Amazon-owned Lovefilm isn't about to go quietly into the good night, having reacted to the news of Netflix's launch with a little price cut.
The Netflix unlimited streaming package has been introduced for just £4.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial to boot - as one commenter points out, this deal has been around since December but Lovefilm has now confirmed that the launch price of £4.99 won't be going up.
This fiver gives you access to any amount of film and TV show streaming through Lovefilm, which, the company is keen to remind you, is available on PlayStation 3, Xbox and iPad, among other devices.
Convenient timing
Lovefilm has also taken this opportunity to reveal that it now has 2 million paying subscribers after a record number of people joined in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Although exact figures weren't given, the company says it added "hundreds of thousands of new customers" in October to December 2011 and describes it as "the fastest customer growth rate Lovefilm has experienced since 2009".
The company's staying schtum on the subject of today's Netflix launch, preferring not to comment on its competitors' activities. But reading between the lines, what the company is essentially saying is, "We've been streaming video in the UK since before you were even born, yeah Netflix?" (It hasn't though, if you want to be literal about these things - Netflix-the-company came first.)
