Netflix And Dreamworks In Streaming Talks, Deal May Follow Soon [For Those Still Upset By Outages And Price Hikes, Seems Netflix Has An Inducement To Keep You In The Wings]

Posted on TFTS by Steve Anderson on Monday, 25. July 2011 under: Audio,Visual, Internet Highlights

Admittedly, Netflix has not been having a great time of things the last couple weeks. Massive social media outrage, price hikes, repeated outages…and of course, the sheer number of people thinking seriously about dropping their Netflix service. But now, reports have emerged saying that Netflix just might have something to keep you around after all.

The word is that Netflix and Dreamworks have been in talks regarding getting Dreamworks content onto Netflix for streaming, meaning a variety of very popular brands, from the Shrek series to Kung Fu Panda and beyond, may well be making it onto Netflix’s streaming service. Reportedly, Dreamworks previously had a deal with HBO, but is looking to throw it over and let Netflix take over where HBO just left off.

Just when this change would actually take place is as yet unknown–they’re still in talks, at last report–but a complete deal could be struck within days, according to some estimates.

Admittedly, this doesn’t mean much by itself; even if the entire Dreamworks catalog came over to Netflix that would still only hike Netflix’s available streaming capability by just over a hundred or so films when you start factoring in all the co-productions they’ve done. Many of the complaints about the lack of streaming would still be valid. But there are greater implications here. If Dreamworks, a major studio in its own right, is looking to throw over HBO, who knows who else would follow? And the more studios get on board with streaming, the better the chance Netflix, who is pretty much top of the heap in terms of streaming, has to come out ahead of the curve on what may be the last great format war.

And we’ve heard a lot from you guys about this over the last few days, so the floor is once again open to you. Is a big pile of movies from Dreamworks available for streaming enough to keep your interest in Netflix? Or have the last couple weeks of price hikes and outages soured you toward Netflix entirely too much to stick around? We’d love to hear from you again on this, so head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!