Why Netflix is unbundling streaming from DVD rental

Here’s the clearest explanation I’ve seen of why Netflix is splitting up the DVD and online parts of your subscription, courtesy of Felix Salmon:

Up until now, it seems, Netflix has paid the studios a flat monthly fee, linked to the number of subscribers it has with access to their content. And when that got too expensive, it wound up cutting off streaming from its DVD subscribers to save on its own library-subscription costs.