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A. The impending death of net neutrality in the US could (though I don't know the odds on this) throw a huge wrench into these works. Does it look likely in the
by bo1024 10y ago
A. The impending death of net neutrality in the US could (though I don't know the odds on this) throw a huge wrench into these works. Does it look likely in the next couple years that ISPs will be allowed to throttle Netflix in favor of their own services?
B. I hate that "the streaming race" is the only race in town. When will we have price-viable options to purchase, download, and own a movie? (Own: have control over, e.g. can store, back up, watch on any platform, etc.). The only options I know of are DRM-controlled like iTunes and even those cost orders of magnitude more than streaming by reasonable measures.*
*Netflix users pay about $10/month and watch on average about 45 hours/month of video (about $0.20/hour), while downloads cost about $20 per movie. If the downloaded two-hour video is watched five times on average, to pick a number out of a hat, that's still a cost of about $2/hour of watching.
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoI really don't want to own content anymore, it's just not worth the hassle, streaming is fine by me. I doubt I have ever watched the same film or TV series five times.
- bo1024 10y agoI guess I'm different because I'm often on a plane or train, in an airport, at a hotel, or living in a place where I'd like to watch a video but can't stream it (or not at a decent quality) due to internet availability at the time or locality restrictions. I also prefer FOSS operating systems where playing DRM'd content can be challenging or impossible. Other reasons: data caps, privacy concerns (like when Netflix leaked the watching habits of a large portion of their viewers as part of their "challenge"), security (maybe I want to watch on a device not attached to the internet), etc. I agree that 5 times seems high -- that just adds to the point that downloadable content and DVDs are overpriced relative to streaming.
- mcv 10y agoWatch the same thing five times on average? What for? There's way too much other cool stuff to watch. I admit our Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs have probably been played more than 50 times by now, so buying popular kids stuff makes sense (and these cost a lot less than $20), but for me, I generally prefer to watch something new rather than the same thing a second time. The impending death of net neutrality is only a US thing. Netflix is more international than that. I doubt it's going to impact me much.
- bo1024 10y agoMy point was that downloads are 10x overpriced even if you plan to watch them 5 times. If you watch it less, then they're just more overpriced. The numbers I found (Netflix earnings report from Q3 and Q4 of 2016) seemed to indicate, if I'm reading it right, that they actually lose money internationally and are only profitable in the US. So I think they're in a very fragile position with regards to US policy changes.