Subscribers of Netflix, past and present, received a lengthy email from Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings.

(If you don't want to read the entire email I've pasted below, the quick summary is that the company is keeping Netflix for streaming and introducing Qwikster for DVDs by mail - and adding video games. Basically, subscribers will have two accounts with two services and two separate charges on their credit cards, instead of just Netflix.)

Dear [subscriber's name],

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn't make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

So here is what we are doing and why.

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.

I want to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.
Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.

Respectfully yours,

-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments.

I canceled my Netflix account the last week of August. I live with someone who also has a Netflix account, and when the company announced the price increase, we decided to just share an account. After all, we watch several movies together, anyway, and keeping separate queues for our own TV shows and movies just didn't seem worth the price we would both be paying.

I initially didn't think much of the Netflix/Qwikster change, but now that I'm mulling it over (and writing about it), I'm getting more and more annoyed. I'm indifferent to the fact that there will be two charges on the credit card instead of just one; if it's the same amount, it doesn't really matter. However, the lack of an integrated website shows a complete disregard for the user. The company is making it more difficult for its subscribers to find the movies and TV shows they want. Sure, with the streaming service, it's easy to scroll through genres or your instant queue to find something to watch. But if something isn't available for streaming, you're going to make me look it up on another website? That's backwards. Search for something in any other service - Google, Bing, CLEVNET - and you'll see that it gives you the information you're looking for in a variety of formats - websites, blogs, videos, books, ebooks, movies, etc. One company forcing a user to search two different sites to get the same information? Get ready to say goodbye to a whole lot more of your subscribers.

One thing I do like about the change: video games by mail! I don't play enough video games to warrant a GameFly account, but there have been several occasions where I've wanted to play something before deciding whether to buy it. I'm glad this service is finally integrated into something I'm already subscribed to.

So will I keep my account? If I was subscribing by myself, probably not. But since I'm sharing a subscription, it's probably still worth it for now, even with the clunkiness involved. One thing is for sure: Changes in technology mean us current-and-recently-former Netflix subscribers won't have to wait long for an improvement to this service or an even better option. Companies like Hulu and Redbox have a great opportunity to grab Netflix defectors. I'm sure they and other current companies or start-ups are considering ways to sweeten the deal. Will Netflix go the way of Blockbuster?

If you have a Netflix account, what will your plans be when Qwikster arrives? If you're not a subscriber, do the new options entice you?


-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl

I am not happy, and I'm sure many of you Netflix subscribers feel the same way.

If you haven't heard the news, Netflix is raising its prices, by quite a bit.

Is it really worth it for me to nearly double what I'm paying to get the same service as now? Probably not.

"Netflix’s willingness to risk alienating subscribers signals that it needs to bring in more money to cover its rising costs," The Associated Press writes.

The price spike set off a mostly angry discussion on Twitter: Dear Netflix was trending late Tuesday night. Several of the tweets I saw were people complaining that more of the catalog isn't available for streaming. (Of course, the company has to pay for the rights to stream content and couldn't afford to go streaming-only without cutting its catalog.) One tweet mentioned using Redbox instead, which I suppose would be fine if you are looking to watch more new releases.

I use Netflix to watch a lot of older movies and TV shows that I missed in their original run, and I really hate that canceling the mail part of my plan would mean giving that up. But that's what the library is for, right?

What are you going to be doing with your Netflix account?


-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl

A few weeks ago I finished a TV series that had been occupying a good portion of my free time for the past year or so.

I put "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in my Netflix queue at the suggestion of several friends, though I was doubtful that I was going to enjoy the series. I'm not big on sci-fi, and I wasn't sure how a movie from the early '90s could be turned into seven years of television. But as I got to the last few discs, I started dreading the end to the series that I had become totally engrossed in.

"Buffy" follows the life of Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a vampire slayer, and her eclectic group of friends -- including a watcher (Anthony Head), a couple of witches (Alyson Hannigan and Amber Benson), a werewolf (Seth Green), a vengeance demon (Emma Caulfield), a slayer (Eliza Dushku), a few vampires (David Boreanaz and James Marsters) and some other demons, as well as a couple of regular human beings (Nicholas Brendan, Charisma Carpenter, Michelle Trachtenberg and Kristine Sutherland), and not-so-regular human beings (Marc Blucas and D.B. Woodside). Buffy fights evil and saves the world, but she's also a regular high schooler and college co-ed who yearns to have a normal life. For seven years, Buffy plays normal by day and kills evil by night. She (mostly) hides her double-life from all but her inner circle, which helps her research, trick and slay demons, gods and whatever else comes out of the Hellmouth to torture and kill us regular folk.

It sounds cheesy, right? The first season or two are fairly campy, but the show picks up steam and improves quickly. Plotlines span several episodes; the series moves away from eliminating one evil per show as "the Scooby gang" begins concentrating on bigger, tougher villains.

The end of the show was almost like the end of a good book: I didn't want it to end because I didn't want the characters to be gone. I became so invested in what was happening that I wanted to see life continue in Sunnydale, Calif., long after Buffy saved the world one more time.

The title of this post is the final line of the series, uttered by Willow (Buffy's best witch friend). I felt the same way when the credits appeared on screen, and I restarted the series finale to watch it one more time. Then, I moved "Angel" to the top of my Netflix queue. The title character was Buffy's first vampire friend (and a love interest). "Angel" is a spin-off of "Buffy" that I thought might fill the new void in my TV watching.

I'm 11 episodes in to "Angel" and not entirely sold on the series. It's not as good as "Buffy" (but I suppose the spin-offs are never as good as the original). I'm still giving the series a shot, though; after all, I wasn't totally sure about "Buffy" until the second or third season. My favorite episode of "Angel" so far included an appearance by the slayer, and fellow copy editor Danielle Capriato has told me there are several crossovers in the two series. I'm planning to start my second viewing of "Buffy" this summer (the boyfriend has never seen it). Maybe we'll have to throw in a second viewing of "Angel" when that series chronologically comes up in the "Buffy"-verse.

So what is it I'm gonna do now, Buffy? Take advantage of the instant viewing option with my Netflix to re-enter the world of Sunnydale.


-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl