A bit frustrated with Netflix…

Consider the screenshots below. I have taken snapshots of the top 8 movies in my Netflix queue configured to ship HD media and as SD DVDs. HD media consistently has a MUCH longer wait. It has been this way for at least a month for me (since I’ve had either HD DVD or Blu-ray) and I have to say, I’m about to lose patience. Last week, Steve Swasey (VP of Corporate Communications at Netflix) said “The studios are not replicating (discs) as fast and that’s causing the slowdown. This is short term. It should be fixed in the next couple of weeks.” I’m not entirely sure I buy that comment, but how will it be fixed within the next couple of weeks? What has changed to allow for dramatically more discs? Nothing that I’m aware of from monitoring news on the format war front.

From my POV, I won’t rent/buy a DVD if the Blu-ray is available (and I’m not buying any more HD DVDs period). I simply want the extra quality if it is available…

(Please don’t go nuts over the likely crappy movies in my queues. I like to see most movies from my preferred genres regardless of the high likelihood of sucking)

Top 8 as Blu-ray/HD DVD discs:

Top 8 as DVD discs:

I’ll give this situation 2-4 more weeks and then I will likely be putting my account on hold until they get their act together and supply customers with what they expect.

UPDATE (2008-02-23):

This is starting to get better. My assumption is that Netflix allocated $X to HD media. As a business they had to determine how many renters there were who would care about HD media at this point of its adoption. This amount of money allowed them to buy Blu-ray and HD DVD titles, but given the limited number of renters, the amount led to insufficient amounts of either format. Now that Netflix (and the rest of the industry) is stopping their support of HD DVD, the full budget can be applied to Blu-ray discs. I have received 3 or 4 recent releases in the past couple of weeks. We’ll see how the glut of March releases at the top of my queue fares…