9 ms·

> Because we can predict with high accuracy what our members will watch and what time of day they will watch it Not only can they predict it, but I imagine to

by e28eta 10y ago

> Because we can predict with high accuracy what our members will watch and what time of day they will watch it Not only can they predict it, but I imagine to a large extent they control what people watch. Our usage often involves browsing the recommendations on the home page and picking something. I wonder when (or if) the availability of content in a cache close to the viewer will play a role in the home page content? Obviously it already works in the other direction (cache what we think they'll want to watch), but do they penalize the ranking of a title (or category) because it hasn't been cached? It'd be a useful feature for Netflix because they could cut down their bandwidth costs. It could even be useful for some users: those who could watch a movie at full quality from a cache but their ISP can't deliver a full quality non-cached title.

netflixuser 10y ago
> Not only can they predict it, but I imagine to a large extent they control what people watch. Oh man, new sinister revenue stream for Netflix incoming. Next Google is going to realize that they can control which billboards or storefronts you drive by based on your Maps directions.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  They kind of already steer people around with maps. Looking for lunch places near my office is terrible. It's mostly larger places. Good luck if your a mom&pop shop. I've also noticed that Youtube keeps trying to steer me towards videos I don't want to watch, and I don't really have a good way of telling it to stop.
dlandis 10y ago
> Not only can they predict it, but I imagine to a large extent they control what people watch. This is similar to what happened with Google Play Music. They used to have a really nice feature that enabled you to browse through all genres and continue to drill down several levels into very specific sub genres. It was a great way to discover new music. The problem was people were streaming way too much music that was not optimally cached and it was causing scalability issues for them. The solution? Remove the subgenre browse feature and transition to a radio station-based approach. You now have the choice of a limited set of predefined radio stations, each with a limited number of tracks, which I assume are all cached in an optimized way, but you cannot drill down nearly as far into the sub genres. If you browse the google forums there have been thousands of comments about the reduced functionality over the past year or so.
- Pxtl 10y ago
  To be fair, they paid good money for Songza's radio stations system. But yes, the browsability is awful. I don't mind the radio stations approach, but I can't even find good listings of what radio stations they provide... and when I do find a radio station I like, I find it has a rotation of like 12 songs.
  - Something1234 10y ago
    This seems to be true of like at least 90% of music streaming services, just with varying numbers of songs per station. Like with slacker it was 50 songs, and then a small number of extras put in. Or amazon music playing the same song 2 or 3 times during the same listening session.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  Just to echo Pxtl, but much more explicitly, I don't think this had anything to do with caches or scalability, it was because they bought Songza. If you've any evidence, please do share and I'm happy to put my hands up and admit I'm wrong, but the announcement was that the change was supposed to be because they now had these amazing hand curated playlists.
  - gohrt 10y ago
    Why not both? Maybe Sognza's playlists were a caching solution.
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      Occam's razor. dlandis is suggesting a pretty over-complicated, anti-consumer reason as to why google started pushing curated lists. Or you can buy into the incredibly simple "because google bought Sognza to compete with spotify's curated lists".
  - dlandis 10y ago
    > Google looks forward to bringing back those genres/subgenres, and even microgenres, once they've had a chance to improve them and make them more scalable around the world. That is a comment from a top contributor in the product forum. Thread is here https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/play/i9meVyGV2so https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/play/i9meVy...
Pxtl 10y ago
So Netflix's utterly dire searching or access to their tags is actually a feature, not a bug?
- jandrese 10y ago
  I suspect their terrible interface is partially to hide how shallow the streaming catalog is.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    No question about that whatsoever, IMO.
cag_ii 10y ago
> Our usage often involves browsing the recommendations on the home page and picking something. FWIW, my usage is quite different. I do browse the popular/recommended/etc., but only to add things to my list. When I want to watch something I usually select it from "my list".
- e28eta 10y ago
  I think that's a good point, and a weakness in my comment. I know everyone's watching habits differ, but I said "to a large extent they control what people watch" and then offered an anecdote to support it. I doubt anyone outside Netflix knows what percentage browse the homepage, pick from their queue, or search for the video they end up watching. I do think it's safe to assume browsing is a popular choice, but it's not clear it's the dominant one. I'm basing this off the real-estate devoted to browsing on the home page. I think the UI would look different otherwise. I also don't think "control" is the right word to have used, probably "strongly influence".
jsprogrammer 10y ago
Caching is just an optimization, not a feature. If the content hasn't been cached yet, then there is a good chance that a caching is piggybacking on your transfer.
- e28eta 10y ago
  I was using "caching" to talk about the Open Connect Appliances and Netflix's proprietary CDN. It's probably the wrong word to use, given the differences in how the system works. It doesn't sound like a customer watching a video stream causes that video to be copied to an OCA. The "Proactive Caching" section says they "want to make all of the OCA capacity available for content serving" and are trying to avoid read/write contention during peak hours. It sounds like the system's working pretty well, the previous blog post says: "Globally, close to 90% of our traffic is delivered via direct connections between Open Connect and the residential Internet Service Providers (ISPs) our members use to access the internet."
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    Yeah, in my reading it doesn't seem like they cache on request. I don't think they said that they only cache some content though. They likely cache everything, but do so before making that content available to viewers.
mbell 10y ago
At least for me, their predictions are terrible. I watched a couple historical documentary series on WWII and for the next couple months my recommendations were filled with Nazi conspiracy theory junk.
- antimatter 10y ago
  This exact same thing happened to me after watching a WWII documentary. I'm actually really into the WWII genre but their recommendations are terrible in quality particularly the ones from Smithsonian.
ci5er 10y ago
I semi-recently worked on a P2P video distribution system (not like BitTorrent, that's not really suited to sequential content) - not that different from Spotify's old system. One of the things we ended up doing to support new release binge-watching was to have a predictive consumption led pre-fetched content cache for network neighborhoods. It wasn't a change-the-world difference, but interestingly, a lot of people do watch the same video content over a period of not that many days.
foota 10y ago
I don't think Netflix generally pays for bw because of peering agreements?
bertrandmt 10y ago
As is often the case, reality is less sinister than fantasy: no, I can confidently assert that Netflix does not influence your catalog based on the state of the content cache. The system is entirely built the other way around: the cache will fill to meet expected demand, full stop.

by e28eta 10y ago

netflixuser 10y ago

> Not only can they predict it, but I imagine to a large extent they control what people watch. Oh man, new sinister revenue stream for Netflix incoming. Next Google is going to realize that they can control which billboards or storefronts you drive by based on your Maps directions.

CaptSpify 10y ago
They kind of already steer people around with maps. Looking for lunch places near my office is terrible. It's mostly larger places. Good luck if your a mom&pop shop. I've also noticed that Youtube keeps trying to steer me towards videos I don't want to watch, and I don't really have a good way of telling it to stop.

dlandis 10y ago

> Not only can they predict it, but I imagine to a large extent they control what people watch. This is similar to what happened with Google Play Music. They used to have a really nice feature that enabled you to browse through all genres and continue to drill down several levels into very specific sub genres. It was a great way to discover new music. The problem was people were streaming way too much music that was not optimally cached and it was causing scalability issues for them. The solution? Remove the subgenre browse feature and transition to a radio station-based approach. You now have the choice of a limited set of predefined radio stations, each with a limited number of tracks, which I assume are all cached in an optimized way, but you cannot drill down nearly as far into the sub genres. If you browse the google forums there have been thousands of comments about the reduced functionality over the past year or so.

Pxtl 10y ago
To be fair, they paid good money for Songza's radio stations system. But yes, the browsability is awful. I don't mind the radio stations approach, but I can't even find good listings of what radio stations they provide... and when I do find a radio station I like, I find it has a rotation of like 12 songs.
- Something1234 10y ago
  This seems to be true of like at least 90% of music streaming services, just with varying numbers of songs per station. Like with slacker it was 50 songs, and then a small number of extras put in. Or amazon music playing the same song 2 or 3 times during the same listening session.
mattmanser 10y ago
Just to echo Pxtl, but much more explicitly, I don't think this had anything to do with caches or scalability, it was because they bought Songza. If you've any evidence, please do share and I'm happy to put my hands up and admit I'm wrong, but the announcement was that the change was supposed to be because they now had these amazing hand curated playlists.
- gohrt 10y ago
  Why not both? Maybe Sognza's playlists were a caching solution.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    Occam's razor. dlandis is suggesting a pretty over-complicated, anti-consumer reason as to why google started pushing curated lists. Or you can buy into the incredibly simple "because google bought Sognza to compete with spotify's curated lists".
- dlandis 10y ago
  > Google looks forward to bringing back those genres/subgenres, and even microgenres, once they've had a chance to improve them and make them more scalable around the world. That is a comment from a top contributor in the product forum. Thread is here https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/play/i9meVyGV2so https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/play/i9meVy...

Pxtl 10y ago

So Netflix's utterly dire searching or access to their tags is actually a feature, not a bug?

jandrese 10y ago
I suspect their terrible interface is partially to hide how shallow the streaming catalog is.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  No question about that whatsoever, IMO.

cag_ii 10y ago

> Our usage often involves browsing the recommendations on the home page and picking something. FWIW, my usage is quite different. I do browse the popular/recommended/etc., but only to add things to my list. When I want to watch something I usually select it from "my list".

e28eta 10y ago
I think that's a good point, and a weakness in my comment. I know everyone's watching habits differ, but I said "to a large extent they control what people watch" and then offered an anecdote to support it. I doubt anyone outside Netflix knows what percentage browse the homepage, pick from their queue, or search for the video they end up watching. I do think it's safe to assume browsing is a popular choice, but it's not clear it's the dominant one. I'm basing this off the real-estate devoted to browsing on the home page. I think the UI would look different otherwise. I also don't think "control" is the right word to have used, probably "strongly influence".

jsprogrammer 10y ago

Caching is just an optimization, not a feature. If the content hasn't been cached yet, then there is a good chance that a caching is piggybacking on your transfer.

e28eta 10y ago
I was using "caching" to talk about the Open Connect Appliances and Netflix's proprietary CDN. It's probably the wrong word to use, given the differences in how the system works. It doesn't sound like a customer watching a video stream causes that video to be copied to an OCA. The "Proactive Caching" section says they "want to make all of the OCA capacity available for content serving" and are trying to avoid read/write contention during peak hours. It sounds like the system's working pretty well, the previous blog post says: "Globally, close to 90% of our traffic is delivered via direct connections between Open Connect and the residential Internet Service Providers (ISPs) our members use to access the internet."
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Yeah, in my reading it doesn't seem like they cache on request. I don't think they said that they only cache some content though. They likely cache everything, but do so before making that content available to viewers.

mbell 10y ago

At least for me, their predictions are terrible. I watched a couple historical documentary series on WWII and for the next couple months my recommendations were filled with Nazi conspiracy theory junk.

antimatter 10y ago
This exact same thing happened to me after watching a WWII documentary. I'm actually really into the WWII genre but their recommendations are terrible in quality particularly the ones from Smithsonian.

ci5er 10y ago

I semi-recently worked on a P2P video distribution system (not like BitTorrent, that's not really suited to sequential content) - not that different from Spotify's old system. One of the things we ended up doing to support new release binge-watching was to have a predictive consumption led pre-fetched content cache for network neighborhoods. It wasn't a change-the-world difference, but interestingly, a lot of people do watch the same video content over a period of not that many days.

foota 10y ago

I don't think Netflix generally pays for bw because of peering agreements?

bertrandmt 10y ago

As is often the case, reality is less sinister than fantasy: no, I can confidently assert that Netflix does not influence your catalog based on the state of the content cache. The system is entirely built the other way around: the cache will fill to meet expected demand, full stop.