Netflix shares shot up 24 percent Tuesday to close...

million members to its streaming service, bringing the total to more than 36 million worldwide (CD April 23 p13). The number of DVD members fell from 8.22 million in Q4 to 7.98 million in Q1. Lower-than-expected content costs and higher revenue led to a higher-than-forecast $113 million in contribution profit for DVD in Q1, Hastings said. While the number of DVD subscribers declined at a slower rate than expected in Netflix’s Q1, the company remains focused on moving toward more and more exclusive streaming content “to reinforce a reason to join Netflix” and remain a subscriber, said Hastings on the company’s earnings call Monday. Netflix has visions of broadening its portfolio of exclusive content over the next few years, with the timeframe dependent on how new releases perform. In the next two years, exclusive offerings will increase “modestly,” Hastings said. If coming shows the company produces “were as wildly successful for us as the first three shows have been, we could continue to expand to 20 or north, but that would be dependent on what happens the rest of this year,” he said. “What we don’t want to do is -- on the back of three shows, one of which has only been out three days -- suddenly take our commitments up to that 20-plus level.” On Netflix’s ability to curate and influence original content relative to other pay-TV networks, Hastings said Netflix is getting “more sophisticated” in working with producers and the creative community, while continuing to learn. “As we bring great success to the creators, then certainly that increases our reputation in the creative community,” he said. Netflix is putting into place an $11.99 monthly family plan to allow up to four simultaneous streams of programming versus the two allowed under the standard plan. Hastings said he expects less than 1 percent of subscribers to move to the family plan. Netflix has no plans “for the near term” to boost standard subscriber fees from their current $7.99 rate, Hastings said. On the company’s brand image following the public relations beating and customer defections Netflix took in 2011 after the split between the DVD and streaming services, the recovery has been “as expected,” Hastings said. “We're making steady progress and we'll continue to work hard to make steady progress going forward.” Netflix has released the next generation of its video player technology to its consumer electronics partners for integration with smart TVs and set-top boxes, Hastings said. The new platform emphasizes “size and performance improvements,” and delivers faster playback start-up time that aims to approach the speed of a linear TV channel change, Hastings wrote in the shareholder letter. The new platform will appear “in a few new devices in time for the holiday season,” and will roll out more widely in spring 2014 CE products, he said.