From [FourFour](http://fourfour.typepad.com/), home of earlier [No Signal supercut](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/no-signal), comes another montage of movie tropes, this one involving [medicine cabinet mirrors](http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2010/02/mirror-scare-a-supercut.html) and their kin.
This afternoon, Netflix announced that it [wouldn’t be shipping new releases](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34731701/ns/business-consumer_news/) from Warner Bros. until 28 days after street date. In exchange for this window, WB is giving better prices and — most crucially — deeper access to its library for Netflix’s streaming service.
The deal makes sense for Warners. Most DVDs are sold in the first month after release, so if they can turn rentals into sales, they come out ahead.
The deal makes sense for Netflix, too. They’re lowering one of their primary costs and getting more content for their Watch Instantly service. To their credit, they understand that the business of mailing DVDs will end. The future is streaming, and they’re increasingly well-positioned.
If you’re a Netflix subscriber who mostly watches new releases, this deal sucks.
Netflix will probably lose some customers in the near term, particularly as other studios cut similar deals. But they may gain more customers with a better streaming library. Netflix has a strange relationship with subscribers: they want to keep them happy but not too happy, since shipping each disc costs real money. My hunch is that the company has crunched the numbers and discovered that the folks who mostly rent new releases end up costing more to support.
If you’re a writer with a movie on home video, this is probably a good deal. You make residuals on DVD sales and streaming, not subscription rentals.
When Netflix ships a disc of Corpse Bride, I get nothing. When Netflix ships those bits over the internet, Warners gets paid, and I get a few cents. That’s good.
This [handy montage](http://videogum.com/archives/supercuts/i_love_your_mr_star_wars_and_o_099461.html) might make you think twice about letting your characters use the title of the movie in dialogue.
(via [fourfour](http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2009/11/two-videos-that-i-didnt-make-but-love-as-if-they-were-my-own.html))
[Toby Wilkins](http://www.tobywilkins.com/) had emailed me about this weeks ago, but I just now got a chance to check it out.
SpeedCine indexes movies available through iTunes, Crackle, Hulu and Amazon VOD, letting you know where you can find any given title. For example, searching for the The Nines provides links for download through Amazon, iTunes and NetFlix.
Because most of these services are U.S.-only, it’s not much help to international users, unfortunately.
The site is still in beta, and while it’s really useful, I wish it provided better URLs for copy-and-pasting. Right now, SpeedCine gives you a jumble of letters after an ASP query. Here’s the listing for Go in SpeedCine:
http://www.speedcine.com/results.aspx?query=T0001274
and here it is on Crackle:
http://crackle.com/c/GO
That’s small enough to be easily Twittered, and feels permanent enough that I’d be comfortable putting it in a blog post.
But that’s a small quibble. SpeedCine is worth making your first stop when trying to find a movie online.
**Update March 2011: SpeedCine [has closed](http://my-life-as-a-blog.com/?tag=/SpeedCine).**