netflix Archive

The big news this morning was that Netflix has decided to split into two – Netflix will remain for the streaming business and a new site, Qwikster, will host the dvd-by-mail offering. Seems like the stock market didn’t love the move – Netflix shares dropped 7% today.

Yesterday I wrote about HTC wrapping a subway train in NYC with ads for their new tablet that allows you to use a stylus to create content.

Today I am back with another interesting advertising option for HTC. They have partnered with Hulu to offer a free trial month of the Hulu Plus service. If you go through the normal Hulu website, you are offered a free trial week of Hulu Plus but if you use this special link, you can use Hulu Plus free for a month. HTC is promoting the HTC Thunderbolt which runs on the Verizon network. From what I can gather, you don’t need an Android device to take advantage of this free trial.

While I am guessing that HTC is paying something to Hulu for this promotion, it certainly is interesting that they picked today to launch the program. Hulu Plus appears to run on many of the same devices that Netflix offers for their streaming service.

I haven’t tried Hulu Plus yet but do find it a bit odd that they charge $7.99/month for the service and yet they still show some advertising within the programming.

Popular online movie rental service Netflix (NFLX) is down. The Netflix website is also used for watching movies and television shows online. Twitter search is jumping bigtime on the outage which occurs when many people typically watch movies and have date nights.

I’ve seen a variety of messages when accessing netflix.com including:

“Http/1.1 Service Unavailable”
and
“We’re sorry, the Netflix website is temporarily unavailable. Our shipping centers are continuing to send and receive DVDs , so your movies will be processed as usual. And you can still instantly watch movies via your Netflix ready device. Our engineers are working hard to bring the site back up as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and, again, we apologize for the inconvenience. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-866-636-3079.”

Update 9:05pm Eastern: Another message is randomly visible noting that Netflix is in a maintenance period, “The Netflix website is temporarily unavailable due to scheduled maintenance. During the maintenance period, you may be able to instantly watch movies on an intermittent basis. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. If you need further assistance, please call us at 866-579-7120.”

Update 10:30pm Eastern: Netflix is back – watch your movies!

I’ve been using the Blockbuster Express machines around NYC for my video rentals. With all of the discount codes Blockbuster sends out, the rentals wind up averaging about 25 cents per DVD. Today I noticed that the machine in Times Square had about 30 newly added popular movies.

Please report in if Netflix is down where you are located.