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Netflix Watch Instantly's life after Starz includes Academy Award winners, more captions
In a change of conversation that would make Don Draper proud, Netflix has picked up its blogging pen and accentuated the positive, even as hundreds of titles provided by Starz Play blinked away this week. The first bit of good news? Content that's coming instead of going includes several movies that scored trophies at last weekend's Academy Awards,including Best Picture winner The Artist, and Best Documentary winner Undefeated that will arrive "later this year, plus Best Animated Feature Rango that goes live on the service March 31st. That extends to movies in theaters too, as last weekend's top two, Act of Valor and Good Deeds, are pay-TV window exclusives for Netflix. The other positive note is that it achieved a goal of offering closed captioning on 80 percent of the hours streamed by the end of last year, and notes 90 percent of streaming is now done on devices that have been updated to support optional captions. The bad news there is that some embedded TV and Blu-ray player software might not be able to be updated for captions, and progress on adding captions for that last twenty percent of content may be slower since it's content that isn't viewed as often. So, is the red envelope company doing enough to keep you hanging around, or are you going to blow through the last few eps of Lillyhammer and pull the eject button?
Netflix locks up Academy Award nominated exclusives from The Weinstein Company
If you're looking for more content to watch on Netflix's Watch Instantly streaming service -- especially since all those Starz movies are exiting stage left at month's end -- we have good news, as it just announced a multi-year exclusive deal with The Weinstein Company. The agreement covers foreign language, documentary and "certain other movies" that will be watchable in their pay-TV window only on Netflix, and not HBO or Showtime. That includes such high profile selections as The Artist, which is nominated for 17 Academy Awards this weekend and Best Documentary nominated Undefeated, as well as other flicks like Coriolanus and The Intouchables. Of course, this is still Netflix so while fans of subtitles and exposés may be sated, The Weinstein Company's more mainstream flicks and Dimension Films releases like Scream 4 aren't included, as they're still Showtime exclusives due to the deal it signed with the channel back in '08. Either way, more movies is more movies and you can check out all the details in the press release after the break, hopefully this deal works out better than HD DVD's exclusive Weinstein pact did back in the day.
