Netflix rewinds split plan

Oct 11, 2011, 10:55 GMT

San Francisco - Netflix, the online movie service that has revolutionized the video rental market, is backtracking on its plan to split its video streaming business from its DVD rentals after an unprecedented customer backlash.

The about-face came two weeks after the Silicon Valey company said that users of its DVD service would be shunted to a new website called Qwikster.com to manage their accounts while the original website would be devoted to streaming video rentals. Customers would also have to manage two separate accounts under the new plan.

But negative customer reactions prompted the company to scrap the controversial plan.

'It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs,' Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings said in a blog posting. 'This means no change: one website, one account, one password. in other words, no Qwikster.'