Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

This morning’s New York Times covered Netflix’s distribution deal with Panasonic, a television manufacturer.  It’s interesting that companies like Netflix are anticipating flat screen televisions to be home-networked devices.  Direct manufacturing alliances set them up to compete against cable/satellite/telco service providers that offer “on demand” programming—not to mention broadcasters like ABC who let us view episodes of “Lost” right after they are broadcast through the old airwaves.  
 
While Netflix is an Internet business, it is still an old, physical media company relying on snail mailed DVDs.  As it becomes more of an entertainment television channel in its own right, there will be significant pressure on the company to create a great movie ordering/playing/pausing user interface that supports how users really view movies.  Will that be enough to differentiate them?  And will turning the channel to ABC soon pop up a navigable page on the TV set?
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/technology/03netflix.html
 
Michael Beavers