Established in 1997 in California USA by software engineers Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, Netflix began as a subscription based service offering DVD movie rentals. In 1999, they launched an unlimited rental subscription service for a fixed monthly fee. Netflix was available to members in North America, South America and some parts of Europe.
In 2002, Netflix listed as a public company on the Nasdaq, with the number of Netflix members swelling to 4.2 million by 2005. In 2007 Netflix introduced the game changing streaming function to its service, which allowed its members to instantly watch tv shows and movies on their personal computers. Amid strong interest from countries such as Australia, the service remained restricted to certain parts of the world.
With the current nature of the internet, it wasn’t long before viewers in countries such as New Zealand and Australia began to develop methods of bypassing geographical blocking of the services. Despite it being "illegal" to circumvent geo-blocking, many Australians found ways to evade this, flocking to the progressive service permitting unlimited downloaded material including popular movies and television series.
In 2008, Netflix began partnering with consumer electronics companies streaming on the Xbox 360, Blu-ray disc players and TV set-top boxes. In 2009 this extended to PS3, internet connected TVs and in 2010 the service also became available on the Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and the Nintendo Wii.
Subsequent years saw the service expand geographically. Not satisfied just being a streaming service, Netflix began creating its’ own original content in 2012 with its revival of the cancelled Fox series Arrested Development. This move lead the way to the creation of further original content including the Emmy Award winning series House of Cards.
Finally, after many years of waiting, Netflix is said to be launching in Australia and New Zealand this March 2015. Adding to the competition, Netflix is sure to shake up the streaming video-on-demand, free-to-air and pay-tv landscape in this country. Although the official launch date and subscription price is not yet certain, Netflix have announced that the plethora of content that will be made available include the popular Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm titles together with some of the Netflix original series.
With the availability of services such as Netflix in Australia, do you think your viewing habits may change? Perhaps they have already.
