Netflix started selling used DVDs a few years ago, a side venture to its more traditional rental movies by mail model that made Netflix one of the most successful online businesses around.

The move for Netflix to drop out of the used DVD business isn’t really that surprising to me and I don’t think the reasons for the decision are really being talked about.

Netflix claims the decision was made to allow the company the room to focus on its core business — movie rentals by mail and streaming video. I’m guessing that is true, but there is something in the statement that is missing.

Netflix is working hard on building its streaming service, announcing an upgrade to HD for a number of titles, prepping for a launch on Xbox 360 and TiVo along with Blu-Ray players that support the format.

The company has also made agreements with the movie channel Starz in order to get its hands on new movie releases. I think this agreement is actually the most telling reason for Netflix to pull out of the used store business.

Lets face it, the movie industry hates used stores. A used DVD sold doesn’t count in sales figures for the movie and ultimately means a “loss in sales” for the studio or distributor that doesn’t get a cut of that sale.

The movie industry has been slow to adopt the Netflix streaming service, mostly pushing out “catalog movies” that haven’t spent time on the big screen in a few years.

Closing down its used DVD store is a good will measure for Netflix, letting the movie companies know they are ready to play ball and really push the streaming service even further. Netflix is positioning themselves for the future and they’re doing it now.

I only hope Netflix doesn’t give too much. The entertainment industry is notorious for taking a pound when an ounce was offered.

At any rate, the streaming service is building up and becoming one of the most compelling offerings out there. If that means missing out on a few deals on DVD, that’s fine. After all, I’ll be able to watch it on my Xbox soon enough.

Video by Common Craft.

I have been using Twitter myself for quiet a while, since it was just a little birdie as it were, going back to early February 2007. Since that time I’ve only actually known a couple people who Twitter and yet, I have seen my viewers swell to over 80 people.

I now have a goal to expand that to 100 people by the end of September. Not sure how I’m going to do it but so far the people who follow me just seem to do it on their own, I’m going to let it happen organically. I’ve gone up over 20 people in about a month so it’s not unlikely.

The problem I find with Twitter, and a complaint that many users have, is the constant instability of the service. It is almost constantly down. That makes for a difficult user experience. And yet almost all of us continue to return to the simple social networking service.

I lost interest in FaceBook before I started using it and the MySpace experience is awful. It’s all about Twitter — at least when it works.

You can follow me right from my blog, otherwise friend me up on twitter.com/rjw3. Let me know if you do and I’ll follow you back. It’s worth it I swear.

As a user of TiVo, this is somewhat exciting news. The idea of getting YouTube directly on my TiVo means a lot more content opportunities. I’ve seen the experience on Apple TV and it’s pretty smooth. Having used TiVo’s partnership with Amazon Unbox service, I expect a pretty strong quality to come out of this.

There are more partnerships that have been talked about, but a rumored Netflix partnership has apparently stalled. I would love to see Netflix Watch Now on my TiVo.

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers also talked about a new vision for TiVo, opening the device to a whole house experience. Currently I’m able to share content between my two TiVos (living room and bed room) which is nice, but to do it through one box in a more seamless manor would be exciting.

All this is making me feel good about holding off on upgrading to an HD TiVo had this point. My standard def box is doing me pretty well. I just have to ignore the HD QAM video I can watch. Soon though, hopefully.

It has been evident to me for a long time Blu-Ray players were priced based on the PlayStation 3. Sony, the primary backer of the high definition Blu-Ray format also produces the PS3 - set to be a major part of Sony’s revenue stream. Oh yeah, and it plays Blu-Ray movies too.

At $399 and above, Sony’s PlayStation 3 has remained one of the cheaper Blu-Ray players on the market for some time. It appears it will stay that way, at least according to tech blog Engadget.

When Warner Bros. announced it was canceling its support of HD DVD, it said its decision was based on consumer demand. At the time most reports had Blu-Ray 2/3rds lead over HD DVD, but that number was quickly evaporating. As HD DVD was pushing lower priced players on the market, disc sales for the format raised dramatically. Within months it would have been easy to see a more level playing field between the formats.

HD DVD was predominantly run by Toshiba with few hardware companies supporting it, while Sony’s Blu-Ray group included a number of hardware producers. That was a major flaw on the HD DVD side of things - the limitation of product - but this allowed for dramatic price differences between the competitors that would have put more high definition players into peoples homes.

Without competition it appears Blu-Ray prices are spiking again. This will slow adoption to a format that is poised to help almost all media companies with new sources of revenue - as people upgrade their DVD libraries (including those of the rental companies).

As it stands now, I have no intention of buying a Blu-Ray player until the prices become more realistic - say under $200. With the average player coming in closer to $500 and above my back account feels a safe for now.

Read the Engadget story here. (Note: Engadget credits Tom’s Hardware for the story).

It was billed as an interesting keynote address for SXSW, a conference that brings together technology, music, art and everything else in between. An evolving event that kicked off many years ago that has expanded from a focus on music to what it is today.

The piece of SXSW that seems to be attracting the most attention this year is an interview between Mark Zuckerberg, an entrepreneur with a reputation for being shy and avoiding public speaking. The other, a columnist/journalist who admits to being a friend of “Zuck’s” - Sarah Lacy.

What happened during the keynote address that was set up like an interview was something that apparently devolved into madness. Check out the video from where the interview begins to devolve.

An audience of about 1,000 attendees - with an addition group of overspill - were disappointed with the direction the discussion between Zuckerberg and Lacy was taken - a focus mainly on the business side of Facebook.

The crowd, filled with computer programers, bloggers and developers had little interest in the new models Facebook have developed and a little over 30 minutes into the keynote began to disrupt the discussion and ask their own questions.

Lacy ran into an issue that many interviewers need to keep in mind. She really began to stroke the ego of her subject too much. “I love Facebook,” Lacy said at one point.

She also continually promotes a book she recently wrote on the subject of Zuckerberg and Kevin Rose, another Internet personality who has helped shape the net as we are beginning to know it today. This apparently rubbed the audiance the wrong way as well.

I have never done a public, Jay Leno style interview - most of mine have been more on the intimate one on one angle. It’s obviously a difficult thing to tackle and one she obviously falls short at it.

See Lacy’s response.

I have not read her columns or any other material, I am actually interested in her book and will likely check it out. I sympathize with what she went through during SXSW, I’m one step away from being in her shoes. (Ok 1,000 steps but still). It’s not easy.

Note to the audience, if you happen to read this - you were rude, inappropriate and should be ashamed of the attacks you sent Lacy’s way. To the first questioner - think about that the next time you’re not interesting or make some kind of a mistake. Your wordy question proved how difficult it is to do this.

When the announcement came days before the Consumer Electronics world entered its big trade show in January, the end of HD DVD seemed to be inevitable.

As the Web is so good at doing, a video popped up taking footage from a German film about the downfall of Nazi Germany re-subtitled with comments about HD DVD. I felt sick watching it.

A friend sent me the You Tube video with a chuckle, but I found it impossible to laugh at it. Comparing the downfall of a consumer electronic product to the greatest villain our world has ever known - a group that killed millions of people and set an entire country on a course it still strives to over-come.

While I’m not suggesting censorship, I’m completely against that, I do find it sad that someone took footage documenting the downfall of one of our worlds more horrific regimes, repurposed in this way.

There has been a lot of comedy at the expense of Nazis over the years, well deserved, thought out and pointed humor that serves to demonstrate the absurdity of their actions. This particular video seems to take a less thought out take on Nazis in an effort for a cheap laugh at the expense of a consumer product. Not really funny, more nauseating.

I understand where the creators of this video is coming from and I’ll give them credit for some interesting jokes at the expense of HD DVD, but placed over a backdrop with Hitler, it feels more like an ignorant frat joke that has the potential to open wounds instead of a light hearted video to be passed around the office.

After watching it I went to my downloads folder to delete it, finding a folder filled with nearly a gig of PDF files, wallpaper, unused shareware and a few other video files. Generally speaking, the majority of the files fell squarely in the “I don’t need or use these” category.

There were of course a few gems in the rough, which I moved to a more permanent “documents” or “pictures” folder, but for the most part the files that served no real purpose ended up in the trash.

Some of the files dated back to over 6 months ago, many duplicates of HDTV manuals I downloaded looking at feature sets before selecting my Vizio.

It’s an interesting metaphor for life I think, we often accumulate stuff we don’t need and every so often we need to purge ourselves of some unneeded stuff.

That said I backed up all the files, even the unneeded ones, onto a DVD-R. So no, I won’t be getting rid of that second copy of Dogma anytime soon. I’m too much of a pack-rat.

With more media outlets and the growth in the tech blogging community, the competition to be “your source” for news at CES has never been more fervent. Some source did live blogging, others did creative videos, while at least one blog made a complete fool of itself.

This year, Gizmodo did a stunt at CES. Using a gadget advertised on late night TV that turns off all televisions within a certain radius. Said blogger took the device and shut off dozens of flashy new HDTVs throughout the show and interrupted a press conference. This of course annoyed vender’s, organizers and generally everybody with any sense of common decency.

The individuals responsible for the stunt over at said tech blog have made claims of civil disobedience to prove their independence and not being part of the establishment. The problem comes in that this particular blog is part of a major corporation that is seeking as much traffic as possible - note advertisers paid the bills that allowed the bloggers to do this prank.

Any claims of civil disobedience as a reasoning behind the stunt is pure posturing. This was all about page views, click throughs and visibility. This particular blog has a history of such antics drawing both curious attention and negative attention. As time goes on the site has lost a great deal of credibility. While their competition (Engadget) has almost always taken a journalistic high road, avoiding such stunts and recognizing what credibility is really about.

I have to be honest, I have never been a fan of Gizmodo. Its always felt a little less tasteful or honest in comparison to its competitors. This incident just serves to prove the point. While its competition have run into controversy - including one reported rumor that likely caused a serious, all be it short lived, dip in Apple’s stock price on Wall Street - Engadget has generally felt more trust worthy.

As a professional journalist I question the tactics and explanations from the perpetrator. From posting a “comedy” video of the clips to their “response” to the criticism that flooded the tech community in recent days.

In the end, if they wanted to get attention, they’ve obviously made their point. As for their journalistic credibility - I’d argue they never really had it.

SlingBox has been a product I’ve been interested in for a while. I intend on picking one up in the near future to hook up to my TiVo for viewing when I’m traveling. The SlingBox connects to your television or DVD player or TiVo and lets you watch and control it through your computer.

This year the fine SlingMedia folks came through with their long discussed SlingCatcher. This new product will let users send from the SlingBox to another television - taking the computer out of the equation. Interesting idea. I plan on using this to watch TiVo’d shows in another room. Good times.

Then there was the death of HD DVD. I saw it coming before it happened but I am disappointed it happened the way it did. I have some thoughts I’ll expand on it later, but I have to say - Warner Bros. doesn’t have the consumer in mind. It’s a money thing, and that’s a shame. Oh well. I still have a nice upconverting DVD player at least.