Business 2.0: How Netflix Is Fixing Hollywood. "Granted, it was no windfall -- Sarandos paid just $1 per copy, about the same as the cost of producing one. But he offered Pollard a cut of each rental for the first year. The 10,000 rentals in 2000 generated sufficient buzz to get Nice Guys a 2001 airing on HBO. And Pollard has already reinvested the $12,000 he's earned through Netflix rentals in his next movie.

Netflix accounts for 3 to 5 percent of all U.S. home video rentals -- an astounding figure when you consider that Kozmo.com and other online companies that experimented with video rentals barely got out of the starting gate. And for last year's indie hit Amélie, Netflix says, it generated better than 20 percent of U.S. rentals. Boutique movie studios like IFC Films, which released last year's critical hit Y Tu Mamá También, love Netflix because it provides a huge market for movies that can't muster a widespread theatrical release, as well as for those that last only a few weeks on the big screen.

The company's recommendation software promotes older and independent titles so well that it's threatening to cost the company: Customers are renting an average of 5.5 movies per month, compared with 4.5 two years ago. By encouraging people to rent more films, Netflix is only encouraging more shipping costs, and training its happy users to pig out on the all-you-can-eat DVD buffet. For Netflix, that means that as many as 3 million discs are in the hands of customers at any given time, with an average of 300,000 DVDs shipped out of the company's 20 leased distribution centers each day.

Netflix's library of discs, now 5.5 million, continues to grow. But the company can't buy nearly enough of some DVDs (such as the wildly popular 8 Mile) to keep everything in stock. It almost never sells used copies, and it doesn't promote new releases either. So it merchandises films from its stock of what's immediately available to ship. That's why Hollywood loves the model: It keeps older titles in motion and gives life to smaller releases. On any given day, in fact, 98 percent of the 15,000 titles in Netflix's inventory are in circulation with customers." Logistics, it's the name of the game, the war, and the movies.

MercuryNews.com: Better Luck Tomorrow. "The movie industry is very conservative. It's not proactive to change or trying to make waves. That's why independent film and cinema is so important: It's where change and risk occurs... The power structure discriminates against us, and culturally we've been so narrow-minded, focusing on being a lawyer, doctor or working for the government... Even as a proud Asian-American media executive, I say it's still a bad business decision to make a television show or movie to appeal to Asian-Americans only. The key is to appeal to Asian-Americans and others."

Sundance TV Lab. "In our half-hour pilot episode, TV LAB will present a handful of new ideas for television series as brief pilots, along with a "pitch" by their creators. In the process, we're presenting a first look at what might be the next wave of original television." As long as it's not another reality based show... or should it be another reality show?