Netflix our near and dear consumer of days and nights is possibly evolving in a huge way with news this week that the VOD service could soon offer ability for users to not only stream their favorite shows and movies, but download them as well. For years Netflix has publicly denied they would introduce a downloadable addition to the service siting that it would complicate the company’s mission to offer a lot of content on demand. That was the stance on issue from the company until recently when tech industry blog Light Reading got a big scoop from Penthera, a company that helps media outlets like Comcast with their video services.
“We know from our sources within the industry that Netflix is going to launch this product,” says Penthera COO Dan Taitz. “My expectation is that by the end of the year Netflix will be launching download-to-go as an option for their customers.” So what does Netflix say?
“While our focus remains on delivering a great streaming experience, we are always exploring ways to make the service better,” said a Netflix spokesperson. That is not a denial, so this is still a real possibility. The idea of being to download an entire season of ‘House of Cards’ or ‘Daredevil’ and being able to stream it while taking a cross-country trip by plane, does that sounds satisfying? Yes, it does.
Read the whole story here which elaborates on how big video companies deal with the change in audience demands of their products. It’s an interesting read.
In other streamable news, Netflix has some challenges based on the massive maintenance of their huge library of actively changing titles and how that figures in the video world. Heads up, some NSFW language from the ETC News elaborate on these issues.
@kevkellam