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Netflix, the company that ushered in the mail-order DVD rental biz, is offering a set-top box that allows subscribers to stream movies and TV shows from the web.
The $99.99 Netflix Player connects to a television and streams video content from a PC via Ethernet or Wi-Fi, writes ZDNet. The player will be able to play HD videos once Netflix makes those available. There is no charge for Netflix subscribers beyond the cost of the box and the general Netflix subscription fee.
The library for the player, at 10,000 entries, is slim compared with Netflix’s selection of 100,000 DVD titles. And, because of rights issues, most of the internet titles are more than five years old.
The move is a direct competition to Apple TV, which takes content from the iTunes store and costs $229, and Amazon Unbox on TiVo, which allows TiVo subscribers to purchase movies and television shows from the internet and watch them on their TVs. Richard Doherty, director of consumer electronics consulting firm Envisioneering Group, calls the Netflix Player “the most impressive product we’ve seen attached to a TV this decade,” according to The New York Times.
The growth of web-to-TV products like this has been slow, hampered by limited selections of programming and competition from cable and satellite companies, which keep upping their video-on-demand offerings. Univision, for example, announced yesterday that it plans to make available via VOD more than 1,000 hours of programming, including films, news programming and matches from the 2010 World Cup (via MediaPost).
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Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
