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BAD NEWS FOR BLOCKBUSTER CUSTOMERS IS GOOD NEWS FOR NETFLIX Thursday, February 28 2008 Blockbuster's recent decision to raise prices redounded to the benefit of Netflix, the online renter said Wednesday. The company said that it expects to report subscriber growth to 8.26 million from its earlier forecast of 8.05 million. Netflix also said that Blockbuster's price increase resulted in Netflix's existing subscribers spending more. The victory of Blu-ray over HD DVD in the high-definition format war will also allow Netflix to increase its inventory of Blu-ray titles, the (more) INTERNET DOWNLOADING NO THREAT, SAYS NETFLIX CFO Thursday, February 7 2008 
It
is
likely
to
be
a
long
while
before
movie
downloading
becomes
a
significant
challenge
to
the
DVD
rental
business,
NetFlix
CFO
Barry
McCarthy
told
an
investment
conference
in
San
Francisco
Wednesday.
"There
are
100
million
DVD
players
in
U.S.
households,"
McCarthy
told
the
Thomas
Weisel
Partners
Technology,
Telecom
&
Internet
Conference.
"If
you
really
think
people
are
going
to
stop
renting
DVDs,
you
need
to
lie
down
until
that
thought
passes."
As
reported
by
(more) |
|
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On the same day that shares in online DVD renters Netflix rose to a record high, the company suffered its second-worst outage in its history, going offline at about 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time and not coming back until about 7:00 p.m. The company did not disclose the cause of what it called an "unanticipated, unplanned outage" but did acknowledge that it would not be able to send out discs to many of its customers until today. Netflix experienced a similar system crash last July, which lasted more than 18 hours. On that day, however, the company's shares fell 7 percent; in Monday's trading, shares of the Los Gatos, CA-based company rose 5 percent following a note to clients by Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olsen saying that his earlier guidance -- he had estimated that Netflix shares would rise to $36 -- was too conservative and that he now believed they would hit $40. They closed Monday up $1.93 at $38.17. 
