Hurt Locker: Netflix’s 28-Day Window Would Decimate Their Top Rental List

As you may have heard by now, Netflix has agreed to movie studio demands that they not rent new movies until 28 days after their DVD release. The idea is that this will help drive DVD sales, which have been plummeting in recent years, taking billions out of the pockets of the studios. Right now, this deal is only in place with Warner Brothers, but you can be sure that the other studios are going to want the same deal. Netflix says it's going along with this because most of its customers care more about catalog (older) releases than newer ones. But the popularity charts suggest otherwise. Each month, Netflix releases a list of the top 25 rented movies for the previous month on its Facebook page. This week, they gave out the data for January 2010, and guess what? Of the top 25 rentals, over half (13) would not have been fully available to rent for the month under the new 28-day rule. And some wouldn't have been available at all. Clearly, this new policy is going to have a bigger effect on Netflix users' rental habits that the company wants you to believe.