Funai, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba to Provide Netflix Ready Devices

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ — Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), the world’s largest online movie rental service, today announced agreements with five global consumer electronics companies that will introduce Netflix ready devices later this year. The partners include Funai, which distributes the Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania and Emerson brands in the United States, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba. Each company will introduce Blu-ray disc players or digital televisions that will instantly stream thousands of movies and TV episodes from Netflix that can be watched instantly in the comfort of the living room.

Netflix announced the partnerships at the annual Consumer Electronics Show here, representing the continued rapid integration of Netflix streaming functionality into leading consumer electronics devices.

For only $8.99 a month, Netflix members can instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes streamed to their TVs and computers via an ever-growing list of Netflix ready devices, and can receive unlimited DVDs delivered quickly to their homes by the U.S. Postal Service.

The partners announced today join some of the world’s leading consumer electronics companies that currently market Netflix ready Blu-ray disc players from Best Buy’s Insignia brand, LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony. Microsoft and Sony market the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3, respectively, both of which instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix. Netflix members can instantly watch movies and TV episodes on the stand-alone Roku and on new TiVo digital video recorders (DVRs). And watching movies and TV episodes instantly from Netflix without an external device is possible on current and future model televisions from Insignia, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony and VIZIO.

“Ever since Netflix began instantly streaming movies and TV episodes to personal computers in January 2007 we’ve said we want to be ubiquitous on whatever device gets the Internet to the TV,” said Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings. “We’ve made incredible progress toward this goal over the last year and we’ve rapidly established Netflix as a must-have service for Internet connected consumer electronics devices. The important companies and brands we’ve announced today join a roster of world-class CE companies that have partnered with Netflix.

“We look forward to adding even more partners this year, and we expect instant streaming of movies from Netflix to be available on more than one hundred different partner products in 2010,” said Mr. Hastings.