Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: Netflix Raises Price Of Dvd And Online Movies Package By 6

What cost $10 a month online streams of movies plus one DVD by mail at a time will now cost $16 a month, the company said, tacitly acknowledging the high costs of

mailing physical DVDs, but also admitting that many people still want the skinny little discs. Online streaming alone will remain $8 a month. Netflix advertised the change as a

new choice for consumers.
For millions of customers, the shift in price might change the daily calculus of an entertainment diet made up of a myriad of choices: cable television packages, online streams,

Redbox rentals and iTunes downloads. The price increase spurred complaints from thousands of Netflix customers on Facebook and other Web sites, some of whom said they

may now rely less on physical DVDs and more on online options.
For Netflix, the adjustment is the latest step in a long-term transition toward becoming a next-generation premium television business, said Arash Amel, a research director

for IHS Screen Digest, noting that the company has made streaming, not DVDs by mail, the core of its business.
Mr. Amel said further changes to Netflixs monthly prices should be expected in the next couple of years as the companys growth rate slows and as it pays hundreds of

millions of dollars more to license streams of movies and TV shows.
Thanks in large part to its four-year-old streaming service, Netflix has more than 20 million customers in the United States. The company expects that as broadband speeds

become faster and TV sets get connected to the Internet, it can become an even bigger player in streaming video.
But it has to manage the transition from DVDs to digital movies and shows carefully. Under the terms announced Tuesday, the streaming-only service will continue to cost $8

a month; a separate DVD-only service will also cost $8 a month for one DVD at a time or $12 a month for two.
For current Netflix customers, the price changes will take effect in September, but for new customers, they took effect Tuesday.
The new pricing is a big change from last November, when Netflix started selling its streaming service for $8 a month and offering one DVD at a time for an additional $2. At

that time we didnt anticipate offering DVD-only plans, Jessie Becker, vice president of marketing, wrote Tuesday in a blog post.
As Netflix knows well, the DVD business has been in decline for years as consumers have moved to the Web. But since November, Netflix has realized there is still a very

large continuing demand for DVDs both from our existing members as well as nonmembers, Ms. Becker wrote. To keep the DVD service alive, the company evidently needs

more than $2 a month.
Netflix must be pretty comfortable with the value of both services that they can break each out, said John Blackledge, an analyst at Credit Suisse Securities. At the same

time, increasing the price for DVD-and-streaming customers may push more people into streaming-only plans.
Netflix also said Tuesday that Andy Rendich, its chief service and operations officer, would lead a new, separate management team in charge of the physical DVD service.

That team will free other executives to think only about streaming.
IHS Screen Digest expects Netflix to serve up over a billion streams of movies and TV shows this year, almost double last years total; and perhaps more important for

Netflix, it expects the costs of acquiring those movies and TV shows to double. It estimates that Netflix spent $400 million on licenses for streaming last year.
But what it is spending is not enough for movie aficionados who expect new releases right away and who are disappointed by the glaring absences in the companys online

library. Last month, in a reminder that Netflix is vulnerable to decisions made by Hollywood studios, more than 200 films from Sony Pictures were pulled from the streaming

service because of what Netflix called a temporary contract issue with Starz, a partner of Sony. The issue has not yet been resolved.
Some Netflix streaming customers depend on the DVD-by-mail add-on because certain blockbuster movies are available much faster that way. If the customers move away

from the DVD-by-mail service en masse, two potential beneficiaries are cable and satellite companies that rent movies on demand for a premium and vending machine

operators like Redbox that charge lower prices for single DVD rentals. » Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: Netflix Raises Price Of Dvd And Online Movies Package By 6