Netflix to stream Starz movies

Superbad, No Country among 2,500 titles in agreement

By Danny King -- Video Business, 10/1/2008

OCT.1 | Netflix has signed an agreement to stream movies from Liberty Media's Starz movie-channel network as part of the DVD rental company's continued effort to attract more subscribers to its video-streaming service.

Netflix will offer about 2,500 films, TV shows and special events from the "Starz Play" broadband subscription service, the companies said in a statement today. About 1,000 of the titles are available today, including No Country for Old Men and Superbad. Additionally, Netflix will let customers watch a sneak preview of the first episode of the Starz TV series Crash, which debuts on the channel Oct. 17.

By reaching a deal with Starz, Netflix gets access to titles for which Starz has exclusive video-on-demand distribution agreements. Last year, Starz sued Walt Disney Studios' Buena Vista Television unit after the studio reached video-download deals with Apple's iTunes and Wal-Mart that offered movies the same day they debuted on DVD.

Netflix has been trying to build on its 8.4 million subscriber base by adding streaming services. Last week, the largest U.S. movie-rental service via mail announced agreements to stream from an inventory of about 850 episodes from TV shows such as Hannah Montana and NCIS from Disney Channel and CBS, respectively.

The agreement with Starz, which has 16 Starz and Encore movie channels in the U.S., "reflects the creative ways we are working with content partners to expand the profile and the number of choices our subscribers can watch instantly over the Internet, in addition to the 100,000 titles we offer on DVD through the mail," Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said in the statement.

Last month, LG Electronics started selling a Blu-ray Disc player that instantly links with Netflix’s 12,000-title streaming service. In July, Netflix expanded its partnership with Microsoft that allows customers to stream Netflix’s movies and TV shows through Microsoft’s Xbox 360 videogame console.

In May, Netflix introduced a set-top box allowing customers to stream from an inventory of what was about 10% of its 100,000 titles. Later that month, CEO Reed Hastings said products such as Netflix Player by Roku, which had to be back-ordered within three weeks of its introduction, would double the company’s subscriber base within a decade.