Adjust Your Queues Accordingly

The Finch household has grown impressively adept at timing our Netflix DVD returns just right, queuing up new releases to ship on the first day they are available. Thanks to a new deal with Universal and 20th Century Fox, though, we can ease off the trigger.

The agreement -- like one they already have in place with Warner Bros. Studios -- institutes a twenty-eight day delay between a movie's DVD release and its availability on Netflix, and is meant to help the studios boost DVD sales. Netflix's booty in the bargain is an increase in studio content available for subscribers to stream for free from the website.

So, you'll have to wait an extra twenty-eight days to watch Avatar on your home theater system, but you can watch a medium-res, internet-streamed, season-two episode of Fox's Lie to Me on your 2002 laptop right now!

Interestingly, Blockbuster will still offer movies through its mail-order service on the normal release date thanks to the brick-and-mortar behemoth's promise to pay the studios first when it inevitably goes bankrupt.

You probably can't get any additional information by clicking on the Netflix ads that appear on this site from time to time, but it wouldn't hurt to try...