Netflix To Expand Blu-ray Inventory

Online rentailer Netflix says it plans to grow its selection of Blu-ray titles by as much as three-fold in the coming year.

Speaking at the Jeffries 4th Annual Internet Conference in New York on Wednesday, Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy said that his company expects to add as many as 1,500 Blu-ray titles to its existing 400 titles this year.

McCarthy went on to say that the company had not yet decided whether the higher price of acquiring Blu-ray discs (vs standard DVD) might lead to a price hike for subscribers.

"It seems apparent that content will cost us more," said McCarthy. "Whether we raise prices will be entirely a function of churn, subscriber acquisition costs and gross margins."

As we've previously reported, earlier this month Neflix announced it would phase out its HD DVD support, saying that although only a small portion of Netflix subscribers had elected to receive high-def discs, a majority of those subscribers had chosen Blu-ray over HD DVD.

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