Netflix News

Ever heard the saying “Don't call us; we'll call you?” In everyday social situations that is an appallingly rude attitude to take. But on the Internet it's basic self-preservation — assuming you change “call” to “contact.”

For example: if you are a Netflix customer, it's perfectly fine if you wish to contact Netflix because you think you're having a problem. But if Netflix contacts you about a problem — don't believe it. Chances are it's not really Netflix, but a sleazy would-be thief impersonating Netflix in the latest attempt at a phishing scam.

Security blogger Jerome Segura of Malwarebytes discovered the latest Netflix-flavored phishing scam, which at heart is the same as any phishing attempt: a would-be hacker poses as a business or financial institution – Netflix, Microsoft, your bank or cell phone company or anyone else – and asks for your account numbers, passwords and other information identity thieves find useful.

Hacker bait

Segura pretended to “fall for” the Netflix phishing scam, with a computer he'd specifically set up to be used as hacker-bait. (Which is another way of saying: do not try this at home, or at work, with your own computer.) The phishers, whose IP address traced back to somewhere in India, took full control of Segura's computer and stole copies of files with names like “Banking2013” -- nothing any legitimate Netflix IT guy would need to see, in other words.

Segura posted screenshot highlights, along with a full seven-minute video of the phishers' trip through his bait-computer files, on Malwarebytes.

But suppose that you, unsuspecting, received the same bait email Segura got, and furthermore suppose you decide to ignore the “Don't call us; we'll call you” rule of Internet scam protection. Or maybe you're just legitimately scared – “Gee, maybe there is something wrong with my Netflix account, and the company really is trying to warn me about it!” What can you do to protect yourself?

Easy: if you want to contact Netflix (or any other company in existence) because you're worried about a possible warning email or phone call or text message allegedly from that company, do your own independent online search for the company's contact information, rather than accept the information offered in the email.

When Segura got that fake Netflix phishing message, for example, it urged him to call a certain 1-800 phone number, allegedly for Netflix's “Member services.” But if you go to Google and search for “Netflix member service number” (without quotation marks), you will discover that, in Netflix corporate terminology, there is no such thing as a “Member service number,” although there is a “Customer service number,” 1-866-579-7172, which is completely different from the number the phishers asked Segura to call.

You've got to hand it to Redbox. It thinks big. And right now it's thinking of big price increases in the DVDs, Blu-ray Discs and videogames it rents from its familiar big red boxes.

On Dec. 2, the daily price of a DVD rental will go from $1.20 to $1.50 and a Blu-ray Disc will from from $1.50 to $2. In January, daily rental rates for videogames will go from $2 to $3. 

“With new-release movies for $1.50 a day, Redbox remains the best value in new-release home entertainment,” CEO Scott Di Valerio said in a statement. “The pricing adjustments announced today will allow Redbox to continue to offer consumers high quality movies and games while making investments to enhance the customer experience.”

The company said it has conducted extensive market testing over the last few months and is confident the increased revenue will exceed any losses in market share. However, Redbox caters to lower-income customers who can't afford cable or satellite hook-ups, so it's always possible the big red box may hit a big red wall if it gets too aggressive with its pricing. 

Redbox operates vending kiosks at more than 35,000 locations, including gas stations and grocery stores, as well as at some Walgreens, Walmart and McDonald’s locations.

The company says that besides raising prices, it is starting a new "recommendation engine" that will help customers find movies that they're likely to enjoy. It's said to be similar to the algorithms used by Netflix, Amazon and other companies that offer suggestions based on past buying habits. 

Netflix was the company that could seemingly do no wrong, until last July. Then, a series of business missteps alienated customers who were especially unhappy when the company began charging separately for its DVD and streaming services.

These days we hear complaints about the content.

“I can no longer find any of the movies I would like to view using the Netflix search command,” Doug, of San Diego, Calif., wrote in a ConsumerAffairs post.

"It stared a few months ago when there was an update to the 360 home page. I realized afterwards that the Netflix had been significantly downgraded, being most noticeable in the search feature."

More of the same?

Gillian, a Netflix subscriber from Northumberland, UK, is unhappy with the selection, calling it “the same old rubbish.”

“It was the same, nothing I want or not what was advertised,” Gillian wrote. 

Jay, of New Canaan, Conn., said he recently cancelled his DVD account and went to streaming. He says he's disappointed.

“I now notice that more and more of my choices are only available on DVD,” Jay wrote. “This is driving me to purchase from Amazon, and recently Hulu Plus more often than using Netflix.

Shooting Starz

The content on Netflix may, in fact, be changing a bit. Netflix's key content contract with Starz Entertainment expired this week, meaning Starz content is no longer available. But consumers shouldn't blame Netflix for that. Starz announced last year it was refusing to renew the contract because it did not believe Netflix was charging consumers enough money to view the content.

Netflix has indeed changed its emphasis and is becoming primarily a provider of TV shows rather than feature films. Many of the new additions are highly acclaimed series, including Mad Men, Arrested Development and Breaking Bad.

Netflix had better watch it. There may not be room in town for both Netflix and Amazon Prime. Prime today got the drop on Netflix as it scored an exclusive deal to distribute a couple of FX shows -- "Justified" and "The Shield" -- online.

Amazon said it has reached a content licensing agreement with Sony Pictures Television to make Amazon Prime the exclusive location to watch FX's "Justified" and "The Shield."

Prime subscribers can watch the shows for free, while other Amazon visitors can purchase and download episodes for $1.99 apiece.

"Justified" is a gritty series bult around the deeds and misdeeds of Raylan Givens, a U.S. Marshal based in the backwater reaches of Kentucky, with Timothy Olyphant of "Deadwood" fame playing the lead.

It's been one of the most watched shows on Amazon Instant Video, where customers can purchase and download episodes for $1.99 each, and will now be available to Prime members at no additional cost, the company said.

In addition, Prime Instant Video will add the inner-city Los Angeles crime drama "The Shield" to its catalog.

“Justified" and "The Shield" are two fan favorites on Amazon,” said Brad Beale, Director of Digital Video Content Acquisition for Amazon. “We’re consistently looking for ways to make Prime even better – and one of the ways we’re doing that is adding shows like these that we know customers love.”

Amazon stole some thunder earlier this month when it acquired exclusive online rights to the PBS hit "Downton Abbey." 

So, would you like to see what your Facebook friends are watching on Netflix? How about letting your FB buddies see what you're watching?

That sounds spooky to a lot of people but it's apparently something Netflix customers have been saying they want, and now it's here. 

Netflix announced today that its U.S. members will be able to connect to Facebook and agree to share favorite TV shows and movies on Netflix. The company will be turning on the feature "over the coming days" and expects that all U.S. members will have access to the social feature by the end of the week.

"There are few better ways to find a movie or TV series you'll love than hearing about it from your friends," said Tom Willerer, vice president of product innovation at Netflix.  "Facebook already makes it easy for our international members to connect with friends over TV shows and movies and we're thrilled to now bring this experience to our U.S. members."

The feature has been available internationally for quite some time but, until recently, it was prohibited in the U.S. by something called the Video Privacy Protection Act, enacted in 1988 to keep prying eyes from finding out what movies consumers rented from Blockbuster and other video rental stores. It was amended by Congess last year after some intensive lobbying by Netflix.

The new Netflix/Facebook integration lets Netflix members see what their friends have watched by adding new "Friends' Favorites" and "Watched by your friends" rows to Netflix. Members also automatically share what they watch only within Netflix and can optionally share what they've watched to Facebook, Netflix said.

"People naturally talk about TV shows and movies and love to share their experiences," said Willerer. "Through the Netflix/Facebook integration we want to let Netflix members express themselves on Facebook and provide a digital version of the proverbial water cooler."

"By default, sharing will only happen on Netflix," Cameron Johnson, director of product innovation at Netflix, wrote in a blog post. "You'll see what titles your friends have watched in a new 'Watched by your friends' row and what they have rated four or five stars in a new 'Friends' Favorites' row. Your friends will also be able to see what you watch."

Johnson provides a step-by-step guide in this video:

Netflix is one of those ideas that has turned out to be so good that everyone else wishes they'd thought of it. Now, Verizon and Redbox are trying to take it one step further, with a new service that offers streaming movies and rental DVDs.

Oh wait, that's what Netflix does.

OK, let's try it again: Verizon and Redbox are offering a new service that offers streaming movies and DVDs you can rent from one of  those 35,000 Redbox vending machines.

But although it is starting out with a lot of vending machines and a lot of network capacity, the new venture -- called Redbox Instant by Verizon (catchy, eh?) -- is kind of short of movies. It only has 4,600 streaming titles, far fewer than Netflix, Amazon and Hulu Plus, the household names in the field.

But never mind that. The company says it's not trying to compete with Netflix, which offers not only movies but also thousands of TV shows old and new, and even a few Netflix-produced original series.

Redbox Instant will only offer movies. Old movies. New movies. Just, you know, movies. Many better titles are only available at the kiosks, which will take a little getting used to. 

It will cost you $8 a month -- which, coincidentally, is what Netflix charges -- to be part of this grand experiment. For that you can stream as many movies as often as you can stand it and also get credits good for four DVD rentals at one of those kiosks. Kick in another buck and you can upgrade to Blu-ray rentals.

Verizon and Coinstar -- Redbox' elegantly-named corporate parent -- are high on the idea anyway.

“When you consider the core elements the parties bring to this venture – our powerful brands; our national rental kiosk footprint; our anytime, anywhere network presence; and our mutual commitment to customer-focused innovation – it’s clear that Verizon and Redbox are a powerful entertainment team,” said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon consumer and mass business markets.

The companies have been working on this for the last year or so and they say it's finally ready for primetime at RedboxInstant.com.

Netflix will pay $9 million to resolve a privacy case that began in 2011. U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Davila in San Jose, Calif., has granted final approval in the case that charged Netflix with retaining consumers' viewing histories and other personal information.

Plaintiffs Jeff Milan and Peter Comstock filed suit in early 2011 alleging violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), recently amended to allow wider sharing of viewing information. A wave of similar suits followed and the court consolidated the cases. After court-supervised mediation, the parties reached a settlement, which the court has now approved.

Those covered by the settlement include all Netflix subscribers as of the date of the preliminary approval, a group estimated at more than 62 million. Because of the unwieldy size of the class, individual class members will not receive any payment. Named plaintiffs Milan and Comstock will each receive a $30,000 payment and, after payment of court costs, attorney fees, etc., any remaining funds will go to nonprofit orgniazations and programs promoting consumer education and privacy protection.

Minimal recovery

"In light of the minimal monetary recovery" that individual class members would receive, the court agreed that the lump sum payments to further consumer education about privacy issues was an appropriate solution. Details can be found at www.videoprivacyclass.com.

This is what is known as a "cy pres" remedy, a structure that gives class members an indirect benefit rather than a check or other direct direct personal benefit. It is frequently used where proof of individual damage would be difficult. In this case, for example, it was not conclusively shown that any of the viewing histories or other data were distributed to third parties in a way that made individual users identifiable by name.

A similar settlement was used in privacy litigation involving Google Buzz. In that case, it was argued that tens of millions of Gmail users' personal information was wrongly disclosed when Google introduced its now-defunct Buzz social networking service. In that case, the settlement included an $8.5 billion payout to nonprofit groups working to further consumer privacy protection and security.

Besides making the payment, Netflix has agreed to "decouple" viewing histories from customers' identification and payment methods within one year of the settlement.   

Viewers once waited anxiously for the season premier of a much-loved TV series. But subscribers to online video streaming services now wait for an entire season, in one gulp.

Such was the case Sunday when Netflix debuted Season Four of the groundbreaking comedy series, "Arrested Development." The series, cancelled by Fox in 2006, was brought back to life by Netflix, which released the entire season instead of dribbling the episodes out one per week, as network television does.

Netflix had been offering the first three seasons for some time, helping to grow the audience for what is becoming a cult classic. Aside from being a risky venture – producing original content – Netflix chose to revive a series that has been dormant for seven years.

White hot hype

The gamble paid off initially. The return of "Arrested Development" generated white hot hype, including a marathon all day Saturday on the cable channel IFC. However, the reviews of season four of the series – and a sizable chunk of viewers has already viewed the entire season – have been lackluster to say the least.

So much so that it affected Netflix stock this week. Shares were pummeled, losing more than six percent of their value. Market analysts were counting on the return of "Arrested Development" to spur sales of Netflix subscriptions. The company may enjoy a pick-up in business but the Street has decided that is far less certain.

But Netflix appears undeterred. In interviews this week, company CEO Reed Hastings opened the door to produce additional seasons of "Arrested Development," but said it will ultimately be up to the cast.

Whether Netflix brings "Arrested Development" back for an encore or not, it appears to be committed to producing original content, with Hastings telling one interviewer that his company could be the next HBO.

House of Cards

In January, Netflix launched "House of Cards," an original series starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright as a Washington, D.C., power couple, doing whatever it takes to get to the top. The series appears to have been both a critical and popular success, though Netflix doesn't release viewership data.

Moving into original content is actually a self-preservation move since Netflix faces more competition for content. In 2011 Starz Entertainment announced it was not renewing the lease on its movie catalog because Netflix didn't charge enough for access to its content.

Now, there are more TV shows than movies on Netflix's streaming service and the new content appears to have found a ready audience, though not all viewers are sold. Linda, of Atlanta, Ga., says the movies she wants to watch are not available for streaming.

Not so good reviews

“In fact, all I can find is 2-3 year-old first run movies and occasional newer movies that must have bombed out in theaters before anyone ever heard of them,” she writes. “Sorry. Not worth it.”

“Netflix is affordable and it has many shows and movies for everyone,” writes Dina, of Brooklyn, N.Y. “However, they neglect some of their categories such as Anime. They need to fairly add new shows in all sections.”

“We are so disappointed with the selection of old movies and TV shows available,” Debra, of Minneapolis, Minn., chimed in. “These are not second run in our view, more like fourth, fifth or worse.”

It's not that Netflix is cheap. The company would surely like to purchase access to more movies. But with Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus becoming bigger competitors, and distributors reluctant to provide content for a service that costs just $8 a month, the content is increasingly hard to come by.

Netflix has a new look -- one it hopes will better lend itself to viewing on TV screens instead of smaller tablet and smartphone screens. 

"Our members collectively watch more than a billion hours of Netflix a month, most of that is on a TV," said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. "This is the biggest change to the Netflix experience on televisions in our history, making it even easier to find something great to watch on Netflix."

The new design was created specifically for the big screen, featuring multiple cinematic images for each title along with a new, snappy description and more personalized detail on why Netflix suggests it, the company said. 

The new format also lists Facebook friends of each subscriber who have already watched each programme, if a subscriber has paired their Netflix account to the social network.

The new TV experience is delivered by a new Netflix software platform that runs efficiently on various devices, from low-powered set top boxes, recent model Smart TVs and Blu-ray players to high-end game consoles. Previously each device had its own Netflix experience, which meant features took longer to roll out across devices. The Netflix website remains unchanged.

"This new software platform will allow us to innovate even faster and continuously improve the Internet television experience for our members across multiple devices," said Hunt.

The new format launches today and will be rolled out to all members globally within two weeks. Devices that will support the new experience include PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Roku 3, newer Smart TVs and recent Blu-ray players. Additional devices, including other Roku boxes, will be added at a later date.

Eating cable's lunch

Netflix, whose share price has more than trebled this year, is fast becoming a major threat to pay-per-view channels and premium cable channels. It already has than 30 million subscribers in the U.S. - surpassing that of HBO's older pay-per-view channel - and 1.5 million in Britain.

Netflix and other streaming video services are in the right place at the right time to grab the loyalty of younger consumers. Millennials -- the 18-to-24 group -- are dropping their TV remote controls at a faster rate than any other demographic, according to new research expected to be released this week by digital ad firm YuMe and the IPG Media Lab, Online Media Daily reports.

The Millennials are making video viewing a more personal experience, preferring tablets and smartphones to large-screen TVs, the study finds; they consume the majority of their video content via smartphone (about 20%); just over 15% via tablet devices; just under 15% via PC; less than 10% via live TV; and less than 7.5% via DVR devices.

It’s a fact of life that a person who reaches a certain age will start feeling strange new urges and desires — specifically, the desire to bore the heck out of younger people via long-winded tales on the theme, “We sure had it rough compared to kids these days.”

This is easy for folks who grew up during truly tough times like the Great Depression or World War Two, but later generations are reduced to complaints like, “When I was your age, if we wanted to watch a movie for the second time we had to wait up to four minutes for the videotape to finish rewinding.”

Luckily, Netflix provided new old-times complaint fodder this week, in a press release titled “Netflix Declares Binge Watching is the New Normal,” a long, detailed and statistics-packed article that boils down to “People who rent an entire season of a TV series they like rarely limit themselves to watching only one episode at a time.” (Note to young people: you don’t appreciate how good you have it. Why, when we were your age, we couldn’t watch previous seasons of TV shows at all unless the reruns went into syndication — and even then, we were lucky if we could see one episode per day.)

"Binge" defined

Anyway, according to the press release (which in turn discussed the results of a survey of TV-viewing habits): “A majority (73%) defined binge watching as watching between 2-6 episodes of the same TV show in one sitting.  And there's no guilt in it.  Nearly three quarters of TV streamers (73%) say they have positive feelings towards binge streaming TV.”

If watching a mere two episodes in a single sitting entails “binge” watching of a show, then it’s no surprise the majority of people with DVDs of TV shows deem themselves “binge” watchers.

In fairness, though, there was more to the press release than standard pro-Netflix advertising. The company spoke with a cultural anthropologist named Grant McCraken, who concluded that, due to changing times and the stresses of daily life, especially in this economy, “I found that binge watching has really taken off due to a perfect storm of better TV, our current economic climate and the digital explosion of the last few years. But this TV watcher is different, the couch potato has awoken. And now that services like Netflix have given consumers control over their TV viewing, they have declared a new way to watch. …. Getting immersed in multiple episodes or even multiple seasons of a show over a few weeks is a new kind of escapism that is especially welcomed today.”

So, surprise: TV viewers with the option to choose what they watch, when they watch it and how many episodes they watch at once turn out to adopt viewing habits very different from TV viewers back in the days when your viewing options were limited to “whatever’s airing on TV right now.”

In today’s changing times you might not have control over the big things in life, like your job, family and finances, but thanks to services like Netflix you do have control over what you watch on TV.

You could see this coming. Like a, well, house of cards, the Internet is a complex structure that works surprisingly well, considering how many players are involved in stitching the whole mess together from one millisecond to the next.

There's been this little issue called "net neutrality" that's been around forever but of interest only to the technocentric. It's about to become a lot more interesting to everybody.

Here's why: Irked by the success of Netflix and the amount of traffic it pours onto the net each day, Verizon and other carriers are demanding that Netflix pay them a premiuim for transmitting that traffic. A report in today's Wall Street Journal quotes Netflix as saying its average prime-time speeds dropped by 14% last month, just as the hit series "House of Cards" returned for its second season on Netflix.

Being throttled?

Verizon customers who pay $70 or more for "unlimited" FiOS broadband Internet service are becoming very familiar with the little "loading" graphic that appears much more frequently lately, when the video and audio pause because of network congestion -- or, as conspiracy theorists suggest -- purposeful throttling.

One longtime FiOS customer in the Washington, D.C., area said he had never seen the "loading" graphic on Netflix until this month. 

Why now? One potential explanation is that a federal appeals court ruled last month that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have the authority to impose net neutrality rules requiring that Verizon and other carriers treat all traffic equally.

The idea behind the Internet when it was founded was that everyone could transmit and receive data on an equal basis, limited only by the speed of their local connection to the Internet. 

Disappointed Dilberts

Telephone and cable companies -- who once imagined that they would be the movie and entertainment titans of the future -- find this irksome and have been arguing that major content distributors like Netflix should pay more for using so much bandwidth.

The content distributors reply that they pay millions of dollars for their Internet connections, while consumers collectively pay millions for their local connections through Verizon and other companies and that the "backbone" costs are the responsibility of the carriers. (This is vastly oversimplified but a more detailed explanation quickly becomes yawn-inducing).

An argument conveniently overlooked by the carriers is that if Netflix suddenly went away, most of its subscribers would likely switch to Hulu, Amazon Prime and other video distributors, generating just as much traffic as currently exists but perhaps spreading it out over more distributors.

While technically, backbone issues aren't covered by net neutrality -- which formally applies only to "last mile" service -- the debate over who pays for heavy video usage is only likely to get worse and seems certain to play a role in the Comcast-Time Warner merger, which would create a broadband collossus with a great deal of power over what consumers are able to see ... and how many "loading" graphics they have to endure in the process. 

There's this long-standing theory that the Internet is a miracle of free enterprise, a parallel universe in which the most innovative products and services just naturally rise to the top.

No one likes this theory better than the cable and telecommunications company, since they own the "pipes" through which flow the bits and bites that make up the Internet. For years, they have been enjoyed a steady geyser of cash from home and business customers signing up for "last-mile" Internet access as well as telephone and cable TV service.

Their only frustration has been that they have not been able to get their mitts fully into the pockets of what for lack of a better term are called the "content providers" of the Web -- Google, Netflix, Amazon and so forth. 

In another parallel universe, of course, it works just the opposite. The cable and telephone companies pay the TV stations and cable channels for their programming. After all, the reason people subscribe to cable is so they can watch "Breaking Bad" and other classics of Western civilization, no?

So why wouldn't Verizon and Comcast pay Google and Netflix for putting up all that great content that people are willing to pony up for? After all, without content, who would want a broadband Internet connection?

Hand on the spigot

Ah, but the telecom giants don't see it that way -- and the reason is that they have their hand on the spigot that controls the flow of products. Turn the spigot counterclockwise a few cranks and things start to slow down. Instead of watching "House of Cards" unfold, we watch it freeze while the little "Loading" box grabs the screen. (There is a more vulgar way of expressing what the telecom companies have their hands on but we'll stick with the spigot analogy for now).

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to its credit, has been trying to codify the "Net Neutrality" principle, which roughly holds that products flow freely across the Web, with the end user picking up the delivery tab and the producer paying the cost of uploading ("shipping") to the Web. The "peering" -- as it's called -- that goes on in the guts of the Internet, as companies hand off online traffic to one another, has typically not involved payment from one carrier to another.

That's all changing as the telecoms and cable companies see their dreams of becoming content titans dashed on the shores of their ineptitude. So if they can't be Rolex-wearing Hollywood executives, a suitable consolation prize is squeezing content providers and consumers to the maximum extent possible.

Besides reflecting the human propensity for greedy behavior, this reflects the reality of consolidation, exemplified most recently by the proposed Comcast acquisition of Time-Warner Cable.

Netflix pays up

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that it was shotguns across the table for a few minutes as each side tried to stare down the other. But as Comcast twisted the spigot a few more turns, Netflix blinked and agreed to ransom its content.

No one is saying how much Netflix is paying but you can be sure there are several zeroes involved.

It's always possible the FCC will manage to get a handle on all of this and impose some regulations that would retain the free exchange of bits that have made the Internet the hotbed of innovation it has become. But big bucks are involved and lobbyists are out in force, circling the wagons and working to keep the telecom and cable companies living the good life to which they've become oh so accustomed.

In another sign that watching TV online has become mainstream, Mariott Hotels has announced it will begin replacing guest room TV sets with Internet-connected sets.

A press release announcing the move emphasizes a relationship with Netflix, noting guests will be able to watch Netflix content on TV sets in their rooms when they travel. However, Marriott isn't providing a Netflix subscription, only a way to watch it.

Smart TVs, connected to the Internet, will replace those that just offer typical cable channels. To watch Netflix, guests must access their own accounts or subscribe.

According to the press release the Internet-connected TVs will have the Netflix app. Presumably there will not be apps for Netflix competitors and no way to view other Internet content.

Changing consumer preferences

“Our collaboration with Netflix responds to changing consumer preferences in the way our guests access and watch content, while recognizing the leading role Netflix is playing in driving this transformation,“ said Matthew Carroll, vice president brand management, Marriott Hotels. “Because consumers are choosing to take their streaming content with them when they travel, Marriott Hotels is making the industry’s first rollout of Netflix a priority.”

While Marriott isn't exactly making everything on the Internet accessible through in-room TVs, it's a big step for any hotel chain. Many hotels, after all, sell premium content to guests. Watching Netflix for free could be stiff competition.

With the agreement, Marriott says it is the first hotel brand authorized to offer guests direct access to their Netflix accounts as part of its guest room entertainment offering. Netflix is currently available at 6 Marriott properties, with 6 more launching this summer.

All hotels by the end of 2016

The hotel plans to expand Internet TVs to 100 of its properties by the end of 2015, and to nearly all of its more than 300 properties in the U.S. by the end of 2016.

Marrriott says Internet TVs have been installed at:

• New York Marriott East Side
• San Jose Marriott
• Princeton Marriott
• Newport Marriott
• Dallas/Fort Worth Marriott Solana
• Bethesda Marriott Suites

The next properties to get Internet TVs are:

• Marriott Marquis Washington, DC
• San Francisco Marriott Marquis
• Atlanta Marriott Marquis
• Dayton Marriott
• San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino
• Anaheim Marriott

The company says guests staying multiple days only have to login to their accounts once throughout their stay. When guests checkout, it says all account information is wiped clean from the televisions.

Marriott said a report from Accenture, showing more than half of U.S. consumers watch Internet television, was persuasive in moving it in that direction. In testing at hotels, the number of guests using any of the Internet apps on the guest room televisions was as high as 26%, depending on the property.

Netflix subscribers will notice that some recently released Hollywood blockbusters will disappear from the on-demand line-up soon.

The company has announced it is ending its relationship with Epix, the cable network that holds the rights to popular movies like Hunger Games: Catching Fire, World War Z, and Transformers: Age of Extinction.

The movies go away at the end of September when the Epix contract with Netflix expires. But if you think it is Epix that is pulling the plug on Netflix, then you would be mistaken.

Focusing on exclusive content

In an announcement Sunday, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said Netflix has chosen not to renew its agreement because Epix movies are available from other providers. It's part of the company's strategy to focus on original and exclusive content.

It appears to be a very different situation from four years ago, when Netflix was primarily an on-demand movie service heavily dependent on Starz Entertainment's vast library. In September 2011, Starz announced it would not renew its contract with Netflix.

Netflix was willing to pay Starz's price for the movies, but that was not the issue. The issue, apparently, was that Netflix did not charge consumers enough to view the content.

“This decision is a result of our strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging of our exclusive and highly valuable content,” Starz CEO Chris Albrecht said at the time. “With our current studio rights and growing original programming presence, the network is in an excellent position to evaluate new opportunities and expand its overall business."

Starz also licensed its content to cable TV providers, who charged a lot more for their services. The implication being that allowing Netflix to provide access to movies at $8 a month was a threat to services charging 10 times that amount.

Turning lemons into lemonade

Then an unexpected thing happened. Netflix did not crumble as perhaps many in the industry hoped it would. It began buying up rights to TV series – the only content it could find to replace the lost movies. Subscribers seemed to embace it.

“Binge watching” entered into the common vocabulary, as viewers would sit down and watch an entire season of a series in a weekend. It helped that many of the series that were available, like “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men,” were of higher quality than most movies.

Since then, Netflix has more or less redefined itself and now has an emphasis on original programming, with series like the award-winning House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. Sarandos says the emphasis on original content will continue, and will also extend to feature films.

“Just like we’ve changed the game for TV watchers by releasing entire seasons around the world at the same time, we have begun making movies that will premiere on Netflix globally and in some cases, simultaneously in theaters,” Sarandos wrote in a blog post. “It will take us time to build a robust slate of original movies, but we’re hard at work on it with such great stars and directors as Brad Pitt, Ricky Gervais, Judd Apatow, Angelina Jolie, Sofia Coppola and Adam Sandler.”

Meanwhile, Epix films will be available elsewhere. The company signed a deal with Amazon Prime in 2012 and will begin distributing content through Hulu in October.