The economic crisis has taken it’s toll on many industries, but not Netflix. Consumers are happy to sit on their butts and escape through a goods movie. The streaming and mailing movie rental company is doing just fine. They closed 2008 with 9.4 million customers and today they announced that they’ve broken the 10 million mark.

The company has added 600,000 net subscribers since January 1st alone. It’s likely only going to go up as customers choose their service over theater tickets or going out on the town to eat.

In an effort to make one console appeal to gamers more than the competition, console makers like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are adding new features. With the global economy down the console makers are also adding features to make gaming systems perform tasks outside of gaming to broaden their appeal.

One such feature was the addition of Netflix streaming capability to the Xbox 360. The Netflix application was made available for Netflix and Xbox Live Gold customers in November of 2008. In the roughly three months since the Netflix application was made available Microsoft says that over a million Xbox 360 owners have installed and activated the Netflix application.

Some great news for Netflix customers. According the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, they’re starting to test Saturday shipping during the first quarter of 2009, but apparently only in “certain parts of the country.” So, normally if you send back a disc on Friday, you would have to wait for Monday for your next disc to ship.

If Netflix receives it on a Saturday, you could receive your next disc as quickly as Monday. That is, if you live close enough to a distribution center to get one day delivery. That should make a lot of people happy. It’s only one day, but still. We like everything now!

There is more than a little truth to the fact that when money is tight and the economy sucks, people want to spend what little money they do have on things that take their mind off how bad the economy sucks. Thanks to that fact entertainment industries tend to weather recessions pretty well.

Netflix is among the companies that are still doing well despite the weak economy. Netflix has announced its Q4 2008 financials for its year ending on December 31, 2008. The mail-order movie rental service finished the quarter with 9,390,000 subscribers for a 26% growth compared to the same quarter of 2007.

LG and Netflix seem to feel confident enough in the desire for streaming movies to consumer devices in that they are now bringing the experience to other products for the home. The two announced today plans for Netflix-enabled “Broadband HDTVs.”

These new LCD and plasma HDTVs will begin being available this spring. LG is embedding the Netflix software into these televisions, thereby letting Netflix customers watch the growing library of movies, television shows and HD content available through Netflix’s streaming video offering.

The Roku Netflix player was the first device to support streaming movie rentals from Netflix and ushered in an array of devices supporting the Netflix streaming service. One of the best features of the original Roku Player was the cheap $99 price tag.

Roku announced today that its Digital Video Player now supports HD streams of films from Netflix. Other HD streaming partners will reportedly be added to the Roku player as well. The additional providers are expected to debut in q1 2009.

Online movie rentals are one of the most convenient ways for movie fans to get their favorite films without leaving the house. The catch is that many of the newest releases aren’t available for streaming rentals. Netflix offers a streaming on demand library of 12,000 movies and TV shows to its subscribers.

Several hardware devices will allow Netflix members to access the streaming content including the Xbox 360 and some DVD players. Netflix and TiVo announced today that TiVo DVR subscribers would be able to access the streaming content library over certain TiVo DVRs.

Netflix has proven to be very successful with its online movie rental service. Netflix also offer subscribers a streaming instant movie service that allows users to watch movies on the PC or TV with appropriate hardware.

The problem for users on Mac computers that are Netflix members is that there was no streaming media player for the Mac. Netflix has now announced the latest version of its instant watching service based on Microsoft Silverlight. The new player will allow users on Intel-based Mac systems to enjoy streaming titles.

Now that HD DVD is dead, the Blu-ray player is pretty much a commodity item. Player manufacturers are looking for anything they can get to differentiate their players from the competition in the market. Samsung announced a partnership with Netflix today that will help make Samsung Blu-players more interesting.

The Samsung BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray players will be able to stream Netflix movies instantly from the Internet to Netflix subscribers. In addition to a catalog of 12,000 movies, Netflix also offers TV shows.

Earlier in the year, Netflix announced their plan to increase Blu-ray titles and even hinted the possibility of raising fees on monthly subscribers with the Blu-ray renting option. They’ve done it. Users are receiving e-mails confirming the fee. The company notified its customers of a fee increase of $1 plus tax per month for subscribers with unlimited Blu-ray movies. While the increase sucks at even $1, I don’t see those wanting BD content going back to DVD. Of course in this economy a dollar is worth hanging onto. Netflix e-mail below.

Microsoft announced at E3 today that along with a complete UI update coming to the Xbox 360, they will also be offering streaming movies via Netflix through the game console and Xbox Live. We had heard Netflix express interest in this partnership earlier this year and Microsoft says it will come to fruition in “late fall”. The new feature will require users to be subscribers to Netflix and manage their queue from their computer much like they do now, but will add the ability to stream and view the movies through the Xbox 360 game console. To make this even better, any Xbox Live Gold subscribers will get the service for no additional charge.

Basically this means that owners of an Xbox 360 are getting a brand new interface and all the features of a Roku box (Netflix set-top box retailing for $100) for no additional charges, aside the Live subscription fee that any true Xbox fan is paying anyway.

This should make a lot of people happy. After a bit of a wait, I present the first Netflix set-top-box. Previously, Instant Viewing was available only to Windows PC users through the IE browser. But now, thanks to Roku, users can finally tap into at least a chunk of the Netflix library without having to wait for those damn discs in your mailbox for just $99.99.

The Netflix Player can even use a wireless signal to stream, but performance may differ here and there. It’s got HDMI, component, composite, Ethernet, S-Video and a Toslink optical audio jack as far as ports go. No HD support, but things look quite positive so far.

You can’t have a good format war without some fallout. With the fall of HD-DVD, the question has been raised regarding Netflix’s ability to sustain its subscribers and demands for the Blu-Ray Format. Netflix said today that its subscriber count will be 3% higher than forecast because of price increases from Blockbuster and cheaper online advertising rates. Of course, the raise in price led to a loss of thousands of subscribers for Blockbuster, many of them switching or even returning to Netflix.

Here’s another huge blow that the struggling HD-DVD format did not need. Netflix, the online and mail video rental giant will follow its rival Blockbuster’s footsteps and carry Blu-Ray exclusively. With endorsement to The future is Blu campaign, the company will now only buy Blu-Ray discs going forward and will phase out their stock of HD-DVD by the end of the year.

“We’re now at the point where the industry can pursue the migration to a single format, bring clarity to the consumer and accelerate the adoption of high-def.”, said a company spokesman. Netflix stated that they expect all studios to begin to publish movies on the Blu-ray format. With Netflix’s over seven million subscribers, I think it’s fair to say that this is a killing blow in the format war, whether the effects are immediate or forthcoming.