January 29, 2009 by James Oliver
Whilst most businesses struggle against the biggest economic crisis since the great depression, a few are making a killing. One of those companies is movies-by-mail provider Netflix. The booming company gave most of the credit for its success to their new streaming video service, which provides near instant entertainment to anyone with an Internet connection, an Xbox 360 or a net-enabled Blu Ray player, TV or set-top box.
According to financial experts, in times of economic crisis the need to be entertained does not go away, we just look for ways to do it more cheaply. Ergo, if, pre-crisis, we’d go to the cinema in a Friday night, we might now settle for a Netflix download and a bottle of wine. Take away food is booming, whilst restaurants go out of business for the same reason.
The trend with streaming video has been more pronounced however, due to the fact that we are still getting used to the technology. The number of us watching streaming movies would have been growing year on year anyway as more of us become introduced to the concept through YouTube, Hulu, etc. The recession has simply kicked its growth into another gear.
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