we think we can generate increased profit for Starz, increased profits for Netflix, and over time for the studios.”
He also spoke extensively about innovations that are around the corner for the Netflix streaming service. The previous quarter saw the introduction of the first Blu-ray player that can be used to stream movies from Netflix, LG’s BD 300. He also hinted at additional players with Netflix support coming in the future, saying “we’ll announce more Blu-ray partnerships as they’re ready for consumers.”
But the company isn’t planning to ignore people who prefer to watch on a computer. In fact he indicated an important innovation in the form of support for Intel-based Macs. “This quarter we’ll begin the rollout of our second generation player software which runs on both Windows and Intel Macs,” he said. “It’s a huge step forward for online video players and we’ll be announcing the details shortly.”
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Result for: innovations
During an interview with Gigaom, Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas noted that although they feel the 250 GB bandwidth caps they will be starting next month are sufficient now, they are willing to raise the caps over time, if digital downloads or other innovations come around that need intense amounts of bandwidth.
For the time being, Douglas says, the caps are set at about 100 times the average user’s monthly bandwidth usage. The company has said that only 5 percent or so of users ever use over 100 GB a month.
Douglas gave his word that if “average consumption rises”, the cap will as well. We will have to take his word on it for now, although Comcast has been less than truthful in the past about matters like this.
