About Your Free Netflix Trial Register with Netflix.com for free and receive a free two week trial with absolutely no commitment. You will have access to Netflix's largest selection of DVDs - so go ahead and click the above ad for your free netflix trial. New members can try Netflix for free by visiting netflix.com. Largest Selection of DVDs Our selection -- far superior to what the largest movie-rental stores can offer -- helps ensure that members find everything from the latest big Hollywood releases to hard-to-locate documentaries and independent films. Better Movie Choices We make it easier for members to find and discover movies they'll enjoy. When members rate movies, Netflix customizes its site based on a member's movie taste, which makes our 45,000 titles more relevant and accessible to each member. On average, members rent about 98 percent of Netflix's movie titles each quarter, proving the efficiency with which the company recommends films. Fast and Free Delivery Members enjoy free shipping both ways. More than 90 percent of our members receive their movies with generally one-day service. Netflix operates 35 shipping centers throughout the United States - key to providing overnight delivery - and plans to open additional shipping centers. Neflix launched its movie rental service in 1999 with the goal of using the DVD format and the Internet to make it easier for people to find and get movies they will enjoy. As a result, our members can reliably discover and enjoy lesser-known titles. As we succeed, more people are watching more films, and filmmakers are reaching a larger audience. In turn, we believe they will produce more new films. Netflix strives to be the world's largest and most influential movie supplier. About Netflix Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is the first and largest major online DVD rental service, offering flat-rate rental-by-mail to customers in the United States. By 2005, the service has attracted over three million subscribers, and the company expects the number to reach four million by the end of the year. It has amassed a collection of over forty-five thousand titles. Headquartered in Los Gatos, California, the company provides a monthly flat-fee service for rental of unlimited numbers of DVD movies. Customers each create an ordered list, called a rental queue, of DVDs that they would like to rent. The DVDs are delivered individually by way of the U.S. Postal Service. Subscribers keep the rented DVD as long as they like, but have a limit on the number of DVD movies they can have checked out at any one time depending on their subscription package. To rent a new DVD, customers return a currently-held one to Netflix via a prepaid mailing envelope. Netflix logs the disc as being returned and ships the next disc in the customer's rental queue. Customers could usually expect delivery of their requested DVD within 2-5 days of its shipping. If the received disc is damaged or unplayable for some reason, or if the wrong disc was received, the customer can return it for a replacement or have the next item in their rental queue sent instead. At present (2005), Netflix's most popular plan costs $17.99, which allows a subscriber to check out up to 3 DVDs at once. Other monthly programs with a variety of checkout limits range from US$9.99 to $47.99. Netflix initially offered a service similar to traditional DVD rental shops online until late 1999, fearing that flat-monthly programs might be too radical. However, after launching its subscription service, Netflix has become very successful. Key points of Netflix's success have been its ease-of-use and comprehensiveness. Unlike traditional DVD rental stores, there are no due dates, late fees, shipping or handling, or per-title rental fees. Unlike most online on-demand entertainment services, such as eMusic, the company offerings cover the vast range of DVD movies (and increasingly, television series) with more than 45,000 titles (as of 2005), including titles by major and minor studios (excluding adult movies). Particularly, Netflix has become noted for its extensive collection of documentary films, Japanese anime, and independent films — those usually hard to find in traditional rental shops. Indeed, "some 35,000 different film titles are contained in the 1m DVDs it sends out every day." [1] According to SEC filings, the company had attracted a million subscribers by the fourth quarter of 2002 and two million by the second quarter of 2004. Furthermore, Netflix has developed and maintained an extensive recommendation system based on rating and reviews by customers, similar to the system at Amazon.com; the company believes that it gives it an edge in competing with newcomers like Blockbuster. James Rocchi, a film critic, also known as Mr. DVD, has contributed to reviewing movies. Moreover, the growth has been fueled by the fast spread of DVD players in households; as of 2004, nearly two-thirds of US homes have a DVD player. Netflix also operates an affiliate program which has helped it to build online sales for DVD rentals. Netflix is an example of the odd situation about copyright issues on the Internet. While it is possible and probably more convenient to download directly movies via the network, license issues and the fear of piracy prevents such a service. While he believes it would not be an instant success because of complications in copyright handling and relatively slow adoption of broadband Internet, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said that Netflix will offer limited video on demand by late 2005 with which users can download movies via the Internet and that it may even expand into the video game market. Netflix has been one of the most successful dot-com ventures. A New York Times article from September 2002 said that, at the time, Netflix mailed about 190,000 discs per day to its 670,000 monthly subscribers. The article estimated that the company therefore distributes 1,500 terabytes of data per day, almost as much data that travels across the entire Internet in one day. After incurring substantial losses during its first few years, Netflix posted its first profit during fiscal year 2003, earning $6.5 million profit on revenues of $272 million. Founded by Reed Hastings, Netflix was incorporated on August 29, 1997 and began operations on April 14, 1998. Netflix initiated an initial public offering (IPO) on May 29, 2002, selling 5,500,000 shares of common stock at the price of $15.00 per share. On June 14, 2002, it sold an additional 825,000 shares of common stock at the same price. Because of Netflix's success, other companies have begun launching similar services. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, started an online DVD-rental service in October 2002; however, it handed it over to Netflix in May 2005 in exchange for a promotional deal. Blockbuster, the world's largest movie rental chain, now operates a program for fixed monthly price for unlimited video rentals called MoviePass®. Netflix's success also has inspired a number of overseas imitators, such as Amango and Netleih in Germany, Zip.ca in Canada, Lovefilm in the United Kingdom, Moviemile and Videoland Online (formerly known as Keeno) in The Netherlands and MediaXpress in Spain. Netflix had tentatively planned to expand to Canada and the United Kingdom by 2005, though Amazon's recent entry into the British market has led NetFlix to postpone international expansion. Amid the speculation of Amazon.com's entrance into the US market, in June 2005, CEO Barry McCarthy noted that Amazon.com's current infrastracture does not fit the business model of online rental service, as "[Amazon.com's warehouses]'re not centrally located next to post office distribution centers. They're in low cost areas which supports their core business but it doesn't leverage the existing infrastructure"