In a move that will help absolutely no one, Warners has apparently convinced Netflix to make their site slightly worse for users:
Under a new deal between the two companies, Netflix users won’t just have to wait 56 days to rent Warner Bros. movies on DVD. They’ll have to wait 28 days to add the movies to their queues. […]
Beginning Feb. 1, when the new agreement goes into effect, Netflix customers won’t even be able to add Warner movies to their queues until four weeks after the DVDs go on sale, a knowledgeable person not authorized to speak publicly confirmed. They would then have to wait another four weeks until Netflix starts shipping the discs.
Granted: Netflix would love to get out of the DVDs-by-mail business anyway. But taking away a basic feature that users have come to expect hurts the company’s reputation.
(Maybe that’s why they wanted to be called Qwikster.)