The company’s next challenge is to come up with original shows — instead of reruns — that subscribers will latch onto, mimicking the HBO model. Such a model further distances Netflix from films and differentiates it from newfound competitors like Hulu and Amazon.

Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive, told business school students in Manhattan last week that the company would try a couple of dozen original series in the coming years, but did not specify a timeframe; Netflix had previously said that five such series would premiere by the end of 2013.

A show from Norway, “Lilyhammer,” had its American debut on Netflix earlier this month, and an ambitious drama made just for Netflix, “House of Cards,” will have its debut later in the year. A revival of the Fox sitcom “Arrested Development” will come out sometime next year.

“While they are losing the Starz content later this week, and that could cause some people to cancel subscriptions to the service, the library will otherwise be generally improving throughout the year and then having a more significant step up with ‘House of Cards’ in late ’12 and ‘Arrested Development’ and Dreamworks films in ’13,” said Michael Olson, an analyst at Piper Jaffray.

Still, there is a persistent undercurrent of criticism about Netflix’s actual movie selection, and it was highlighted this week by the Starz disappearance. Mr. Olson’s firm reported last week that only four of the 50 top-grossing films of 2011 were currently available for streaming on the service, and that one of them, Disney’s “Gnomeo and Juliet,” would vanish on Wednesday.

John Hall, a graphic designer in Massachusetts, said he recently dropped the streaming service and started resorting to DVD rentals for that reason. Whenever he headed to Netflix to stream a film, he said, “more often than not, the film I wanted to see was only available on disc.”