10 ms·

Netflix is on Fire

185 points by mcnabj 11y ago

towb 11y ago
And Netflix is the only source of UHD, at least in my parts of the world. Which made me pay them even more for that subscription now when I bought a UHD TV last week. Oh, and I just ended my good old regular cable subscription one month ago.
- jerf 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, how good is the streaming UHD? I've always wondered how the tension between bandwidth consumption and "actually looking better than 1080P" would pan out. Last week with some Christmas funds we bought a 24" TV. Even at the point-blank range it is sitting at, 1080P isn't worth much so I got the nicer (and non-Smart!) 720P Samsung rather than the off-brand "we have 1080P!"-bullet-point-feature brand. We also got a Amazon Fire stick to stream to it. We took perverse glee in making the first thing we streamed to it Netflix's 4K Fireplace stream: http://www.netflix.com/title/80092839 http://www.netflix.com/title/80092839
  - mpeg 11y ago
    I have a 50'' 4k tv and can definitely notice the increase in resolution when watching from close enough, and deeper blacks. However, it's not that big a deal when watching from 5-6 meters.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    On bigger screens and/or ones closer to the viewer it's definitely a noticeable improvement. It's obviously compressed and not up to the standard of a really high bitrate 4k video file but I guess it's equivalent to how "HD" on cable doesn't look as good as HD over the air but it still looks a lot nicer than standard def or DVD. One major downside is that you can't stream 4K Netflix or Amazon to your browser so even on my 27" 2560x1440 monitor (or if you have a fancy 4k or 5k display) you won't get the option. It's only available on various streaming "sticks" or TV-based "apps" at the moment. As far as I know, it's only really meant as a roadblock to casual ripping of 4k content since it wouldn't be difficult to determine whether a viewer's computer had the proper hardware decoders to ensure smooth playback. Unfortunately for viewers, it means you can't get those higher quality streams without buying a device or using a "smart" TV. And last time I checked, there's no shortage of pirated 4K content out there. It's currently one of the only ways to do it if you don't want to rely on a Fire stick, another set top box, or some possibly-secured TV app platform. Not a huge deal on my 2560x1440 monitor since it's not too big and 1920x1080 looks fine. But I'm likely picking up a 4k TV in the next month thanks to a $500 gift card and wanting to game at those resolutions. It's a shame I'll have to either pirate 4k shows or plug in the ethernet cable to the TV when I want to stream legit.
    - Fargren 11y ago
      I also have a 27" 2560x1440 monitor and while the content looks fine, the video gets really choppy if I don't configure my monitor to 1920x1080, as if it's struggling to resize the video. Does this not happen to you?
      - soylentcola 11y ago
        Sorry for the late reply, but whenever I stream from Netflix, Amazon, or Youtube, I just let it stream at whatever their site determines as the max my connection can handle and it never looks choppy in fullscreen. The only time there's any issue is when bandwidth is limited for whatever reason and the site needs to drop down to a lower quality stream. I assume you've already covered this but just in case, do you have the most recent drivers and software for your GPU? I know in the past that (on Windows systems at least) using the default "mostly works" driver that comes with the OS, I'll notice issues with performance because I'm missing any hardware acceleration that the Intel/nVidia/AMD GPU can do. Typically I notice it on work machines that just got reimaged with a generic OS image and don't have the relevant GPU drivers installed yet. Moving windows around, resizing, and other windowing tasks are a bit choppy until I download the appropriate package. Again, I assume you already thought of this if you're specifically buying a higher resolution display than the average cheap PC comes with. Still, it's the only thing that I've had affect framerate/refresh in fullscreen video in the past.
  - towb 11y ago
    It's clearly a step up from 1080p at a distance of about 3,5 - 4 meters at least. But then, a lot of it is the difference of a 5 year old 40" vs. a new 55" tv. The beginning of "Narcos" is filmed from a helicopter down on some streets in a city, that was the first thing I ever saw in UHD, pretty cool! Now I've gotten used to it haha
lostcolony 11y ago
Another interesting thing to see is the response by a lot of those inside the television content industry. Many of the companies that produce content are retooling and reorganizing specifically to deliver that content over the internet. None of them want to use Netflix, instead wanting their own service, but the growth of such streaming services has emboldened them. They both see that it's possible to go directly to consumer, -and- that it will be necessary at some point in the future, as the increase in cord cutters means less money on the incumbent TV providers to pay them with in contract negotiations. They realize they either are looking at ever dwindling fees, and thus, dwindling business, or they have to be able to circumvent the existing distributors. So it's not just that Netflix is managing to create great content; its mere existence is leading to much of the content that TV distributors currently have a stranglehold on to be distributed directly by the content company.
- Zekio 11y ago
  Sadly in some countries such as Denmark, there are some TV licensing fees you can't stop paying, because you can access the content online... Even if you never intend to use it.
  - thomasahle 11y ago
    Just the national broadcasting though, which is not much different from how you pay for highways, even if you don't have a car.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      Dane here. I pay about half of what the biggest channel package costs in mandatory license fees every month, and it is a very poor offering. Netflix is only 80kr, or about 12 dollars, whereas I pay almost 30 dollars for the tv fees. I watched about 10 minutes of broadcast tv last year but many hours of netflix. I don't get why I should be forced to pay for something that doesn't produce any value for me.
aprdm 11y ago
Netflix content is indeed amazing, Narcos is my favourite show by far, house of cards and others are also top notch. In the beginning I was always wishing that Netflix would get famous TV shows/ new movies to the platform ASAP. Now a days I really want to see more of their own content in the platform instead.
mbrutsch 11y ago
Sadly, half those shows are not actually available on Netflix.
- feld 11y ago
  What are you talking about?
  - revelation 11y ago
    Netflix has sold distribution rights abroad to some of their own shows such as House of Cards, then entered the market shortly after. As a result, you can now subscribe to Netflix in these markets and not get access to their own programming. Yes, it is as terrible as it sounds.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      And yet, you can get around those restrictions quite easily.
      - IMTDb 11y ago
        Or you can torrent it quite easily and don't pay a dime. The point is : if I have to do illegal stuff (getting around geoip is against TOS) and start installing software, search on the internet for a tutorial to learn how to watch my stuff, I might as well look for "House of cards torrent", it's faster and cheaper. I can pirate any music I want, yet I pay Apple Music $10/month to get it because it's easy, the UI is nice, everything is in there, and the service "just works". If I have to install a VPN, to change my IP so that the service I am paying will let me watch a show they are producing, something is broken. Period. Fix it or I'll pirate it.
        chris_wot 11y ago
        You are still paying the content creators if you bypass the geoblock and pay the monthly subscription fee. And that fee is not at all onerous. In Australia, all the streaming providers have the problems of not being able to show all content. There is stuff in Australia that we can't watch at all. Bypassing Geoblocks makes me a citizen of the entire world, which I gladly pay for.
ascendantlogic 11y ago
So here's the catch 22. The Hollywood content producers and deliverers won't just sit back and let Netflix and Amazon eat their entire lunch. They will fight back, and presumably with their own streaming services. So we will have a proliferation (more so than now) of services to get specific content through. Usually this is a good thing. People want choice and choice breeds competition which is good for consumers. However in this instance most people I know, myself included, just want one streaming service to subscribe to so it's not such a hassle. But wishing for that is like wishing for Hitler to be replaced with Stalin. It will end poorly with just another monopoly taking the place of the old.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  It's already happening here in Australia. If you like a lot of popular shows you might need 3 different streaming subscriptions, plus cable / satellite for sport. If you want soccer, you might even have to change ISP / mobile provider to get it (EPL on Optus)
- soylentcola 11y ago
  I sort of wonder whether the direct-subscription thing will just take the place of premium cable (or join its ranks). I guess it depends on how you use them and how you watch TV. In the past, I looked at Netflix streaming as a more affordable replacement for basic cable: just like with basic cable (all of the USA/TBS/TNT/etc channels) you couldn't necessarily count on finding a specific movie like with a video store or a VOD setup but you could skim through the offerings, just like flipping channels, and find something you wouldn't mind watching. Other times, it would seem like there's "nothing on". Nowadays there's enough good, original programming coming out throughout the year that it reminds me more of premium cable. And just as you'd tack on another $5 or $10/mo for HBO, MAX, Starz, etc. you can individually subscribe to Netflix, Amazon, and others depending on which ones you find worth paying for based on the shows they produce. The other side to it (for me at least) is the convenience of video on demand without messing with DVRs and such. I've said it before and I'll say it again--if cable wanted a way to make me gladly pay $50/mo or more for their service, they'd give me something like a legit version of Popcorn Time. I messed around with that (via VPN of course) when it was making waves a while back and even though I currently subscribe to cable, HBO, Netflix, and Amazon, I was choosing to watch shows via Popcorn Time. The thing it offered was a single, attractive list of all shows available and a way to bookmark the ones I liked and show which episode I left off on. It brought the Netflix interface to cable TV and was simply a more enjoyable way to watch. I realize that I'm not entitled to whatever I want for free and I understand that this was still an unlicensed way to watch but I didn't feel it was immoral since I already paid for access to the shows. Even if distribution deals would prevent Comcast and friends from offering everything that way, it would be quite welcome and forward-thinking if they leveraged their unique position as content distributor to offer up something along those lines. Again, it's the one thing that would make me almost glad to pay for cable again, rather than only doing it begrudgingly because it's relatively cheap when bundled with internet access.
fredley 11y ago
Brit here wondering how this shift within the industry will affect the BBC. We own a screen, Netflix subscription and Chromecast, and do not pay for a TV License. While this setup is not even remotely commonplace yet, it could be a real threat over the next decade, especially as iPlayer usage is free without owning a License. I would like to see the TV License flipped on its head: you pay a subscription that gets you access to everything the BBC offers, except what they broadcast live (and maybe online news), which you get for free (the exact opposite of how they charge now). A much better proposal for the streaming generation, essentially a tax-cut for the older generation, and none of the nasty TV License policing issues.
- SyneRyder 11y ago
  The BBC has other sources of income too. Here in Australia, there is a ton of BBC content on Netflix Australia, which presumably Netflix paid the BBC for (eg River, for which Netflix acquired exclusive international streaming rights: http://deadline.com/2015/10/netflix-bbc-river-stellan-skarsgard-abi-morgan-1201577912/ http://deadline.com/2015/10/netflix-bbc-river-stellan-skarsg... ) In Australia, our ABC is funded directly out of general taxes, rather than an explicit TV License. I can imagine Britain eventually moving to a similar model to fund the BBC.
  - genmon 11y ago
    BBC income last year... From the license fee, £3.7B GBP; from commercial activities, £1.0B GBP. Details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwework/reports/ara http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwework/repo... The BBC is in a difficult bind. It can't charge for license-fee funded content in the UK where it's best known. And if it had to make all its income from its commercial arm, it would only make Doctor Who and Top Gear, none of the classical music, news, or drama that it's best at. How the BBC is funded is intensely political, being argued a ton right now as the charter is up for renewal in 2016. The BBC in 2017 could be much smaller.
    - gregpilling 11y ago
stonogo 11y ago
What is the purpose of this article? Was it really some random person SO EXCITED about a video streaming company? I struggle to find a thesis here. Do people need an entire essay that just says "Netflix is making money and producing content"?
- zanny 11y ago
  The point is more that Netflix is producing the best content, better than all the studios and HBO right now by user rating. I'd be very interested though in viewership numbers between prime time TV shows like Big Bang versus new series releases of House of Cards.
  - AznHisoka 11y ago
    User rating according to whom? Is it all standardized?
    - chucky_z 11y ago
      I believe those are the direct rottentomatoes.com "User" scores. So aggregated from a large population of users for rottentomatoes.com; I would consider that to be a pretty good representation of the average American population who uses the internet.
      - zymhan 11y ago
        > who uses the internet Which skews your sample.
- StevePerkins 11y ago
  Three-day holiday weekend. There are currently two separate posts on the front-page about 1999's "Age of Empires 2" being a nice video game.
  - Gigablah 11y ago
    Yes, when people return from their holidays we'll go back to our regular schedule of marketing blog posts disguised as technical articles.
je42 11y ago
In addition to it; netflix actually knows that when you watch a series you don't care about already seen episodes. Good old TV never really labeled episodes correctly and is a pain to use when you are just interested in the next you haven't seen. In netflix it is painless. Yes, the feature is simple, but still I value it every time i can just watch the next episode ( or pick up where left in the middle of the episode).
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  Not only that, Netflix even does a decent job of handling multiple people watching the same series at different points, even on the same virtual account.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
We are huge Netflix fans (my wife and I have our own streaming accounts, which is stupid now since they offer family options for separating play lists). That said, I think that Hulu Prime, the version without commercials, is also a fine product and Hulu is owned by the large network stations. We get Amazon Prime free shipping via my brother's business so we have not signed up ourselves and don't get the free Amazon Prime content which friends and family members say is amazing. The thing is: there is so much good content that it is fine, at least for me, to not have access to everything. Another distribution model that I like is Google Play Movies and TV. It is a little pricy but I wanted to watch the Worricker Triliogy (fantastic!!) the the new scifi Expanse and it was so very convenient simply buying both series and watching them anytime on any device. If the cost was a little less, and if Google Play had most content, I think that I could be happy with a completely a la cart pay per view experience. A suggestion for anyone working in this industry: when content is rented, offer a purchase option that is valid for a week. Sometimes I have rented movies and liked them enough that I would pay the difference to own permanent viewing rights.
- criddell 11y ago
  > I think that Hulu Prime, the version without commercials The last time I looked, the commercial free version of Hulu still had commercials for some shows. Has that changed?
  - mark_l_watson 11y ago
    I haven't seen any commercials since I started paying $11.98/month, a plan that they say is "No Commercials."
    - criddell 11y ago
      This page: http://www.hulu.com/help/articles/52427902 says some shows still have commercials: Grey’s Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Scandal, Grimm, New Girl and How To Get Away With Murder It also says shows available for next-day viewing will still have commercials.
rdlecler1 11y ago
Other than a few good streaming shows you're left with the leftover movies that the studios are willing to license to them. Most of the good stuff you have to get through other means. Sometimes I miss blockbuster.
k__ 11y ago
Mom: "We got Sky now, so many channels and we get the newest Soccer and Movies!" GF: "Oh nice... so where can I choose the movies?" Mom: "You select the movie channel at 20:15 and it shows it" GF: "What? I that's in four hours! Who pays a company to wait? This sounds like Netflix in bad to me..." Classic cable TV is basically dead. First Netflix&co had better airing times (on demand, haha) and now they invest in better shows. Besides Rick and Morty and Game of Thrones, every show I watched last year, was made by Netflix or Amazon. And this seems to be a good thing. Just look at stuff like orange is the new black. These new producers are far less conservative than the old media companies.
- kriro 11y ago
  Sky (in Germany) has a service called Go which streams to cell phones/tablets. They also have Anytime for the box. No need to watch at the time if you don't want to + you can always just record it and watch later. They've been pretty aggressive in rebuilding their platform content wise. If you use a regular cable (not wireless) the online archive is actually pretty big and they have all the latest blockbusters. They even offer a DRMed download of content which I haven't seen on any other platform (quite convenient if you commute via train through low-bandwidth areas :D). That being said...Netflix is awesome and they have excellent developers and understand software. Their original content is amazing, very bullish on them :)
  - petepete 11y ago
    Sky UK has Go too, plus thousands of films available to stream, built-in catch-up TV and Sky Box Sets which has loads of programmes, from HBO, Disney, C4 and many others - all built into the Sky Box and accessible via the remote. Truthfully, it's not as cost effective as Netflix, but hey, where else can I watch the Premier League and La Liga?
- refurb 11y ago
  My comment is only tangentially related to yours, but I thought it might be helpful/entertaining. Back in the early 90s (~25 years ago) i got my first unix account that had access to the INTERNET! I could have nicely formatated text (via html) sent to my computer running Lynx. That alone was amazing. The my brother brought home a movie on a CD-ROM. Barely watchable video quality. The i read about the "future" and how eventually you could have a movie streamed to you when you wanted to watch it! Give me a break, that's technically impossible. And here we are today!
brownbat 11y ago
They spent the last 10 years conducting massive studies of what people like to watch. If they weren't able to come up with some hits after that, then they weren't trying. Somewhere behind the scenes, Netflix is applying sabermetrics to Hollywood. Except it's worse than in baseball... Unlike Oakland, all their competitors (except maybe Amazon) can't just copy their approach, because all their data is private, not public.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Sure, but you'd think that with all of the market research done by TV and cable over the past several decades (and it's not as if Comcast and Time Warner don't track what people watch on their digital cable services) they'd have some inkling as to what's currently in demand and what may be underrepresented. Perhaps it's just more efficient for Netflix to commission content or buy it and then distribute it themselves. The on-demand model means no concerns about finding the right timeslot and that's something even NBC has to deal with despite their Comcast ownership. Or maybe as the newcomer, they have to take more risks whereas the older networks are more risk-averse. Right now Netflix reminds me of nothing so much as it does HBO. It's got older movies and content that it's licensed from others and it's got its own content that often seems less concerned with getting the broadest and widest appeal. Netflix streaming is basically the evolution of premium cable and all they really did differently was jump straight to online-only delivery.
  - brownbat 11y ago
    > they'd have some inkling as to what's currently in demand and what may be underrepresented. My working assumption is that the lessons learned from the prediction engine they've built are a qualitative leap over just "what's popular, assuming all of the US is composed of identical viewers." Or even a few demographic divisions. Eh, I could be wrong though. Maybe this is just a gutcheck, I think Netflix is better at data science than other studios, because they have more experience working with programmers and large datasets.
- Shorel 11y ago
  It's not the fault of Netflix that Nielsen ratings suck so much.
kriro 11y ago
It'll get interesting when they make the first play for sports rights. Not because I think it's necessary or anything but that would be a pretty strong signal for the general audience that the paradigm has shifted. I think streaming quality isn't quite there yet but there's plenty of not super premium content they could try.
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  It turns out that my interest in sports did not exceed my hatred of cable companies. I canceled cable and don't watch nearly as much live sport coverage as I used to. Every so often I'll catch something in a bar or go to a friend's place to watch the Super Bowl, and that's it. Point being, I don't think live sports is enough for cable to survive on. Once that's all that cable is good for, I think an increasing number of people will simply give up on sports, especially at $100+/month.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    At least where I live, the cable companies are the only real option for broadband internet access so we're already paying Comcast for something. And once you are paying for internet access, cable TV is typically a lot less than $100/mo. The only reason we still have it is because internet access is $70/mo while internet plus cable (major channels in HD, minor ones in SD), plus HBO (main HBO channel in HD, secondary HBO channels in SD) costs $100/mo with their tuner/dvr rental. So for a lot of people, they don't need to be worth $100+/month but they do need to be worth $30-ish per month. Whether they are is debatable but if anyone in your house still likes to "flip" channels and watch the latest cable/network TV, it's not always a done deal. If it were up to me, I'd ditch the cable TV because I hardly watch it and would spend less just renting "season passes" to the handful of shows I do.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  I'm sort of curious as to how well their infrastructure would handle something live as opposed to their current "asynchronous" stuff. It's not that you can't get live streaming sports now but I don't know enough about the actual content delivery system to tell whether they'd have to invest in the tech side as well as the content rights for something like live sports. I agree that it would be a great thing for them to try out with something people want to watch but maybe doesn't have the massive demand in the US (since that's their main base of ops). Still, I wonder if it would really go over well because even for something less popular, they'd have to buy the broadcast rights and then people without Netflix (and potentially without the bandwidth to even get Netflix) suddenly can't watch their games. It would be like putting pro hockey or football/soccer (in the US) on HBO. Sure, those don't have the demand of NFL football or MLB baseball in the states but they have enough of a fan base who's used to watching on ESPN, etc that it may seem like an unwelcome paywall. Honestly not really sure what sports would have both enough of a viewer base to be worth the effort and are underrepresented enough that fans would just be glad someone is giving them coverage. I agree though. If Netflix has outdone cable by beating them to the trend of video-on-demand, they may eventually need to address those areas where cable and broadcast remain the norm. I suppose cable and broadcast could focus more on that live content and leave the rest to streaming companies but eventually the competition will come down to people only wanting to pay for one or the other.
cm2187 11y ago
Don't know if the catalogue is the same here in the UK than in the US, but in the UK Netflix is only good for TV shows. The movie offering is very light. The other thing is the lack of offline viewing, which is useful when travelling. The media industry is so backward. I can't believe most of them still live in the 90s and these problems haven't been solved yet.
- alykhalid 11y ago
  Netflix has a different catalogue for each country they serve.
  - ctz 11y ago
    I recently learned this first hand. Even more confusingly, your account is not attached to your country of payment but instead done by geoip, so travelling will mean you likely can't continue to watch the same series. This is a major ballache. Even netflix support don't realise this.
    - sbarre 11y ago
      I'm sure they totally realize it, but it's not something a front-line support agent can really do anything about, so why get into that conversation with a customer who won't care about the why and will just see it as a crappy experience (which it totally is)!
      - nickff 11y ago
        They are not able to do anything about it though; they do not have global licenses for their content.
      - scriptdevil 11y ago
        If this was possible, I would get a friend of mine in USA to pay for my account. People complain about piracy in India and do not understand that torrents and streaming sites are currently my only source for good TV series. I am readily willing to pay even $40 a month for such a service.
vermontdevil 11y ago
The key is how are the younger generation consuming tv content? My daughter and all her friends love YouTube, Netflix, etc. They don't bother with cable. That's where the future is heading, me thinks. And yes I have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. Sure the cost pretty much equals what I would pay for cable but I prefer this way.
ck2 11y ago
As long as netflix can dump cash to generate quality original content they will have great success. Redbox likes to advertise "not on netflix for years" on certain titles. And they are right. For someone who never goes to theaters like me, I hope redbox stays in business.
chris_wot 11y ago
I'm an Australian. I barely watch television any more. The TV Networks have basically screwed over Australians for a long time. We don't get the same content at the same time as the rest of the world, it gets shown out of order and at times they even missed entire episodes. The only thing that the TV networks might have had going was to produce their own drama. They didn't - they just produced home improvement shows in the 90s, and really bad reality TV in the 2000s. Very little in the way of drama, and what was created was dross. So, goodbye TV! Hello Netflix!
joakleaf 11y ago
I wonder if ratings are higher because viewers don't have to endure annoying commercials? To me, the absence of commercials definitely makes the experience far more enjoyable, and I can better relate to the stories and characters when the experience isn't constantly interrupted.
soneca 11y ago
I don't think online reviews are a good reference for TV shows. My impression is that, different of movies, only fans do reviews. So the average TV show rating is much higher than for movies. And I also have the impression that Netflix shows have a stronger "fan review only" effect, as you must be proactive to start watching that show on the first place. Another effect is that for movies, after you decide to watch it is easier to get to the end even if you are not liking (more so if you are on a theater). So most people watched 100% of the content. If you don't like a show, you do not pass the first episode. So if you did not watched more than 10% of content, I assume you won't feel confortable with giving a negative review. So that is why I dont trust reviews for TV shows
api 11y ago
Hollywood is ripe for disruption. They remind me of the old 1970s auto industry: fat, happy, and stagnant. They don't do "plot" anymore, churning out nothing but totally formulaic rehashes and reboots and franchise flicks. I don't think viewers are as dumb as Hollywood thinks. Hollywood gets away with this schlock because they have little competition at the high end of film making. Netflix can do what the Japanese autos did: start at the lower end with good but inexpensive TV shows and then eat up the value chain until they are producing blockbuster flicks of superior quality at a lower price. Give me a great blockbuster movie with an actual plot and actual dramatic tension and it's game over.
- frik 11y ago
  The super hero movies are getting annoying. The same goes for arkward unfunny comedian movies. I hope Hollywood revives action movies (1980/90s style; eg Die Hard 1/2) with real stunts and little CGI again, as well as films with good realistic stories, realistic characters, funny and with a little drama (eg The Family Stone).
in_cahoots 11y ago
Looking at the top series, they're all semi-obscure or obscure, early seasons of very new shows. This means they follow some key trends: obscure things typically have higher ratings in general than the mainstream, because you're unlikely to hear about them / watch them if you're not already in some narrow niche. Compare that to something like The Big Bang Theory, where people watch it just because it's on. Ratings also tend to go down as a show matures, both as the quality and novelty drop off (even The Wire has its critics of the last season) and as the show is exposed to a wider audience. Taking this into account, I don't think user ratings are the best measure of a show's appeal.
nebulous1 11y ago
While I think it's pretty f*ing obvious that traditional TV channels are going to be in a lot of trouble in the years to come, I couldn't verify his statement that "Netflix now produces 3 of the top 5 rated video series according to Rotten Tomatoes". I did find the exact list he posted under "Top TV Comedies" http://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/tv-list-2/# http://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/tv-list-2/# Also, on their "Top 10 TV Shows 2015", I only see two Netflix shows in places 8 and 9 on the list. Netflix do produce some top quality shows, but the aren't currently killing it as much as the author claims.
- ryanwaggoner 11y ago
  Unless I'm missing something, your link does match his list, but it's labeled "Top TV Shows on RT", not comedy. Most of those shows are definitely not comedy.
  - nebulous1 11y ago
    Fair point on them not being comedies. This could be an RT issue. This is what I see: http://imgur.com/PdqztD9 http://imgur.com/PdqztD9
buro9 11y ago
Netflix has it easy on content production, all they need do is fill evening TV viewing for a younger generation, and content that can be put in front of children. They do not have the overhead of filling 24 hours a day with new content, Netflix is all killer no filler in terms of content production. And it turns out, that that's only a few hundred hours of TV per viewer per year, many of whom belong to those same small demographic groups that share great overlap in interest. BTW, I'm really glad they turned down Top Gear whilst at the same time producing shows like Jessica Jones. One seems so dated and a decade ago whilst the other feels now or from the future.
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  The thing about Netflix is that is isn't just USA, here in the UK we've sat and taken USA content 3 years late, in the mean time the internet and newspapers full of spoilers and memes about those shows. So what to do? Pirate them? When Netflix turned up it was amazing!! But the biggest selling point? For us is ... reception. Yeah, in the old days TV was full of snow. Now we've gone digital TV is just glitches and pops and whistles. We go from around 180 channels to 20 every time we re-scan the TV (which is about once a month) .... most of the time the TV is unwatchable. Everyone I know is now Netflix and/or Amazon and/or both. Whoever gets Premier Football, Ruby, F1, Moto GP, Formula E and the olympics will win TV forever.
- lostcolony 11y ago
  Who -does- have the overhead of filling 24 hours a day with new content, exactly? Because broadcast TV is what gave us 'reruns' in the first place. All -they- have to do is fill evening TV viewing (and even then only a couple time slots on a couple days; the rest they can, and do, leave to reruns). The need for content production is no different. The benefit to Netflix is that it's on demand, so they aren't -limited- to that 24 hour block. Other TV studios, to air something, have to free up their schedule; Netflix just adds it to their catalog.
- EthanHeilman 11y ago
  According to this[0] Netflix has 65 million subscribers who watch 100 million hours of Netflix a day, which works out to around 1.5 hours of Netflix per day per subscriber. In 2014 [1] people in the US watched an average of 2.8 hours of TV per day. I think you make a good point but it leaves me asking is filler important and if so why? Are viewers going to watch filler if they don't find anything good on Netflix? My guess is that live events like sports and news are the two elements of TV which Netflix can't replace. [0]: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/netflix_statistics-facts/ http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/netflix_statistics-fa... [1]: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
petersouth 11y ago
Does anybody worry that people will just subscribe for one month out of the year and watch everything and then cancel?
- itsbits 11y ago
  I am sure most people will be more busier than you think to watch every thing in a month..
- mcphage 11y ago
  How much TV can you (and do you want to) watch in a month? Plus, with their ongoing series, you can get caught up on a show or two, but a year later and there'll be more content for the shows you watched.
kabdib 11y ago
... and data caps will put it out. Serious question: Would nationalizing Comcast fix anything, or make it worse?
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  This is a problem in the US, not everywhere (nearly everywhere) else in the world.
yalogin 11y ago
Why is the argument framed as Netflix against the other TV companies? That is wrong. I don't think people care who makes the show as long as its good and available/accessible. They will all change one way or the other. Their viability in the long run will depend on how good their online offerings are. We are still in the nascent stages of this. The big issue here is the service providers like Comcast will be relegated to becoming purely pipe providers as they are supposed to be. They are getting hit from both ends by Google and Netflix.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Comcast will have to be reorganized as purely a pipe provider. It won't survive as it is. It's not clear that DSL will not then eclipse cable altogether. As it is , they feed a lot of cash to local stations and ESPN. Those probably won't survive at all, unless as some sort of premium online content. HBO/SHO?: Who knows?
krautsourced 11y ago
It should however also be noted that the people who rate stuff on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes (namely, people who go on the Internet to look at movie reviews, discuss, rate etc.) are also probably most of the target audience for streaming services in general. While "Big TV" also caters for the older demographic, people who like reality tv (yes, apparently they do exist, I don't know...) etc., which still make up probably the majority of the viewers. Things will most likely change in the next decades, when the older viewers die out and a whole generation expects streaming and on demand and maybe even expect "stuff that is not shit" on TV - though I won't hold my breath for the latter.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  I don't think the entire massed effort of the entire entertainment industry for all time can provide 6 hours/day of "stuff that is not shit." Roughly 6 hours/week is close to doable for the current industry if they don't make too many mistakes. Reality TV began with GenX/millenials (MTV in the '90s with The Real World) and I'm not familiar with people older than that who watch that. I say that; I'll watch Counting Cars now and again. Reality TV represents a trade of quality for volume. Us boomers endured dreck like "Dallas". I think the future is in nonfiction. I am biased to like things like BookTv. The costs are relatively low, it's got a pretty high hit rate ( some subjects will simply not engage some people ) but it's not really media any more. Add some "media" to it and you get the execrable TED talks. I can't see that supporting much in terms of ad revenue. But it might stream on some sort of modest subscription basis.
  - rileymat2 11y ago
    Did reality TV begin with Real World on MTV? What about shows like "Cops"? I think that predates Real World.
    - delecti 11y ago
      I feel like it's worth distinguishing between reality TV with a consistent cast like Real World, and those without like Cops, which is almost more like a documentary in that sense. I'm not sure how I'd make the distinction clear though, because stuff like "Ghost Hunters" feels a lot more like the Real World kind, despite being (ostensibly) more like a documentary.
rco8786 11y ago
Author seems unaware that Apple is already in the streaming space also. Otherwise, yea Concast et. al. Seem to have their heads in the sand.
- bparsons 11y ago
  Apple is producing content? All I see in the iTunes store is a bunch of crummy network TV reruns and stuff I can get on a dozen other platforms.
guiomie 11y ago
Marco Polo — 92% (Fun Fact: Critics rated it 24%. How’s that for incongruity?) Narcos — 94% (Another crazy disconnect as critics only rated it 78%) The author preaches shows produced by data driven companies, then when a rating data driven company has results he judges abnormal to his taste he insinuates something is wrong. Personally, I found Marco Polo okay, the visuals are good, but the plot got boring after a while. I would not give it more than 50%. As for Narcos, 78% seems legit, I found the whole traditional drama show mixed with documentary interventions awkward. And would not give it more than 75%. As for the article, of course linear TV is going to get disrupt. But I doubt Amazon or Netflix will get a monopoly. AMC and HBO will simply put their content online, and TV providers will make their revenue loss from linear TV on higher internet consumption.
- davej 11y ago
  The author is simply highlighting the disconnect between critics ratings and audience ratings for Netflix shows.
wtbob 11y ago
I wonder how much of Netflix's success is that its show are good, and how much is that they are easy to watch. Anytime I want to, I can go to Netflix and watch any episode of their shows. I ca watch the first season; I can watch the intervening seasons; I can watch the current season. There are no blackouts; there are no embargoes. I can binge-watch if I want, or I can pace myself, at my pace. Compare that to the big companies' offerings, where I may be able to watch every episode this season, but not get started by catching up on previous seasons (I know that they hope I'll pay up for boxed sets of those early seasons, but I'll just skip their shows altogether instead), or I may be able to wath previous seasons but not the current one, or (my favourite) I can watch previous seasons and recent episodes but not early episodes this season. Why would I want to get involved with a show which is such a pain to watch?
- hackerboos 11y ago
  I'm a prolific pirate. The Amazon offerings as pointed out by the author (Transparent, High Castle..) sit on my HTPC - downloaded from torrents because Amazon's streaming services are not offered here in Canada so how else would I get them. I haven't pirated any Netflix shows because it's simply too cheap and too easy to just do it legit.
  - e40 11y ago
    I have Amazon Prime and I've been forced to pirate the content because their streaming app on the Roku 3 sucks ass. On the same device, the Netflix app never buffers (I have a 55 Mbps connection). So, I recently downloaded a series I was watching. Turns out, I had paid for it (Hannibal season 3), in HD. Just couldn't stream, over a few days, without stopped. So, torrenting I went. I have the same complaint about HBO Now on the Roku. Man, does it suck. Lest people think the problem is my network, often when I have the issue I switch to Netflix and never once have I had a problem after the switch. Seems unlikely I just happened to switch when the network problems went away.
    - diamondtrim 11y ago
      Sounds like the Netflix app just had better bandwidth detection and quality adjustment than Amazon or HBO. Not surprising, as the latter two are less mature apps and infrastructure built by relatively newcomers to the streaming business whose core competency is not in digital media distribution (regardless who may have built their system). Ironically, it might be because you bought it in HD that it buffers excessively on your roku, whereas it might stream better in SD. But none of that matters, you are correct at this point that Netflix clearly has it figured out and working for you, while their competition does not. Only to say, the dynamic bitrate support is likely to improve on the other apps with time (not to mention, your internet connection is likely to periodically increase in speed for various upgrades to your equipment or your ISPs) so those issues are likely not permanent.

185 points by mcnabj 11y ago

towb 11y ago

And Netflix is the only source of UHD, at least in my parts of the world. Which made me pay them even more for that subscription now when I bought a UHD TV last week. Oh, and I just ended my good old regular cable subscription one month ago.

jerf 11y ago
Out of curiosity, how good is the streaming UHD? I've always wondered how the tension between bandwidth consumption and "actually looking better than 1080P" would pan out. Last week with some Christmas funds we bought a 24" TV. Even at the point-blank range it is sitting at, 1080P isn't worth much so I got the nicer (and non-Smart!) 720P Samsung rather than the off-brand "we have 1080P!"-bullet-point-feature brand. We also got a Amazon Fire stick to stream to it. We took perverse glee in making the first thing we streamed to it Netflix's 4K Fireplace stream: http://www.netflix.com/title/80092839 http://www.netflix.com/title/80092839
- mpeg 11y ago
  I have a 50'' 4k tv and can definitely notice the increase in resolution when watching from close enough, and deeper blacks. However, it's not that big a deal when watching from 5-6 meters.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  On bigger screens and/or ones closer to the viewer it's definitely a noticeable improvement. It's obviously compressed and not up to the standard of a really high bitrate 4k video file but I guess it's equivalent to how "HD" on cable doesn't look as good as HD over the air but it still looks a lot nicer than standard def or DVD. One major downside is that you can't stream 4K Netflix or Amazon to your browser so even on my 27" 2560x1440 monitor (or if you have a fancy 4k or 5k display) you won't get the option. It's only available on various streaming "sticks" or TV-based "apps" at the moment. As far as I know, it's only really meant as a roadblock to casual ripping of 4k content since it wouldn't be difficult to determine whether a viewer's computer had the proper hardware decoders to ensure smooth playback. Unfortunately for viewers, it means you can't get those higher quality streams without buying a device or using a "smart" TV. And last time I checked, there's no shortage of pirated 4K content out there. It's currently one of the only ways to do it if you don't want to rely on a Fire stick, another set top box, or some possibly-secured TV app platform. Not a huge deal on my 2560x1440 monitor since it's not too big and 1920x1080 looks fine. But I'm likely picking up a 4k TV in the next month thanks to a $500 gift card and wanting to game at those resolutions. It's a shame I'll have to either pirate 4k shows or plug in the ethernet cable to the TV when I want to stream legit.
  - Fargren 11y ago
    I also have a 27" 2560x1440 monitor and while the content looks fine, the video gets really choppy if I don't configure my monitor to 1920x1080, as if it's struggling to resize the video. Does this not happen to you?
    - soylentcola 11y ago
      Sorry for the late reply, but whenever I stream from Netflix, Amazon, or Youtube, I just let it stream at whatever their site determines as the max my connection can handle and it never looks choppy in fullscreen. The only time there's any issue is when bandwidth is limited for whatever reason and the site needs to drop down to a lower quality stream. I assume you've already covered this but just in case, do you have the most recent drivers and software for your GPU? I know in the past that (on Windows systems at least) using the default "mostly works" driver that comes with the OS, I'll notice issues with performance because I'm missing any hardware acceleration that the Intel/nVidia/AMD GPU can do. Typically I notice it on work machines that just got reimaged with a generic OS image and don't have the relevant GPU drivers installed yet. Moving windows around, resizing, and other windowing tasks are a bit choppy until I download the appropriate package. Again, I assume you already thought of this if you're specifically buying a higher resolution display than the average cheap PC comes with. Still, it's the only thing that I've had affect framerate/refresh in fullscreen video in the past.
- towb 11y ago
  It's clearly a step up from 1080p at a distance of about 3,5 - 4 meters at least. But then, a lot of it is the difference of a 5 year old 40" vs. a new 55" tv. The beginning of "Narcos" is filmed from a helicopter down on some streets in a city, that was the first thing I ever saw in UHD, pretty cool! Now I've gotten used to it haha

lostcolony 11y ago

Another interesting thing to see is the response by a lot of those inside the television content industry. Many of the companies that produce content are retooling and reorganizing specifically to deliver that content over the internet. None of them want to use Netflix, instead wanting their own service, but the growth of such streaming services has emboldened them. They both see that it's possible to go directly to consumer, -and- that it will be necessary at some point in the future, as the increase in cord cutters means less money on the incumbent TV providers to pay them with in contract negotiations. They realize they either are looking at ever dwindling fees, and thus, dwindling business, or they have to be able to circumvent the existing distributors. So it's not just that Netflix is managing to create great content; its mere existence is leading to much of the content that TV distributors currently have a stranglehold on to be distributed directly by the content company.

Zekio 11y ago
Sadly in some countries such as Denmark, there are some TV licensing fees you can't stop paying, because you can access the content online... Even if you never intend to use it.
- thomasahle 11y ago
  Just the national broadcasting though, which is not much different from how you pay for highways, even if you don't have a car.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    Dane here. I pay about half of what the biggest channel package costs in mandatory license fees every month, and it is a very poor offering. Netflix is only 80kr, or about 12 dollars, whereas I pay almost 30 dollars for the tv fees. I watched about 10 minutes of broadcast tv last year but many hours of netflix. I don't get why I should be forced to pay for something that doesn't produce any value for me.

aprdm 11y ago

Netflix content is indeed amazing, Narcos is my favourite show by far, house of cards and others are also top notch. In the beginning I was always wishing that Netflix would get famous TV shows/ new movies to the platform ASAP. Now a days I really want to see more of their own content in the platform instead.

mbrutsch 11y ago

Sadly, half those shows are not actually available on Netflix.

feld 11y ago
What are you talking about?
- revelation 11y ago
  Netflix has sold distribution rights abroad to some of their own shows such as House of Cards, then entered the market shortly after. As a result, you can now subscribe to Netflix in these markets and not get access to their own programming. Yes, it is as terrible as it sounds.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    And yet, you can get around those restrictions quite easily.
    - IMTDb 11y ago
      Or you can torrent it quite easily and don't pay a dime. The point is : if I have to do illegal stuff (getting around geoip is against TOS) and start installing software, search on the internet for a tutorial to learn how to watch my stuff, I might as well look for "House of cards torrent", it's faster and cheaper. I can pirate any music I want, yet I pay Apple Music $10/month to get it because it's easy, the UI is nice, everything is in there, and the service "just works". If I have to install a VPN, to change my IP so that the service I am paying will let me watch a show they are producing, something is broken. Period. Fix it or I'll pirate it.
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        You are still paying the content creators if you bypass the geoblock and pay the monthly subscription fee. And that fee is not at all onerous. In Australia, all the streaming providers have the problems of not being able to show all content. There is stuff in Australia that we can't watch at all. Bypassing Geoblocks makes me a citizen of the entire world, which I gladly pay for.

ascendantlogic 11y ago

So here's the catch 22. The Hollywood content producers and deliverers won't just sit back and let Netflix and Amazon eat their entire lunch. They will fight back, and presumably with their own streaming services. So we will have a proliferation (more so than now) of services to get specific content through. Usually this is a good thing. People want choice and choice breeds competition which is good for consumers. However in this instance most people I know, myself included, just want one streaming service to subscribe to so it's not such a hassle. But wishing for that is like wishing for Hitler to be replaced with Stalin. It will end poorly with just another monopoly taking the place of the old.

voltagex_ 11y ago
It's already happening here in Australia. If you like a lot of popular shows you might need 3 different streaming subscriptions, plus cable / satellite for sport. If you want soccer, you might even have to change ISP / mobile provider to get it (EPL on Optus)
soylentcola 11y ago
I sort of wonder whether the direct-subscription thing will just take the place of premium cable (or join its ranks). I guess it depends on how you use them and how you watch TV. In the past, I looked at Netflix streaming as a more affordable replacement for basic cable: just like with basic cable (all of the USA/TBS/TNT/etc channels) you couldn't necessarily count on finding a specific movie like with a video store or a VOD setup but you could skim through the offerings, just like flipping channels, and find something you wouldn't mind watching. Other times, it would seem like there's "nothing on". Nowadays there's enough good, original programming coming out throughout the year that it reminds me more of premium cable. And just as you'd tack on another $5 or $10/mo for HBO, MAX, Starz, etc. you can individually subscribe to Netflix, Amazon, and others depending on which ones you find worth paying for based on the shows they produce. The other side to it (for me at least) is the convenience of video on demand without messing with DVRs and such. I've said it before and I'll say it again--if cable wanted a way to make me gladly pay $50/mo or more for their service, they'd give me something like a legit version of Popcorn Time. I messed around with that (via VPN of course) when it was making waves a while back and even though I currently subscribe to cable, HBO, Netflix, and Amazon, I was choosing to watch shows via Popcorn Time. The thing it offered was a single, attractive list of all shows available and a way to bookmark the ones I liked and show which episode I left off on. It brought the Netflix interface to cable TV and was simply a more enjoyable way to watch. I realize that I'm not entitled to whatever I want for free and I understand that this was still an unlicensed way to watch but I didn't feel it was immoral since I already paid for access to the shows. Even if distribution deals would prevent Comcast and friends from offering everything that way, it would be quite welcome and forward-thinking if they leveraged their unique position as content distributor to offer up something along those lines. Again, it's the one thing that would make me almost glad to pay for cable again, rather than only doing it begrudgingly because it's relatively cheap when bundled with internet access.

fredley 11y ago

Brit here wondering how this shift within the industry will affect the BBC. We own a screen, Netflix subscription and Chromecast, and do not pay for a TV License. While this setup is not even remotely commonplace yet, it could be a real threat over the next decade, especially as iPlayer usage is free without owning a License. I would like to see the TV License flipped on its head: you pay a subscription that gets you access to everything the BBC offers, except what they broadcast live (and maybe online news), which you get for free (the exact opposite of how they charge now). A much better proposal for the streaming generation, essentially a tax-cut for the older generation, and none of the nasty TV License policing issues.

SyneRyder 11y ago
The BBC has other sources of income too. Here in Australia, there is a ton of BBC content on Netflix Australia, which presumably Netflix paid the BBC for (eg River, for which Netflix acquired exclusive international streaming rights: http://deadline.com/2015/10/netflix-bbc-river-stellan-skarsgard-abi-morgan-1201577912/ http://deadline.com/2015/10/netflix-bbc-river-stellan-skarsg... ) In Australia, our ABC is funded directly out of general taxes, rather than an explicit TV License. I can imagine Britain eventually moving to a similar model to fund the BBC.
- genmon 11y ago
  BBC income last year... From the license fee, £3.7B GBP; from commercial activities, £1.0B GBP. Details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwework/reports/ara http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwework/repo... The BBC is in a difficult bind. It can't charge for license-fee funded content in the UK where it's best known. And if it had to make all its income from its commercial arm, it would only make Doctor Who and Top Gear, none of the classical music, news, or drama that it's best at. How the BBC is funded is intensely political, being argued a ton right now as the charter is up for renewal in 2016. The BBC in 2017 could be much smaller.
  - gregpilling 11y ago

stonogo 11y ago

What is the purpose of this article? Was it really some random person SO EXCITED about a video streaming company? I struggle to find a thesis here. Do people need an entire essay that just says "Netflix is making money and producing content"?

zanny 11y ago
The point is more that Netflix is producing the best content, better than all the studios and HBO right now by user rating. I'd be very interested though in viewership numbers between prime time TV shows like Big Bang versus new series releases of House of Cards.
- AznHisoka 11y ago
  User rating according to whom? Is it all standardized?
  - chucky_z 11y ago
    I believe those are the direct rottentomatoes.com "User" scores. So aggregated from a large population of users for rottentomatoes.com; I would consider that to be a pretty good representation of the average American population who uses the internet.
    - zymhan 11y ago
      > who uses the internet Which skews your sample.
StevePerkins 11y ago
Three-day holiday weekend. There are currently two separate posts on the front-page about 1999's "Age of Empires 2" being a nice video game.
- Gigablah 11y ago
  Yes, when people return from their holidays we'll go back to our regular schedule of marketing blog posts disguised as technical articles.

je42 11y ago

In addition to it; netflix actually knows that when you watch a series you don't care about already seen episodes. Good old TV never really labeled episodes correctly and is a pain to use when you are just interested in the next you haven't seen. In netflix it is painless. Yes, the feature is simple, but still I value it every time i can just watch the next episode ( or pick up where left in the middle of the episode).

CydeWeys 11y ago
Not only that, Netflix even does a decent job of handling multiple people watching the same series at different points, even on the same virtual account.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

We are huge Netflix fans (my wife and I have our own streaming accounts, which is stupid now since they offer family options for separating play lists). That said, I think that Hulu Prime, the version without commercials, is also a fine product and Hulu is owned by the large network stations. We get Amazon Prime free shipping via my brother's business so we have not signed up ourselves and don't get the free Amazon Prime content which friends and family members say is amazing. The thing is: there is so much good content that it is fine, at least for me, to not have access to everything. Another distribution model that I like is Google Play Movies and TV. It is a little pricy but I wanted to watch the Worricker Triliogy (fantastic!!) the the new scifi Expanse and it was so very convenient simply buying both series and watching them anytime on any device. If the cost was a little less, and if Google Play had most content, I think that I could be happy with a completely a la cart pay per view experience. A suggestion for anyone working in this industry: when content is rented, offer a purchase option that is valid for a week. Sometimes I have rented movies and liked them enough that I would pay the difference to own permanent viewing rights.

criddell 11y ago
> I think that Hulu Prime, the version without commercials The last time I looked, the commercial free version of Hulu still had commercials for some shows. Has that changed?
- mark_l_watson 11y ago
  I haven't seen any commercials since I started paying $11.98/month, a plan that they say is "No Commercials."
  - criddell 11y ago
    This page: http://www.hulu.com/help/articles/52427902 says some shows still have commercials: Grey’s Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Scandal, Grimm, New Girl and How To Get Away With Murder It also says shows available for next-day viewing will still have commercials.

rdlecler1 11y ago

Other than a few good streaming shows you're left with the leftover movies that the studios are willing to license to them. Most of the good stuff you have to get through other means. Sometimes I miss blockbuster.

k__ 11y ago

Mom: "We got Sky now, so many channels and we get the newest Soccer and Movies!" GF: "Oh nice... so where can I choose the movies?" Mom: "You select the movie channel at 20:15 and it shows it" GF: "What? I that's in four hours! Who pays a company to wait? This sounds like Netflix in bad to me..." Classic cable TV is basically dead. First Netflix&co had better airing times (on demand, haha) and now they invest in better shows. Besides Rick and Morty and Game of Thrones, every show I watched last year, was made by Netflix or Amazon. And this seems to be a good thing. Just look at stuff like orange is the new black. These new producers are far less conservative than the old media companies.

kriro 11y ago
Sky (in Germany) has a service called Go which streams to cell phones/tablets. They also have Anytime for the box. No need to watch at the time if you don't want to + you can always just record it and watch later. They've been pretty aggressive in rebuilding their platform content wise. If you use a regular cable (not wireless) the online archive is actually pretty big and they have all the latest blockbusters. They even offer a DRMed download of content which I haven't seen on any other platform (quite convenient if you commute via train through low-bandwidth areas :D). That being said...Netflix is awesome and they have excellent developers and understand software. Their original content is amazing, very bullish on them :)
- petepete 11y ago
  Sky UK has Go too, plus thousands of films available to stream, built-in catch-up TV and Sky Box Sets which has loads of programmes, from HBO, Disney, C4 and many others - all built into the Sky Box and accessible via the remote. Truthfully, it's not as cost effective as Netflix, but hey, where else can I watch the Premier League and La Liga?
refurb 11y ago
My comment is only tangentially related to yours, but I thought it might be helpful/entertaining. Back in the early 90s (~25 years ago) i got my first unix account that had access to the INTERNET! I could have nicely formatated text (via html) sent to my computer running Lynx. That alone was amazing. The my brother brought home a movie on a CD-ROM. Barely watchable video quality. The i read about the "future" and how eventually you could have a movie streamed to you when you wanted to watch it! Give me a break, that's technically impossible. And here we are today!

brownbat 11y ago

They spent the last 10 years conducting massive studies of what people like to watch. If they weren't able to come up with some hits after that, then they weren't trying. Somewhere behind the scenes, Netflix is applying sabermetrics to Hollywood. Except it's worse than in baseball... Unlike Oakland, all their competitors (except maybe Amazon) can't just copy their approach, because all their data is private, not public.

soylentcola 11y ago
Sure, but you'd think that with all of the market research done by TV and cable over the past several decades (and it's not as if Comcast and Time Warner don't track what people watch on their digital cable services) they'd have some inkling as to what's currently in demand and what may be underrepresented. Perhaps it's just more efficient for Netflix to commission content or buy it and then distribute it themselves. The on-demand model means no concerns about finding the right timeslot and that's something even NBC has to deal with despite their Comcast ownership. Or maybe as the newcomer, they have to take more risks whereas the older networks are more risk-averse. Right now Netflix reminds me of nothing so much as it does HBO. It's got older movies and content that it's licensed from others and it's got its own content that often seems less concerned with getting the broadest and widest appeal. Netflix streaming is basically the evolution of premium cable and all they really did differently was jump straight to online-only delivery.
- brownbat 11y ago
  > they'd have some inkling as to what's currently in demand and what may be underrepresented. My working assumption is that the lessons learned from the prediction engine they've built are a qualitative leap over just "what's popular, assuming all of the US is composed of identical viewers." Or even a few demographic divisions. Eh, I could be wrong though. Maybe this is just a gutcheck, I think Netflix is better at data science than other studios, because they have more experience working with programmers and large datasets.
Shorel 11y ago
It's not the fault of Netflix that Nielsen ratings suck so much.

kriro 11y ago

It'll get interesting when they make the first play for sports rights. Not because I think it's necessary or anything but that would be a pretty strong signal for the general audience that the paradigm has shifted. I think streaming quality isn't quite there yet but there's plenty of not super premium content they could try.

CydeWeys 11y ago
It turns out that my interest in sports did not exceed my hatred of cable companies. I canceled cable and don't watch nearly as much live sport coverage as I used to. Every so often I'll catch something in a bar or go to a friend's place to watch the Super Bowl, and that's it. Point being, I don't think live sports is enough for cable to survive on. Once that's all that cable is good for, I think an increasing number of people will simply give up on sports, especially at $100+/month.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  At least where I live, the cable companies are the only real option for broadband internet access so we're already paying Comcast for something. And once you are paying for internet access, cable TV is typically a lot less than $100/mo. The only reason we still have it is because internet access is $70/mo while internet plus cable (major channels in HD, minor ones in SD), plus HBO (main HBO channel in HD, secondary HBO channels in SD) costs $100/mo with their tuner/dvr rental. So for a lot of people, they don't need to be worth $100+/month but they do need to be worth $30-ish per month. Whether they are is debatable but if anyone in your house still likes to "flip" channels and watch the latest cable/network TV, it's not always a done deal. If it were up to me, I'd ditch the cable TV because I hardly watch it and would spend less just renting "season passes" to the handful of shows I do.
soylentcola 11y ago
I'm sort of curious as to how well their infrastructure would handle something live as opposed to their current "asynchronous" stuff. It's not that you can't get live streaming sports now but I don't know enough about the actual content delivery system to tell whether they'd have to invest in the tech side as well as the content rights for something like live sports. I agree that it would be a great thing for them to try out with something people want to watch but maybe doesn't have the massive demand in the US (since that's their main base of ops). Still, I wonder if it would really go over well because even for something less popular, they'd have to buy the broadcast rights and then people without Netflix (and potentially without the bandwidth to even get Netflix) suddenly can't watch their games. It would be like putting pro hockey or football/soccer (in the US) on HBO. Sure, those don't have the demand of NFL football or MLB baseball in the states but they have enough of a fan base who's used to watching on ESPN, etc that it may seem like an unwelcome paywall. Honestly not really sure what sports would have both enough of a viewer base to be worth the effort and are underrepresented enough that fans would just be glad someone is giving them coverage. I agree though. If Netflix has outdone cable by beating them to the trend of video-on-demand, they may eventually need to address those areas where cable and broadcast remain the norm. I suppose cable and broadcast could focus more on that live content and leave the rest to streaming companies but eventually the competition will come down to people only wanting to pay for one or the other.

cm2187 11y ago

Don't know if the catalogue is the same here in the UK than in the US, but in the UK Netflix is only good for TV shows. The movie offering is very light. The other thing is the lack of offline viewing, which is useful when travelling. The media industry is so backward. I can't believe most of them still live in the 90s and these problems haven't been solved yet.

alykhalid 11y ago
Netflix has a different catalogue for each country they serve.
- ctz 11y ago
  I recently learned this first hand. Even more confusingly, your account is not attached to your country of payment but instead done by geoip, so travelling will mean you likely can't continue to watch the same series. This is a major ballache. Even netflix support don't realise this.
  - sbarre 11y ago
    I'm sure they totally realize it, but it's not something a front-line support agent can really do anything about, so why get into that conversation with a customer who won't care about the why and will just see it as a crappy experience (which it totally is)!
    - nickff 11y ago
      They are not able to do anything about it though; they do not have global licenses for their content.
    - scriptdevil 11y ago
      If this was possible, I would get a friend of mine in USA to pay for my account. People complain about piracy in India and do not understand that torrents and streaming sites are currently my only source for good TV series. I am readily willing to pay even $40 a month for such a service.

vermontdevil 11y ago

The key is how are the younger generation consuming tv content? My daughter and all her friends love YouTube, Netflix, etc. They don't bother with cable. That's where the future is heading, me thinks. And yes I have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. Sure the cost pretty much equals what I would pay for cable but I prefer this way.

ck2 11y ago

As long as netflix can dump cash to generate quality original content they will have great success. Redbox likes to advertise "not on netflix for years" on certain titles. And they are right. For someone who never goes to theaters like me, I hope redbox stays in business.

chris_wot 11y ago

I'm an Australian. I barely watch television any more. The TV Networks have basically screwed over Australians for a long time. We don't get the same content at the same time as the rest of the world, it gets shown out of order and at times they even missed entire episodes. The only thing that the TV networks might have had going was to produce their own drama. They didn't - they just produced home improvement shows in the 90s, and really bad reality TV in the 2000s. Very little in the way of drama, and what was created was dross. So, goodbye TV! Hello Netflix!

joakleaf 11y ago

I wonder if ratings are higher because viewers don't have to endure annoying commercials? To me, the absence of commercials definitely makes the experience far more enjoyable, and I can better relate to the stories and characters when the experience isn't constantly interrupted.

soneca 11y ago

I don't think online reviews are a good reference for TV shows. My impression is that, different of movies, only fans do reviews. So the average TV show rating is much higher than for movies. And I also have the impression that Netflix shows have a stronger "fan review only" effect, as you must be proactive to start watching that show on the first place. Another effect is that for movies, after you decide to watch it is easier to get to the end even if you are not liking (more so if you are on a theater). So most people watched 100% of the content. If you don't like a show, you do not pass the first episode. So if you did not watched more than 10% of content, I assume you won't feel confortable with giving a negative review. So that is why I dont trust reviews for TV shows

api 11y ago

Hollywood is ripe for disruption. They remind me of the old 1970s auto industry: fat, happy, and stagnant. They don't do "plot" anymore, churning out nothing but totally formulaic rehashes and reboots and franchise flicks. I don't think viewers are as dumb as Hollywood thinks. Hollywood gets away with this schlock because they have little competition at the high end of film making. Netflix can do what the Japanese autos did: start at the lower end with good but inexpensive TV shows and then eat up the value chain until they are producing blockbuster flicks of superior quality at a lower price. Give me a great blockbuster movie with an actual plot and actual dramatic tension and it's game over.

frik 11y ago
The super hero movies are getting annoying. The same goes for arkward unfunny comedian movies. I hope Hollywood revives action movies (1980/90s style; eg Die Hard 1/2) with real stunts and little CGI again, as well as films with good realistic stories, realistic characters, funny and with a little drama (eg The Family Stone).

in_cahoots 11y ago

Looking at the top series, they're all semi-obscure or obscure, early seasons of very new shows. This means they follow some key trends: obscure things typically have higher ratings in general than the mainstream, because you're unlikely to hear about them / watch them if you're not already in some narrow niche. Compare that to something like The Big Bang Theory, where people watch it just because it's on. Ratings also tend to go down as a show matures, both as the quality and novelty drop off (even The Wire has its critics of the last season) and as the show is exposed to a wider audience. Taking this into account, I don't think user ratings are the best measure of a show's appeal.

nebulous1 11y ago

While I think it's pretty f*ing obvious that traditional TV channels are going to be in a lot of trouble in the years to come, I couldn't verify his statement that "Netflix now produces 3 of the top 5 rated video series according to Rotten Tomatoes". I did find the exact list he posted under "Top TV Comedies" http://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/tv-list-2/# http://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/tv-list-2/# Also, on their "Top 10 TV Shows 2015", I only see two Netflix shows in places 8 and 9 on the list. Netflix do produce some top quality shows, but the aren't currently killing it as much as the author claims.

ryanwaggoner 11y ago
Unless I'm missing something, your link does match his list, but it's labeled "Top TV Shows on RT", not comedy. Most of those shows are definitely not comedy.
- nebulous1 11y ago
  Fair point on them not being comedies. This could be an RT issue. This is what I see: http://imgur.com/PdqztD9 http://imgur.com/PdqztD9

buro9 11y ago

Netflix has it easy on content production, all they need do is fill evening TV viewing for a younger generation, and content that can be put in front of children. They do not have the overhead of filling 24 hours a day with new content, Netflix is all killer no filler in terms of content production. And it turns out, that that's only a few hundred hours of TV per viewer per year, many of whom belong to those same small demographic groups that share great overlap in interest. BTW, I'm really glad they turned down Top Gear whilst at the same time producing shows like Jessica Jones. One seems so dated and a decade ago whilst the other feels now or from the future.

monk_e_boy 11y ago
The thing about Netflix is that is isn't just USA, here in the UK we've sat and taken USA content 3 years late, in the mean time the internet and newspapers full of spoilers and memes about those shows. So what to do? Pirate them? When Netflix turned up it was amazing!! But the biggest selling point? For us is ... reception. Yeah, in the old days TV was full of snow. Now we've gone digital TV is just glitches and pops and whistles. We go from around 180 channels to 20 every time we re-scan the TV (which is about once a month) .... most of the time the TV is unwatchable. Everyone I know is now Netflix and/or Amazon and/or both. Whoever gets Premier Football, Ruby, F1, Moto GP, Formula E and the olympics will win TV forever.
lostcolony 11y ago
Who -does- have the overhead of filling 24 hours a day with new content, exactly? Because broadcast TV is what gave us 'reruns' in the first place. All -they- have to do is fill evening TV viewing (and even then only a couple time slots on a couple days; the rest they can, and do, leave to reruns). The need for content production is no different. The benefit to Netflix is that it's on demand, so they aren't -limited- to that 24 hour block. Other TV studios, to air something, have to free up their schedule; Netflix just adds it to their catalog.
EthanHeilman 11y ago
According to this[0] Netflix has 65 million subscribers who watch 100 million hours of Netflix a day, which works out to around 1.5 hours of Netflix per day per subscriber. In 2014 [1] people in the US watched an average of 2.8 hours of TV per day. I think you make a good point but it leaves me asking is filler important and if so why? Are viewers going to watch filler if they don't find anything good on Netflix? My guess is that live events like sports and news are the two elements of TV which Netflix can't replace. [0]: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/netflix_statistics-facts/ http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/netflix_statistics-fa... [1]: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

petersouth 11y ago

Does anybody worry that people will just subscribe for one month out of the year and watch everything and then cancel?

itsbits 11y ago
I am sure most people will be more busier than you think to watch every thing in a month..
mcphage 11y ago
How much TV can you (and do you want to) watch in a month? Plus, with their ongoing series, you can get caught up on a show or two, but a year later and there'll be more content for the shows you watched.

kabdib 11y ago

... and data caps will put it out. Serious question: Would nationalizing Comcast fix anything, or make it worse?

monk_e_boy 11y ago
This is a problem in the US, not everywhere (nearly everywhere) else in the world.

yalogin 11y ago

Why is the argument framed as Netflix against the other TV companies? That is wrong. I don't think people care who makes the show as long as its good and available/accessible. They will all change one way or the other. Their viability in the long run will depend on how good their online offerings are. We are still in the nascent stages of this. The big issue here is the service providers like Comcast will be relegated to becoming purely pipe providers as they are supposed to be. They are getting hit from both ends by Google and Netflix.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Comcast will have to be reorganized as purely a pipe provider. It won't survive as it is. It's not clear that DSL will not then eclipse cable altogether. As it is , they feed a lot of cash to local stations and ESPN. Those probably won't survive at all, unless as some sort of premium online content. HBO/SHO?: Who knows?

krautsourced 11y ago

It should however also be noted that the people who rate stuff on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes (namely, people who go on the Internet to look at movie reviews, discuss, rate etc.) are also probably most of the target audience for streaming services in general. While "Big TV" also caters for the older demographic, people who like reality tv (yes, apparently they do exist, I don't know...) etc., which still make up probably the majority of the viewers. Things will most likely change in the next decades, when the older viewers die out and a whole generation expects streaming and on demand and maybe even expect "stuff that is not shit" on TV - though I won't hold my breath for the latter.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
I don't think the entire massed effort of the entire entertainment industry for all time can provide 6 hours/day of "stuff that is not shit." Roughly 6 hours/week is close to doable for the current industry if they don't make too many mistakes. Reality TV began with GenX/millenials (MTV in the '90s with The Real World) and I'm not familiar with people older than that who watch that. I say that; I'll watch Counting Cars now and again. Reality TV represents a trade of quality for volume. Us boomers endured dreck like "Dallas". I think the future is in nonfiction. I am biased to like things like BookTv. The costs are relatively low, it's got a pretty high hit rate ( some subjects will simply not engage some people ) but it's not really media any more. Add some "media" to it and you get the execrable TED talks. I can't see that supporting much in terms of ad revenue. But it might stream on some sort of modest subscription basis.
- rileymat2 11y ago
  Did reality TV begin with Real World on MTV? What about shows like "Cops"? I think that predates Real World.
  - delecti 11y ago
    I feel like it's worth distinguishing between reality TV with a consistent cast like Real World, and those without like Cops, which is almost more like a documentary in that sense. I'm not sure how I'd make the distinction clear though, because stuff like "Ghost Hunters" feels a lot more like the Real World kind, despite being (ostensibly) more like a documentary.

rco8786 11y ago

Author seems unaware that Apple is already in the streaming space also. Otherwise, yea Concast et. al. Seem to have their heads in the sand.

bparsons 11y ago
Apple is producing content? All I see in the iTunes store is a bunch of crummy network TV reruns and stuff I can get on a dozen other platforms.

guiomie 11y ago

Marco Polo — 92% (Fun Fact: Critics rated it 24%. How’s that for incongruity?) Narcos — 94% (Another crazy disconnect as critics only rated it 78%) The author preaches shows produced by data driven companies, then when a rating data driven company has results he judges abnormal to his taste he insinuates something is wrong. Personally, I found Marco Polo okay, the visuals are good, but the plot got boring after a while. I would not give it more than 50%. As for Narcos, 78% seems legit, I found the whole traditional drama show mixed with documentary interventions awkward. And would not give it more than 75%. As for the article, of course linear TV is going to get disrupt. But I doubt Amazon or Netflix will get a monopoly. AMC and HBO will simply put their content online, and TV providers will make their revenue loss from linear TV on higher internet consumption.

davej 11y ago
The author is simply highlighting the disconnect between critics ratings and audience ratings for Netflix shows.

wtbob 11y ago

I wonder how much of Netflix's success is that its show are good, and how much is that they are easy to watch. Anytime I want to, I can go to Netflix and watch any episode of their shows. I ca watch the first season; I can watch the intervening seasons; I can watch the current season. There are no blackouts; there are no embargoes. I can binge-watch if I want, or I can pace myself, at my pace. Compare that to the big companies' offerings, where I may be able to watch every episode this season, but not get started by catching up on previous seasons (I know that they hope I'll pay up for boxed sets of those early seasons, but I'll just skip their shows altogether instead), or I may be able to wath previous seasons but not the current one, or (my favourite) I can watch previous seasons and recent episodes but not early episodes this season. Why would I want to get involved with a show which is such a pain to watch?

hackerboos 11y ago
I'm a prolific pirate. The Amazon offerings as pointed out by the author (Transparent, High Castle..) sit on my HTPC - downloaded from torrents because Amazon's streaming services are not offered here in Canada so how else would I get them. I haven't pirated any Netflix shows because it's simply too cheap and too easy to just do it legit.
- e40 11y ago
  I have Amazon Prime and I've been forced to pirate the content because their streaming app on the Roku 3 sucks ass. On the same device, the Netflix app never buffers (I have a 55 Mbps connection). So, I recently downloaded a series I was watching. Turns out, I had paid for it (Hannibal season 3), in HD. Just couldn't stream, over a few days, without stopped. So, torrenting I went. I have the same complaint about HBO Now on the Roku. Man, does it suck. Lest people think the problem is my network, often when I have the issue I switch to Netflix and never once have I had a problem after the switch. Seems unlikely I just happened to switch when the network problems went away.
  - diamondtrim 11y ago
    Sounds like the Netflix app just had better bandwidth detection and quality adjustment than Amazon or HBO. Not surprising, as the latter two are less mature apps and infrastructure built by relatively newcomers to the streaming business whose core competency is not in digital media distribution (regardless who may have built their system). Ironically, it might be because you bought it in HD that it buffers excessively on your roku, whereas it might stream better in SD. But none of that matters, you are correct at this point that Netflix clearly has it figured out and working for you, while their competition does not. Only to say, the dynamic bitrate support is likely to improve on the other apps with time (not to mention, your internet connection is likely to periodically increase in speed for various upgrades to your equipment or your ISPs) so those issues are likely not permanent.