Posted by Comcast Newsgroup on 10/30/05 21:58

lilydied@aintitcoolmail.com wrote:
> k wrote:
>
>>Is it my imagination that the Netflix movies are not of the quality of
>>regulr rentals?
>
>
> The process of authoring a DVD movie is quite involved and expensive.
> Netflix invests a lot of money into having new inferior masters created
> to use instead of the widely available standard masters. Once the
> master has been made (called a "glass master"), production costs to
> create disks for consumers to use is relatively the same, regardless of
> the quality of the master. This is why Netflix rental costs are so
> high, because they are going to the trouble of re-encoding movies for
> no reason.
>
> "We could just use the high quality versions that are already there,"
> said a high-ranking Netflix executive, "but instead we waste a lot of
> resourses to have new versions made just for us. In this way, we can
> provide inferior product for higher prices. We could be more
> competitive and efficient, and save money for the customer while
> increasing our profits, but we do it this way instead. No one really
> notices (except the people with active imaginations)."
>

All sarcasm aside, does anyone know the rationale for Netflix having
specific versions of some DVDs made specially for it?

BB

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