Streaming on the Rise

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. announced Thursday it would join Netflix Inc., Redbox Instant and Amazon.com Inc. Instant Video to offer streaming videos to its consumers.

 Warner Archive Instant launched this week, allowing customers to choose from hundreds of older movies and TV shows in the Warner Bros. collection for $9.99 a month. It is more costly than Redbox, Netflix and Amazon.

 The Redbox and Netflix streaming programs charge consumers about $8 a month and Amazon charges $79 a year, or $6.60 a month, to join its Prime membership program.

Warner Archive Instant offers content advertised as “rare, hard-to-find” TV shows and movies from the 1920s through the 1990s. The rarity of the content is used as the selling point.

Archive Instant will feature monthly movie and TV marathon streaming events built around a common theme. 

According to an unnamed spokesman, Warner’s goal is not to compete with other streaming video services.

“We’re appealing to an aficionado audience, not the Netflix consumer,” he said in a statement to Internet Retailer. “These are fans of classic movies from the ‘40s and ‘50s,” he said.

At launch, the program offered 122 titles and Warner Bros. said new content will be regularly added. Users can stream through the website but it only works with one connected-TV device, Roku.

Roku users are the only users who will be able to stream high-definition versions of the titles. The Web version of Archive Instant does not offer high definition streaming.

“I wouldn’t use it. It’s too specific,” Elise Diehl, a student at the University of Georgia, said. 

“It has a very limited selection, they have a limited target audience and movies some people have never heard of. And it seems too difficult to use it with a TV,” Diehl said.

 A limited audience that wants to primarily watch older movies may be a problem in the future but Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, believes in the success of his product.

“These are exceptional, high-quality, deep library titles that are often not available,” Gewecke said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg. “It’s a great opportunity to serve customers who are fans of classic movies and TV shows,” he said.