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Dear Chickensoup, We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008. Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out. While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers. If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ― Preparing for the eventual extinction of its DVD-by-mail rental service, Netflix Inc. on Tuesday is introducing its first solution for subscribers who want entertainment delivered directly to their television sets with just a few clicks on a remote control. The breakthrough comes in the form of 5-inch-by-5-inch device tailored for a year-old service that uses high-speed Internet connections to stream more than 10,000 movies and TV shows from Netflix's library. Although it's provided at no additional cost to most of Netflix's 8.2 million subscribers, the streaming service has had limited appeal so far because it doesn't...

I'm puzzled. I just looked up the movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", on Netflix. It was classified as "Availability unknown", but it also has a rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on opinions of 383 people who viewed the film. Has this been pulled by Netflix? Did someone get an injunction against it or something? How can over 300 people have viewed it and rated it, yet the movie is not currently available? Seems fishy to me. Anyone know what the deal is here?

Internet movie rental company Netflix suffered a site outage beginning at 7 a.m. PDT Monday, and the company doesn't know when it will have the problem fixed, a Netflix spokesman said. Customer service personnel told CNET News.com that they were told the site was undergoing routine maintenance when something went wrong, information they then passed on to customers. That is incorrect, according to Steve Swasey, the company's director of corporate communications. He said he couldn't discuss the causes but that it had nothing to do with site maintenance. "Our engineers have been feverishly working on repairing the problem all morning,"...

Which websites are best for viewing/downloading movies with the most bang for the buck?

Dear Blennos, You're receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well. While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements. Toward...

Rentals of DVDs from companies such as Netflix cost the U.S. Postal Service tens of millions of dollars each year because its sorting machines can't process millions of return envelopes, government inspectors say. The postal service incurs more than $20 million per year in labor costs to hand-sort DVDs. And costs are expected to total as much as $30 million per year by 2009. "Because these mail pieces are not machinable, the Postal Service pays significant additional labor costs to manually process them," auditors wrote in a recent report issued by Tammy L. Whitcomb, the deputy assistant inspector general for...

I recieved the following email yesterday afternoon and I am steaming mad. The video chain Blockbuster video has been aggressively advertising thier alternative to the growing success of Netflix. I was pressured by the folks who work at the video stored for months to join Blockbuster Unlimited. They touted the ability to rent movies online just like Netflix but with the added bonus of being able to take a movie back into any store and exchange it free for another title, along with being able to also just rent from the store. This sounded like a great deal and sold...

Left behind by Netflix, DVDs, and on-demand cable service, outlets are dying off; popcorn, tanning salons keep some alive If it were an old Western movie, this would be the faded boomtown. It's silent save for the buzz of fluorescent lighting and the familiar "swish-clunk" of DVDs slipping through an outside drop-box. A smattering of customers -- one, maybe two at a time -- stroll in, getting lost in tall stacks filled with dusty gems such as "Divine Trash" and "Cactus Flower." One elderly gentleman passes through a door in the back to a beyond not suitable for children. At...

Netflix Offers $1 Million Prize for Major Leap in Recommendations The New York Times is reporting that Netflix is offering a $1 million prize for anyone who can come up with a major breakthrough in movie recommendations. Recommendation systems, also known as collaborative filtering systems, try to predict whether a customer will like a movie, book or piece of music by comparing his or her past preferences to those of other people with similar tastes. Such systems will look at, say, the last 10 books, movies or songs a customer has rated highly and try to extrapolate an 11th. Computer...

The principal financial backer of a statewide parcel tax initiative has apparently stopped funding the drive, leaving supporters without the kind of cash, staff and ads typically needed for a full-fledged campaign. Political consultant Rick Claussen said he has advised Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to "let go" of Proposition 88, which would establish a $50 parcel tax on all property for public school funding. "Because of the anti-tax sentiments right now, we took a look at the measure and felt it was better to let go of this one and regroup and decide where we might go in the future,"...

Internet video rental company Netflix's legal claims against rival Blockbuster are based on "unenforceable patents," Blockbuster said in a counterclaim filed on Tuesday. In a bid to shut down its online service, Netflix had sued Blockbuster, the leading movie and game rental company. But Dallas-based Blockbuster on Tuesday said the lawsuit is based on patents that Netflix obtained deceptively in a bid to monopolize online rentals. In an April lawsuit, Netflix accused Blockbuster of starting its online service in 2004 despite knowing that the service infringed a Netflix patent. "There is nothing original about renting movies or subscription rental programs,"...

Online DVD rental company Netflix on Tuesday sued rival Blockbuster for patent infringement, asking a federal judge in Northern California to shut down Blockbuster's 18-month-old online rental service and award Netflix damages, according to a copy of the filing. Blockbuster declined to comment, saying it had not received a copy of the lawsuit. Netflix, which was founded in 1999, holds two U.S. patents for its business methodology, which calls for subscribers to pay a monthly fee to select and rent DVDs from the company's Web site and to maintain a list of titles telling Netflix in which order to ship...

A Stranger in Your Queue If your Netflix movies take too long to arrive, you may be sharing your subscription with your mail carrier. By Eric Wolff JIan Zhong Li loved Netflix. After a long night sorting mail at a Queens processing center, he could settle in at his Brooklyn home with all sorts of movies he’d never seen in the theater. Li especially loved Netflix because the DVDs come in well-labeled red envelopes that make them easy to identify amid the bulk junk. It also makes them so much easier to steal. When postal inspectors followed Li to his...

A Stranger in Your Queue If your Netflix movies take too long to arrive, you may be sharing your subscription with your mail carrier. * By Eric Wolff JIan Zhong Li loved Netflix. After a long night sorting mail at a Queens processing center, he could settle in at his Brooklyn home with all sorts of movies he’d never seen in the theater. Li especially loved Netflix because the DVDs come in well-labeled red envelopes that make them easy to identify amid the bulk junk. It also makes them so much easier to steal. When postal inspectors followed Li to...

Updated: 03:15 AM ESTNetflix Presses Pause for Heavy DVD Renters 'Throttling' Practice Delays Shipments, Gives Preference to Infrequent RentersBy MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP SAN FRANCISCO (Feb. 11) - Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix Inc.'s online DVD rental service 2 1/2 years ago, but he still feels shortchanged. That's because the $17.99 monthly fee that he pays to rent up to three DVDs at a time would amount to an even bigger bargain if the company didn't penalize him for returning his movies so quickly. Carlos Osorio, AP Netflix subscriber...

Posted on Fri, Feb. 10, 2006 Netflix sends frequent renters to the back of DVD line MICHAEL LIEDTKE Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO - Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix Inc.'s online DVD rental service 2 1/2 years ago, but he still feels shortchanged. That's because the $17.99 monthly fee that he pays to rent up to three DVDs at a time would amount to an even bigger bargain if the company didn't penalize him for returning his movies so quickly. Netflix typically sends about 13 movies per month to...

Netflix Hires Former U.S. Postmaster General as COO Netflix has hired former U.S. Postmaster General William J. Henderson as chief operations officer, effective January 23rd. Tom Dillon, who joined Netflix in 1999 and built the logistics and distribution systems at Netflix, will be retiring in April. If he could handle delivering 668 million pieces of mail per day to 130 million addresses with a budget of $68 billion, I think he can handle shipping a few movies (Netflix ships more than one million movies per day).

Netflix Service Complaints Some of the complaints I've received about Netflix recently: Jack writes: My problem is that 98% of the DVD's I receive on a Friday or Saturday go back to a location VERY far from my local center. The movies I receive during the rest of the week go back to my local center nearly 100% of the time. The only times I have received a DVD, at the beginning of the week, that does not go back to my local center is when a movie that I was supposed to have received that previous Friday or Saturday...

Netflix Class Action Lawsuit Settlement Update: Frank Chavez, the person named in the lawsuit, is getting $2,000, and the lawyers are taking in about $2.5 million for "...fees and costs" (I should have gone to law school). You can read the proposed settlement notice here. If you were a paying Netflix subscriber before January 15th you may be eligible for a free, one-month upgrade in service (an additional DVD out at a time), pending approval from the court.

Netflix Takes Over Wal-Mart DVD Rentals Thursday May 19, 4:53 pm ET By Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer Netflix Takes Over Wal-Mart's Online DVD Rental Business; Netflix Shares Surge on News SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is handing off its online DVD rental business to Netflix Inc., signaling the world's largest retailer couldn't beat the Internet upstart at its own game. Thursday's David-defeats-Goliath announcement boosted Netflix's shares, which gained 63 cents, or 4.1 percent, to close at $16.13 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares shed 13 cents in after-hours trading, but soared as high as $19.27 earlier...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), the world's largest retailer, on Thursday said it was closing its online DVD rental business and would direct its customers to Netflix Inc. (NFLX), the company that pioneered online rentals. Shares of Netflix jumped 14 percent, and touched their highest level since October when the company cut prices to compete with an online service launched by rival Blockbuster Inc. (BBI). Under the agreement, Wal-Mart will offer its online customers the opportunity to sign up with Netflix at their current monthly subscription price of $12.97 for a year, and Netflix will promote Wal-Mart...

Netflix Ripoff / Scam Site? Richard told me about Flix-Online.com, an obvious ripoff of Netflix and probably a scam. They charge a one-time fee of $23.40 for unlimed downloads of 35,000 movies, and say they have 1.6 million members. How does it work? That's the easy part. You will simply download and install a single program. Once installed and connected, you can search for movies, television shows, even entire television series or browse a huge selection of movies from a website. Pick all the movies you want and with a single click they will start downloading automatically. Best of all,...

Looking for comments from those who have had experience with one or both of those services. Got any praise and/or complaints about them?

I just received a copy of Voices of Iraq from NetFlix. It appears NetFlix has ordered a custom-produced batch for their customers, so I would expect an ample supply to be available.

I don't watch TV. (I don't have a TV.) I just signed up for netflix for DVDs to watch on my computer. I started out with the old TV show Combat! and some Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. (Showing my age.) Since netflix has so many thousands of offerings, I wonder if freepers would recommend out-of-the-way DVDs, or movies / shows they enjoyed but never saw at their video store. netflix doesn't have the TV episodes of Rocky Jones: Space Ranger. :-(

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Netflix Inc. on Thursday posted a wider quarterly net loss hurt by higher marketing costs, but the online DVD renter raised its earnings forecast, predicting better service would draw subscribers willing to pay 10 percent higher fees. Netflix shares dropped some 11 percent in after-hours trading, however, as investors reacted to a mixed outlook including an indication the planned price hike would cause a jump in a key measure of cancellations in the second quarter before a recovery later in the year. Netflix said it would boost its basic subscription price by $2 per month to...

Los Angeles Daily News Forever rental Netflix has caught interest of eclectic film fans -- with no late fees By Michael LiedtkeAssociated Press Monday, March 01, 2004 - LOS GATOS, Calif. -- It would be easy to cast Netflix Inc. founder Reed Hastings as simply a dot-com rebel whose online DVD subscription service empowers consumers by letting them keep video rentals indefinitely without facing late fees. But Hastings, a former Peace Corps volunteer who once taught math in Swaziland, says he is pursuing a far-nobler cause. Hastings sees himself as a DVD evangelist, with Netflix a bully pulpit for...