I’ve been saying it for some time now–people are looking for any way possible to save cash these days, and renting a movie is wildly, wildly cheaper than the horrorshow of expenditures that is the movie theatre these days.  Debatably, it’s also better, but what’s not debatable is that online video store Netflix is seeing spectacular gains in its bottom line, and some analysts say it’s due to exactly what I’ve been saying it is all along–people looking for a good cheap time that doesn’t depend on four dollar a gallon gas.

Welcome to the club, analysts–we have jackets.  Don’t forget to pay dues for the month.

Netflix appears to be thriving despite of the current recession — or possibly because of it. The online video renter saw its subscriber rate rise 25 percent from its year-ago rate growth. Some analysts attributed the growth to people looking for less expensive entertainment as the current recession grips the country. Other analysts suggested that Netflix may have been helped by the introduction of a streaming service in May that allows users to view movies on their TV sets with the aid of an inexpensive settop box, the Netflix Player, developed by Roku. Net income for the company rose only 3.8 percent to $26.6 million from $25.6 million, leading analysts to suspect that some Netflix customers may be downgrading their subscriptions to receive fewer movies each month than they had previously.

Of course, both sets of analysts could be correct concurrently.  It could be that people wanted a good, cheap time and wanted it easily accessible via the Roku settop box.  Chances are it’s not that mutually exclusive.  And definitely, people wanted to save money where possible so they could easily have downgraded what service they received.  Because let’s face it–it’s a good bargain, and the more movies you get in the better the bargain gets.

And either way…it’s still one of the best places on earth to get the widest array of horror movies.

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