7 ms·

Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar

68 points by panabee 10y ago

dazc 10y ago
Content has certainly improved of late but still not to the point where I'll subscribe month after month. Amazon seems to have the edge (Prime extras aside) since they fill a lot of the gaps with pay per view content that I don't mind actually paying for from time to time.
- cixin 10y ago
  Why not use iTunes for pay per view/purchasing content? Their library seems very comprehensive. I'm currently using Netflix and iTunes. I also have a prime account, but there's rarely anything I want to watch (the exception being Mr Robot).
  - dazc 10y ago
    I don't buy anything Apple but, out of interest, is their pay per view offering more economical than amazon's?
    - thasaleni 10y ago
      Google Play Movies is another alternative for pay per view
    - cixin 10y ago
      Not sure, but for me it's more that the selection is better, I don't think you can get Westworld (series) on amazon yet for example.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Not usually as cheap, but the breadth of the catalog is remarkable. I'll go with Amazon for price reasons if both have what I want, but it's not rare that Amazon doesn't and iTunes does. (And Netflix almost never does. At this point I'm keeping it for season 2 of The Expanse and basically nothing else.)
  - zeristor 10y ago
    I've bought a lot from iTunes, deals come around often enough. June and Decemeber. There are a fair number of films for 99p rental too. Although their prices for the my favourite long tale films are seemingly always "moderate". Network connectivity from the UK is occasionally an issue, Apple were planning to build a data centre in Ireland, but the locals were restive, I have a quality ISP. iTunes is also dependent on who it makes deals with. I watched "Y Tu Mama Tambien" Netflix just before it was removed, and I can't get it anywhere else to watch it again. BBC Store, and BFI have apps and a wider selection. The intention being you play it on your phone and ChromeCast or AirPlay it to your TV; I look for the BFI finnessing their app.
  - nailer 10y ago
    iTunes doesn't have a workable interface unless you have an Apple TV.
pawadu 10y ago
Original content is great but I fear in a few years Netflix can more or less dictate what we can see on TV. And maybe Im in the vocal minority, but I prefer Friends and Seinfeld to House of Cards or Orange and OItNB.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  There are tons of original comedies on Netflix also ;) I don't see how Netflix would dictate what you see on TV, they have more competition now than ever, and it's good. Were getting better content and more of it.
  - nailer 10y ago
    Yep - the "reach the comedic stratosphere and you'll get an HBO special" is being replaced with Netflix or Amazon specials for every comedian who can make a profitable special. As a comedy fan it's great.
- danielbln 10y ago
  You're comparing 90's sitcoms to modern hour-long dramas? The death of the 20 minute laugh-track sitcom is in no way Netflix' fault, is it?
  - pawadu 10y ago
    the article is about netflix removing bought content and replacing it with their own stuff edit: old -> bought
    - gcp 10y ago
      The opposite of "original content" isn't "old content". It's non-Netflix content.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      A minor correction but some "Netflix originals" are bought content, some of which are produced by the BBC.
gcp 10y ago
Netflix is great when you have kids. Uninterrupted cartoons with no commercials where you can pick suitable shows for any age group, properly translated, always available. Their original series there don't seem to score too highly yet (kids hate all of them aside from Lego Friends), but there's enough on offer. I did drop down to the cheapest, lowest end subscription though. I stream via a Wii (kids don't mind the quality) and because of the DRM restrictions in browsers, I also only get to see the low quality streams anyway. I'm hoping the stronger position of their Netflix Originals can eventually tone down the DRM crazy-ness.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Considering Netflix is tying DRM to CPU and only Kabby Lake PC's and later will get Netflix 4K support outside of approved devices it's doubtful. Also bare in mind that almost none of the so called "Originals" are actually produced by Netflix. What Netflix calls originals is pretty much "you can't see it almost anywhere but on netflix", and this isn't even universal, this usually means that Netflix has secured the primary broadcasting rights in a one or more regions. This is why in the UK shows like Better Call Saul, Sole Survivor, The Expanse and many others are marked as Original even tho they are broadcasted on TV in the US and in many other regions.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Unrelated to Netflix, but if you've watched The Expanse and liked it, I can really recommend the original novel series; the show covers roughly the first half of the first book, Leviathan Wakes, and the sixth book arrived late last year, with at least one more still to come. They're an absolutely brilliant combination of space opera and hard sf, and while I gather one of the authors counts George R. R. Martin as a mentor, they are unlike him in being able to keep up a timely release schedule. Along with Stross's "Library Files" series, they're easily some of the best new sf I've seen in the last couple of decades, and I can't recommend them strongly enough to fans of the genre and especially of the show.
    - samlittlewood 10y ago
arethuza 10y ago
We just cancelled our Sky subscription because we'd eventually realised that none of us was watching "live" TV. I binge watched "The Crown" during a recent bout of flu and was deeply impressed.
- petepete 10y ago
  If I could do without sports and HBO stuff (Westworld, Game of Thrones), I too would cancel Sky.
  - mcintyre1994 10y ago
    Have you considered Now TV? You get sky channels in bundles, live + catch up, online or with a (very cheap) modified Roku box. The entertainment (http://www.nowtv.com/entertainment http://www.nowtv.com/entertainment) package includes Sky Atlantic for £6.99/mo, and sports (http://www.nowtv.com/sports http://www.nowtv.com/sports) you can choose £6.99/day, £10.99/wk or £33.99/mo.
    - dancryer 10y ago
      We did this - Cancelled Sky in favour of Netflix + Now TV's Entertainment bundle. Not looked back, despite the many, many calls from Sky.
      - arethuza 10y ago
        Sky's main mechanism for customer retention appears to be call center staff basically pleading to have you stay - a few years back when the bought the ISP I was using the quality of service collapsed and I cancelled the account and they kept dropping the price and wouldn't go away until I said I didn't want their service at any price (even free).
  - thirdsun 10y ago
    At least with sports, football in particular, there's something interesting happening here in europe: DAZN is a legal streaming service that allows you to watch Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and a bunch of other sports live and on demand for 10 €. All officially licensed. Of course I still need my Sky subscription for Bundesliga and Champions League but Sky is slowly running out of arguments.
Sander_Marechal 10y ago
I wish governments would start with compulsory licenses for streaming broadcasts, just like they do for radio. Original content is fine, but in a few years you are going to need subscriptions to a half-dozen streaming services just to view the things you want.
- nicky0 10y ago
  Licenses for radio only work because governments have control over the means of distribution (spectrum allocation). The internet does not (or at least, should not) work like that.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    They already have "control" of copyright enforcement over the internet, they can at least use this power for good to give us nondiscriminatory license agreements.
bgarbiak 10y ago
I'm currently subscribed to Netflix, HBO GO and Canal+ (French/European premium TV channel), and HBO GO has the best catalog, by far. The problem with Netflix is that there are "Originals", and not much else. While the production quality of these shows is superb, the artistic values are nowhere near what the movies on HBO can offer. Which is a shame, because Netflix pretty much nailed the user experience part.
skrebbel 10y ago
It bothers me to no end that audio tracks and subtitles aren't available globally on Netflix. I live in the Netherlands but my kids are half Danish. It's difficult to keep them exposed to Danish when not in Denmark. Netflix has nearly all children's cartoons dubbed in both Dutch and Danish but we can't access the Danish audio tracks from the Netherlands. I had really hoped that a global service like Netflix would allow global access to languages. I understand that show/movie licensing is per country, but subtitles and audio tracks? why? :-( IMHO, this whole idea of "you live in $COUNTRY so you only get to communicate in $MAIN_LANGUAGE_OF_COUNTRY" doesn't belong on the internet. Taking an IP-based guess, sure, many websites do that too. But at least most websites allow you to pick a different language if you wish. Netflix, not so much.
- gcp 10y ago
  IMHO, this whole idea of "you live in $COUNTRY so you only get to communicate in $MAIN_LANGUAGE_OF_COUNTRY" doesn't belong on the internet. As a Belgian, I can assure you the majority of the internet does not even get that part right. I get websites in the wrong language all the time. PSA: The majority language in Belgium is not French.
  - skrebbel 10y ago
    Yeah, the weirdest thing is that HTTP Accept-Language has been around for decades and is usually configured correctly (to the OS system language). No idea why people use geolocation for language at all, on the web.
    - nkristoffersen 10y ago
      Localization is easy with javascript. Just look at navigator.language or navigator.languages[0]
      - aclsid 10y ago
        And I suggest following gettext's lead in this regard, so that on your code you would have something like: i18nstrings = {'My string':<?= _('My string') ?>, 'Second string':<?= _('Second string') ?>}; then you can just do stuff like elem.innerHTML = i18nstrings['My string']; Of course, you process the language header in the backend. I reviewed a couple of i18n libraries for javascript but ended up liking this approach more. It was simple and effective.
GotAnyMegadeth 10y ago
I listen to all of my music on Spotify. Even though both the Windows and Android apps are pretty terrible, they work well enough, the search works and it has 99% of everything out there. I pay £10 per month but would happily pay double if they put the price up. I've never been content with any video streaming service, I even have Amazon Prime for delivery reasons and that includes videos, but I don't use it. I just Google for something and stream it illegally. The few that I've tried just have such limited selections I find it frustrating. I also find the "you might like" suggestions almost always terrible. Also Amazon Prime Video's search is so abysmal it's always easier to steal than work out if you already can legally watch it. I'll happily pay £10+ per month when someone makes the Spotify of video, but unfortunately at the moment Google + illegal is better.
- thirdsun 10y ago
  > I'll happily pay £10+ per month when someone makes the Spotify of video, but unfortunately at the moment Google + illegal is better. The situation is worse than not being able to stream: You can't even _buy_ DRM-less movies. Very much in contrast to music. I buy lots of lossless, digital music that I truly own and can play anywhere I want. I'd love to do the same with movies, but it's just not possible. Buying a movie from a service that may or may not be around in a few years is not an option for me.
legulere 10y ago
> It has put some of its budget into non-English language shows, such as “3%”, a Portuguese sci-fi series. Intriguingly, Netflix noted that many English viewers opted to watch the dubbed version, providing an unexpected added audience. I watched 3%, but as the English dub is really horrible (I'm used to really great German dubs) I switched to Portuguese + subtitles after a few minutes.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
posterboy 10y ago
I was upset that only after registration I was informed there was no support for linux. That's wasting the free month. How can I get netflix to display on debian testing, out of principle without chrome? Supposedly it chrome works, but chromium didn't. Firefox is supposedly getting support, but not officially and so it didn't work for me. I was thinking to keep torrenting while paying, but actually the selection on the public trackers is rather limited to new releases or lonely slow seeders. Avoiding the hassle of finding sources and exposing buggy clients to the scene is the main advantage, but then the netflix selection is limited as well, which is good for competition, I suppose.
- loudmax 10y ago
  I consider myself a pretty hardcore free software enthusiast, and I'm okay with using the Google-branded browser to play Netflix. My feeling is that if you're playing copyrighted content, you're in the restricted intellectual property space anyway. Netflix "owns" the rights to play these videos, so they get to say what platforms they play on. It would be better if they played on a fully open source platform (hopefully they will soon), but it would also be better if copyright law wasn't completely insane. Frankly I'm just glad I can play Netflix on non-Android Linux at all, because that wasn't the case originally. For what it's worth, Netflix runs smoothly on Google Chrome on my Arch laptop. Amazon prime also plays, though the interface is clunkier. I use chromium as my default browser but I aliased nf='google-chrome-stable https://www.netflix.com' https://www.netflix.com'
  - posterboy 10y ago
    > My feeling is that if you're playing copyrighted content, you're in the restricted intellectual property space anyway. Of course, but it goes both ways, so the argument is indecisive at first glance. Now you can go down a slight slippery slope and weigh each side of the argument. But it's basically the only reason I am hesitant, so after all you may be right. Surely, not finding the hoped for selection biased my opinion. Yet before finding the player broken by drm I had more great shows added to my list than I currently could reasonably watch.

68 points by panabee 10y ago

dazc 10y ago

Content has certainly improved of late but still not to the point where I'll subscribe month after month. Amazon seems to have the edge (Prime extras aside) since they fill a lot of the gaps with pay per view content that I don't mind actually paying for from time to time.

cixin 10y ago
Why not use iTunes for pay per view/purchasing content? Their library seems very comprehensive. I'm currently using Netflix and iTunes. I also have a prime account, but there's rarely anything I want to watch (the exception being Mr Robot).
- dazc 10y ago
  I don't buy anything Apple but, out of interest, is their pay per view offering more economical than amazon's?
  - thasaleni 10y ago
    Google Play Movies is another alternative for pay per view
  - cixin 10y ago
    Not sure, but for me it's more that the selection is better, I don't think you can get Westworld (series) on amazon yet for example.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Not usually as cheap, but the breadth of the catalog is remarkable. I'll go with Amazon for price reasons if both have what I want, but it's not rare that Amazon doesn't and iTunes does. (And Netflix almost never does. At this point I'm keeping it for season 2 of The Expanse and basically nothing else.)
- zeristor 10y ago
  I've bought a lot from iTunes, deals come around often enough. June and Decemeber. There are a fair number of films for 99p rental too. Although their prices for the my favourite long tale films are seemingly always "moderate". Network connectivity from the UK is occasionally an issue, Apple were planning to build a data centre in Ireland, but the locals were restive, I have a quality ISP. iTunes is also dependent on who it makes deals with. I watched "Y Tu Mama Tambien" Netflix just before it was removed, and I can't get it anywhere else to watch it again. BBC Store, and BFI have apps and a wider selection. The intention being you play it on your phone and ChromeCast or AirPlay it to your TV; I look for the BFI finnessing their app.
- nailer 10y ago
  iTunes doesn't have a workable interface unless you have an Apple TV.

pawadu 10y ago

Original content is great but I fear in a few years Netflix can more or less dictate what we can see on TV. And maybe Im in the vocal minority, but I prefer Friends and Seinfeld to House of Cards or Orange and OItNB.

dogma1138 10y ago
There are tons of original comedies on Netflix also ;) I don't see how Netflix would dictate what you see on TV, they have more competition now than ever, and it's good. Were getting better content and more of it.
- nailer 10y ago
  Yep - the "reach the comedic stratosphere and you'll get an HBO special" is being replaced with Netflix or Amazon specials for every comedian who can make a profitable special. As a comedy fan it's great.
danielbln 10y ago
You're comparing 90's sitcoms to modern hour-long dramas? The death of the 20 minute laugh-track sitcom is in no way Netflix' fault, is it?
- pawadu 10y ago
  the article is about netflix removing bought content and replacing it with their own stuff edit: old -> bought
  - gcp 10y ago
    The opposite of "original content" isn't "old content". It's non-Netflix content.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    A minor correction but some "Netflix originals" are bought content, some of which are produced by the BBC.

gcp 10y ago

Netflix is great when you have kids. Uninterrupted cartoons with no commercials where you can pick suitable shows for any age group, properly translated, always available. Their original series there don't seem to score too highly yet (kids hate all of them aside from Lego Friends), but there's enough on offer. I did drop down to the cheapest, lowest end subscription though. I stream via a Wii (kids don't mind the quality) and because of the DRM restrictions in browsers, I also only get to see the low quality streams anyway. I'm hoping the stronger position of their Netflix Originals can eventually tone down the DRM crazy-ness.

dogma1138 10y ago
Considering Netflix is tying DRM to CPU and only Kabby Lake PC's and later will get Netflix 4K support outside of approved devices it's doubtful. Also bare in mind that almost none of the so called "Originals" are actually produced by Netflix. What Netflix calls originals is pretty much "you can't see it almost anywhere but on netflix", and this isn't even universal, this usually means that Netflix has secured the primary broadcasting rights in a one or more regions. This is why in the UK shows like Better Call Saul, Sole Survivor, The Expanse and many others are marked as Original even tho they are broadcasted on TV in the US and in many other regions.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Unrelated to Netflix, but if you've watched The Expanse and liked it, I can really recommend the original novel series; the show covers roughly the first half of the first book, Leviathan Wakes, and the sixth book arrived late last year, with at least one more still to come. They're an absolutely brilliant combination of space opera and hard sf, and while I gather one of the authors counts George R. R. Martin as a mentor, they are unlike him in being able to keep up a timely release schedule. Along with Stross's "Library Files" series, they're easily some of the best new sf I've seen in the last couple of decades, and I can't recommend them strongly enough to fans of the genre and especially of the show.
  - samlittlewood 10y ago

arethuza 10y ago

We just cancelled our Sky subscription because we'd eventually realised that none of us was watching "live" TV. I binge watched "The Crown" during a recent bout of flu and was deeply impressed.

petepete 10y ago
If I could do without sports and HBO stuff (Westworld, Game of Thrones), I too would cancel Sky.
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  Have you considered Now TV? You get sky channels in bundles, live + catch up, online or with a (very cheap) modified Roku box. The entertainment (http://www.nowtv.com/entertainment http://www.nowtv.com/entertainment) package includes Sky Atlantic for £6.99/mo, and sports (http://www.nowtv.com/sports http://www.nowtv.com/sports) you can choose £6.99/day, £10.99/wk or £33.99/mo.
  - dancryer 10y ago
    We did this - Cancelled Sky in favour of Netflix + Now TV's Entertainment bundle. Not looked back, despite the many, many calls from Sky.
    - arethuza 10y ago
      Sky's main mechanism for customer retention appears to be call center staff basically pleading to have you stay - a few years back when the bought the ISP I was using the quality of service collapsed and I cancelled the account and they kept dropping the price and wouldn't go away until I said I didn't want their service at any price (even free).
- thirdsun 10y ago
  At least with sports, football in particular, there's something interesting happening here in europe: DAZN is a legal streaming service that allows you to watch Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and a bunch of other sports live and on demand for 10 €. All officially licensed. Of course I still need my Sky subscription for Bundesliga and Champions League but Sky is slowly running out of arguments.

Sander_Marechal 10y ago

I wish governments would start with compulsory licenses for streaming broadcasts, just like they do for radio. Original content is fine, but in a few years you are going to need subscriptions to a half-dozen streaming services just to view the things you want.

nicky0 10y ago
Licenses for radio only work because governments have control over the means of distribution (spectrum allocation). The internet does not (or at least, should not) work like that.
- pjc50 10y ago
  They already have "control" of copyright enforcement over the internet, they can at least use this power for good to give us nondiscriminatory license agreements.

bgarbiak 10y ago

I'm currently subscribed to Netflix, HBO GO and Canal+ (French/European premium TV channel), and HBO GO has the best catalog, by far. The problem with Netflix is that there are "Originals", and not much else. While the production quality of these shows is superb, the artistic values are nowhere near what the movies on HBO can offer. Which is a shame, because Netflix pretty much nailed the user experience part.

skrebbel 10y ago

It bothers me to no end that audio tracks and subtitles aren't available globally on Netflix. I live in the Netherlands but my kids are half Danish. It's difficult to keep them exposed to Danish when not in Denmark. Netflix has nearly all children's cartoons dubbed in both Dutch and Danish but we can't access the Danish audio tracks from the Netherlands. I had really hoped that a global service like Netflix would allow global access to languages. I understand that show/movie licensing is per country, but subtitles and audio tracks? why? :-( IMHO, this whole idea of "you live in $COUNTRY so you only get to communicate in $MAIN_LANGUAGE_OF_COUNTRY" doesn't belong on the internet. Taking an IP-based guess, sure, many websites do that too. But at least most websites allow you to pick a different language if you wish. Netflix, not so much.

gcp 10y ago
IMHO, this whole idea of "you live in $COUNTRY so you only get to communicate in $MAIN_LANGUAGE_OF_COUNTRY" doesn't belong on the internet. As a Belgian, I can assure you the majority of the internet does not even get that part right. I get websites in the wrong language all the time. PSA: The majority language in Belgium is not French.
- skrebbel 10y ago
  Yeah, the weirdest thing is that HTTP Accept-Language has been around for decades and is usually configured correctly (to the OS system language). No idea why people use geolocation for language at all, on the web.
  - nkristoffersen 10y ago
    Localization is easy with javascript. Just look at navigator.language or navigator.languages[0]
    - aclsid 10y ago
      And I suggest following gettext's lead in this regard, so that on your code you would have something like: i18nstrings = {'My string':<?= _('My string') ?>, 'Second string':<?= _('Second string') ?>}; then you can just do stuff like elem.innerHTML = i18nstrings['My string']; Of course, you process the language header in the backend. I reviewed a couple of i18n libraries for javascript but ended up liking this approach more. It was simple and effective.

GotAnyMegadeth 10y ago

I listen to all of my music on Spotify. Even though both the Windows and Android apps are pretty terrible, they work well enough, the search works and it has 99% of everything out there. I pay £10 per month but would happily pay double if they put the price up. I've never been content with any video streaming service, I even have Amazon Prime for delivery reasons and that includes videos, but I don't use it. I just Google for something and stream it illegally. The few that I've tried just have such limited selections I find it frustrating. I also find the "you might like" suggestions almost always terrible. Also Amazon Prime Video's search is so abysmal it's always easier to steal than work out if you already can legally watch it. I'll happily pay £10+ per month when someone makes the Spotify of video, but unfortunately at the moment Google + illegal is better.

thirdsun 10y ago
> I'll happily pay £10+ per month when someone makes the Spotify of video, but unfortunately at the moment Google + illegal is better. The situation is worse than not being able to stream: You can't even _buy_ DRM-less movies. Very much in contrast to music. I buy lots of lossless, digital music that I truly own and can play anywhere I want. I'd love to do the same with movies, but it's just not possible. Buying a movie from a service that may or may not be around in a few years is not an option for me.

legulere 10y ago

> It has put some of its budget into non-English language shows, such as “3%”, a Portuguese sci-fi series. Intriguingly, Netflix noted that many English viewers opted to watch the dubbed version, providing an unexpected added audience. I watched 3%, but as the English dub is really horrible (I'm used to really great German dubs) I switched to Portuguese + subtitles after a few minutes.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

posterboy 10y ago

I was upset that only after registration I was informed there was no support for linux. That's wasting the free month. How can I get netflix to display on debian testing, out of principle without chrome? Supposedly it chrome works, but chromium didn't. Firefox is supposedly getting support, but not officially and so it didn't work for me. I was thinking to keep torrenting while paying, but actually the selection on the public trackers is rather limited to new releases or lonely slow seeders. Avoiding the hassle of finding sources and exposing buggy clients to the scene is the main advantage, but then the netflix selection is limited as well, which is good for competition, I suppose.

loudmax 10y ago
I consider myself a pretty hardcore free software enthusiast, and I'm okay with using the Google-branded browser to play Netflix. My feeling is that if you're playing copyrighted content, you're in the restricted intellectual property space anyway. Netflix "owns" the rights to play these videos, so they get to say what platforms they play on. It would be better if they played on a fully open source platform (hopefully they will soon), but it would also be better if copyright law wasn't completely insane. Frankly I'm just glad I can play Netflix on non-Android Linux at all, because that wasn't the case originally. For what it's worth, Netflix runs smoothly on Google Chrome on my Arch laptop. Amazon prime also plays, though the interface is clunkier. I use chromium as my default browser but I aliased nf='google-chrome-stable https://www.netflix.com' https://www.netflix.com'
- posterboy 10y ago
  > My feeling is that if you're playing copyrighted content, you're in the restricted intellectual property space anyway. Of course, but it goes both ways, so the argument is indecisive at first glance. Now you can go down a slight slippery slope and weigh each side of the argument. But it's basically the only reason I am hesitant, so after all you may be right. Surely, not finding the hoped for selection biased my opinion. Yet before finding the player broken by drm I had more great shows added to my list than I currently could reasonably watch.