A day after we told you about workers’ unhappy response to Instacart’s plan to do away with tips and replace them with a “service amount,” the online grocery delivery service has decided to keep the tip option open. [More]
on demand
Instacart Shoppers Say Getting Rid Of Tips Will Ultimately Hurt Customers
By 10.13.16
Last month, thousands of Instacart shoppers and drivers — the people who get paid to collect and then drop off grocery orders for customers of the online service — were notified that they would soon be seeing a difference in their paychecks as the company overhauled its tipping and scheduling policies. This announcement hasn’t exactly gone over swimmingly, and now several Instacart workers are telling Consumerist why they have misgivings about the change. [More]
TV Networks Giving You More On-Demand Options To Combat Netflix, Cord-Cutting
By 8.22.16
Broadcast TV networks are freely available over the air, so you might think that they wouldn’t care too much about the growing number of people ditching cable in favor of streaming services. After all, viewers can still get the network shows and local news for the price of a decent antenna. Then you realize that networks are raking in billions of dollars each year from pay-TV providers and you see they have an incentive to try to keep you from cutting the cord. [More]
Offering 'Catch-Up' Service That Leaves Out Episodes Defeats The Point, Comcast
By 6.20.12
Carol has been watching the AMC program “Breaking Bad” using Comcast on-demand. Specifically, the Catch-up service so she can catch up on season 4 before the new season starts next month. This service skips episodes and doesn’t seem to actually be designed to catch anyone up, though…unless that customer is an HD subscriber. [More]
Amazon Instant Video Hitches A Ride On PS3 To Hit More TVs
By 4.4.12
Access to Amazon Instant Video’s streaming library has been a nice perk to signing up for Amazon Prime. But the service was never particularly useful to many customers who like to sit back on their couch and watch stuff on TV rather than stare at a computer screen. Now Amazon has cut a deal with the PS3 that draws it closer to competitors Netflix and Hulu Plus, which both stream on the Wii and Xbox 360 in addition to Sony’s console. [More]
Starz Movies Fall Off Netflix Streaming This Week
By 2.28.12
Your Netflix streaming queue is probably about to get a bit lighter. As we noted back in September, Netflix and Starz did not renew their deal, meaning about 800 movies will be leaving Netflix’s streaming service by the end of the week. [More]
Customer Stream Flows Back Toward Netflix
By 1.26.12
After ditching Netflix en masse in the third quarter, customers began crawling back to the service at the end of the year. [More]
YouTube Adding 3,000 Movie Rentals
By 5.10.11
Confirming last month’s reports, YouTube confirmed it’s adding 3,000 new movies to its little-known rental service. [More]
Comcast Customers Now Have On-Demand Access To Prime-Time Shows From All Networks (Except The CW)
By 4.29.11
In an effort to actually provide its hordes of unhappy customers with something useful for their cable dollar, Comcast has announced that it has made deals to bring almost every prime-time network show to its on-demand lineup. [More]
Report: YouTube To Rent New Movies On Demand
By 4.26.11
A conga line of anonymous sources continue to spill ambitious plans for YouTube, which reportedly not only wants to stock its virtual shelves with live sports and original entertainment programming, but also on-demand streaming rentals of new movies. [More]
AMC, Cinemark Join Regal In Battle Against Movie Studios
By 4.11.11
One way to get on the bad side of movie theater owners is to announce a plan to undermine their sales leverage by offering $30 on-demand versions of films at home when they’re still in theaters. [More]
Regal Fights Back Against Studios Offering Early On-Demand Movies
By 4.7.11
Unhappy with a movie studio plan to offer $30 on-demand movies while they’re still in theaters, Regal Cinemas is reportedly planning to play fewer trailers from the participating studios: Fox, Sony, Warner Bros, and Universal. [More]
Would You Pay $30 To Rent A Movie That's Still In Theaters?
By 3.4.11
For movie fans, there is that odd stretch of time between a film’s initial release and when it hits the DVD/On-Demand market. Maybe it’s playing in a second-run theater or maybe it’s just in limbo. Regardless, DirecTV is betting that customers would be willing to pay a premium to watch movies during that lame-duck time period. [More]
Comcast Offers Free 3D Movies On Demand
By 9.30.10
One problem with owning a 3DTV is that there’s not much to watch through your ludicrously expensive glasses. Comcast is offering a slate of obscure films you can use to show off your technology to visiting friends, provided you keep extra sets of those glasses handy. [More]
Come November You Will Be Able To Search Netflix Streaming Content Via Xbox
By 6.15.10
Netflix-streaming Xbox 360 players will have one less reason to be jealous of Roku owners come November. At the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft announced it will let Netflix users search and add streaming movies and TV shows through the console, bypassing the need to do it the old-fashioned way on a computer. [More]
Studios Want To Send New Blockbusters Straight To Your Living Room
By 5.10.10
Movie theater owners had better hope this 3D thing keeps raging because theater owners have taken a step that might devastate the cineplex scene. The MPAA says the FCC has given it the thumbs up to pretty much put any movies it likes on demand before they’re out on home video. [More]
Quick, Someone Develop Adblock For Online TV Commercials
By 2.8.10
The ratings company Nielsen–the company you can blame for bad stunt-casting and stupid plot devices during sweeps week–is going to start rolling in data from online viewings of commercials this fall, which means networks will start using online viewing stats to help sell ads this time next year. What this means: if a network uses the new Nielsen rating system, “shows seen online will have to have the same group of commercials that run on TV,” reports AdAge. [More]
