Tech Crunch has the story today that Verizon and RedBox will be teaming on that new Verizon streaming service that the internet was abuzz with yesterday. This brings significantly more credibility to the situation as RedBox has both the infrastructure and partnerships in place to compete head on with Netflix. What makes this a bigger deal than the other potential ‘Netflix competitor’ announcements throughout the past year is that a pricing plan was actually revealed to be unlike traditional video-on-demand models.
While we can expect the same lousy grade C quality content that exists currently on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, they will not be so naive as to have the same streaming pricing scheme for everyone regardless as habits. Instead, it will be priced based on the amount of content streamed/rented a month and will start at $6 per month for the lowest tier. This will protect them in the long run financially from a Netflix-like stock apocalypse through the facilitation of more flexible agreements with content providers.
Stay tuned for more on this story as it develops.
[TC]