Updated 1/23 to reflect information received from Netflix.
Amidst news of management shuffling and pending financial results, there seems to be a lot of customer-facing changes going on at Netflix these days.
First off, Warner Brothers announced last week at CES that since they’ve seen “very positive results” [Warner Home Video’s exact words] from the previous 28-day window, they’re going to start holding new releases back from Netflix even longer—now for eight weeks.
Then just this past week, we started getting messages from readers about Netflix no longer supporting HD or 5.1 audio and subtitles. With a little digging, we found that, indeed, titles previously available in HD with 5.1 audio and subtitles (on supported platforms, like Xbox and PS3), no longer sported such features. We were able to find HD titles and even titles with Dolby 5.1 audio, but mostly TV episodes. There’s clearly been a change in the availability of these audio and video features, but Netflix hasn’t announced anything about it. We have a message in to Netflix PR to see if they’ll explain the changes.
![Netflix changes What's Going On at Netflix? [Updated]](http://www.thedigitalmediazone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/neflixchanges.png)
Netflix responded to our query to let us know that there was an issue with metadata that has since been resolved. In fact, our tests show that Limitless and many other titles that didn’t appear badged as HD a few days ago now properly reflect their HD video quality and 5.1 Dolby Digital audio.
Meanwhile, get ready for some changes we do know about: fewer premium titles. Netflix’ content agreement with Starz ends in February, so you’ll soon see fewer of the premium titles available for streaming, including large catalogs of content from Disney and Sony. The Starz agreement ends on February 28.
I’m so glad I dumped my Netflix stock when it was still $190/share! I still have hope that Netflix can turn it around with their original content (but it has to be AMAZING!). I can totally believe that the studios feel like Netflix is too powerful and they are colluding to bring Netflix down a notch or two.
[…] What’s Going On at Netflix? […]