Netflix, Inc. (NFLX), which boasts nearly five million members, brags that their movie rental buffet is changing the movie watching diets of Americans. They have a catalog of 60,000 films that leas man members to over estimate what they can watch and DVDs will sit gathering dust for months without being watched.
From the WallStreetJournal.com:
"It's a paradox of abundance," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. "When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice," he added.
The result can be a type of guilt-fueled Netflix bottleneck for users, who may not feel like watching a film but are also loathe to return it, said Mike Kaltschnee, who writes a popular blog called HackingNetflix.
He's experienced the sensation himself. He twice rented Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," kept it for weeks, only to send it back unwatched. He cites his Catholic upbringing for his inability to watch the sometimes-brutal depiction of Christ's last days. "It's childish almost. It's just a movie. But I could not put it in the DVD player," he said. "And I know I'm not alone."
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