Edmund Lee

Amazon.com isn’t accepting pre-orders for Warner Bros movies on its website, the latest of the online retailer’s contract feuds to spill into public view. Customers trying to pre-order films such as “The Lego Movie,” “300: Rise of an Empire” and “Winter’s Tale” are instead asked to sign up to be notified when the item becomes available.

Digital downloads of the movies are available for purchase through Amazon Instant Video. The world’s biggest online retailer is seeking concessions from Warner Bros that would give it more of a margin on sales of DVDs and digital versions of its movies, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private.

Comcast is having no problem getting bigger. The largest US cable company added video customers for a second straight quarter, bucking the industry trend of losing TV subscribers.

Video subscriber growth and the Winter Olympics helped first-quarter profit of 68 cents a share, excluding some items, beat the 64 cents analysts estimated on average. Comcast also reported that revenue rose to $17.4 billion. Analysts had predicted $17 billion.

Bolstered by its new X1 digital set-top box that gives people the ability to watch TV shows stored online, Comcast added 24,000 TV customers in the quarter to reach a total of 22.6 million.

A New York Times story saying Pakistan’s government protected Taliban forces was censored by the publisher’s printing partner in that country, resulting in a blank hole on the front page of its international edition.

The article, a 4,800-word excerpt from a forthcoming book by Times reporter Carlotta Gall to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, appeared in the New York Times magazine in the US and was intended as a front-page article of the International New York Times.

While the story appears on most copies of the international edition, it doesn’t show up in papers distributed in Pakistan, about 9,000 copies, according to the publisher. The Times’s Pakistan printer, part of the Express Tribune newspaper in that country, removed the article without its knowledge, according to Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy.

“We would never self-censor and this decision was made without our knowledge or agreement,” she said in an e-mail. “While we understand that our publishing partners are sometimes faced with local pressures, we regret any censorship of our journalism.” It is unclear if the Times will continue its partnership with Express Tribune.

Netflix’s effort to secure a place for its video-subscription service on Time Warner Cable set-top boxes is on hold now that the cable operator is being sold, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The discussions are unlikely to progress before Time Warner Cable’s $45.2 billion acquisition by Comcast is completed, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Comcast, which isn’t as far along in its own talks with Netflix, is focused on increasing film downloads and rentals with its new X1 set-top box platform, they said.

“They will not be in any kind of rush to let Netflix on their cable box and cannibalize their business,” said Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach in Dallas who has a neutral rating on Netflix. A deal with Time Warner Cable would put pressure on other pay-TV providers to offer Netflix as well.

The video-streaming pioneer, with 44.4 million online subscribers, has pitched its Web-based trove of original shows, movies and older series as a must-have for pay-TV providers who increasingly poach each other’s viewers for growth. It has signed two European cable services and is trying to reach deals with smaller US outfits that use TiVo set-top boxes. Discussions have included the possibility of Netflix paying fees to pay-TV providers, Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said in an interview in late January. While Netflix can continue to grow without such deals, access on cable TV systems would make viewing easier by eliminating the need to toggle between cable and Internet services, Hastings said.