13 ms·

Netflix Long Term View

313 points by _pius 12y ago

guiomie 12y ago
"we should strive to have the best in each category" ... this is certainly not happening in Canada.
- jaddison 12y ago
  Agreed, but this is true in any of their countries. Content licensing really gets in their way.
- lordbusiness 12y ago
  Completely agree with this. Fortunately there are ways around this for savvy people. But yes. Canadian Netflix is poor, and the price should reflect the diminished offering.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  For a few bucks you can get a proxy or VPN in other countries. Pretty essential when traveling since Netflix cannot even keep their UI in a single language when I go on trips.
solutionyogi 12y ago
Winning moments of truth We strive to win more of our members’ “moments of truth”. Those decision points are, say, at 7:15 pm when a member wants to relax, enjoy a shared experience with friends and family, or is bored. They could play a video game, surf the web, read a magazine, channel surf their MVPD/DVR system, buy a pay-per-view movie, put on a DVD, use a piracy service, turn on Hulu, or launch Netflix. We want our members to choose Netflix in these moments of truth. --------------------------------------------------- This nails it. When I get home (especially if I had a long day at work), I first go to Netflix and see what's on my list. This is because Netflix app is beautiful, it always works and they have my list of things to watch. As someone who loves to watch documentaries, I am happy with the selection that Netflix offers. If I don't like anything on the list, I just watch an old Friends or Breaking Bad episode. I think Netflix has absolutely nailed the user experience and depending on your taste/location, their selection is great as well.
- mhurron 12y ago
  > their selection is great as well Hulu gets more of my bitching when related to selection, but Netflix gets it's share. Partial seasons, only a few seasons of shows that have long since ended, so many movies not offered. But basically when it comes down to I want to watch something, we have both a Hulu subscription and Netflix for a reason and I still have to torrent things. Also, their app sucks for finding things.
  - DennisP 12y ago
    I had Hulu, but a paid service showing the same unskippable commercials over and over again was just too much.
    - mhurron 12y ago
      Well until the most recent update, I didn't see ads on Hulu. I haven't looked into making that happen again yet.
    - giggles_giggles 12y ago
      Hulu's commercials are the absolute worst. I'm not paying a monthly fee so I can watch that stupid Jack in the Box add about the bacon cheeseburger a thousand times. Even if there were more different ads it wouldn't be so bad, but the repeating commercials are absolutely what keep me from ever signing up for Hulu+ (again)
    - mark_l_watson 12y ago
      I hear you re: the commercials. It cost the networks less to show content on Hulu so the commercial time should be less. Also, as you say, they should not show the same commercials over and over again. I recently re-subscribed to Hulu+, and I will probably stick with them for a few more months, but really, they could make the service better and still generate good profits for the networks who collectively own Hulu+.
- anatari 12y ago
  Although I use Netflix all the time, it's in spite of their app. Outside of the "my list" I've curated myself, 98% of the things the Netflix app shows me, I'm not really interested in. I feel like that ratio could easily be made better if they allowed me to mark things I'm not interested in and never show me those things again + apply machine learning to display a better personalized catalog. Whenever I use Netflix I always feel like there is a lot of content locked away and I have to dig past the same stuff it always shows to find stuff I'm interested in.
spike021 12y ago
I personally don't really like the setup Netflix uses as much UI-wise. It seems as though nowadays services need to be all about personalization, where ratings, reviews, and content watched all factor into the new content that is shown to me, the user. I might only like one movie or tv show of a particular genre, give it 4 or 5 stars, and then there's a pretty good chance I'll keep being shown similar ones that I know I'll never be interested in watching. For myself, I think it would work really well if they had the more standard list of available shows, movies, etc in alphabetical order, or some other more sortable format, perhaps by release/airing year, or similar.
- kissickas 12y ago
  They wouldn't have to put so much work into fixing their UI if they had just left their API open. Now that it's gone Netflix has become much less navigable and while the words in this post sound nice to my ears, when I'm sitting on the couch I mostly just get pissed off at the experience.
- blackkettle 12y ago
  it's absolutely ridiculous that they don't provide this sort of basic functionality.
  - bnejad 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure its intentional to hide the gaps in their collection and to show you new stuff they did manage to license.
- jaredsohn 12y ago
  They have a lot of this, at least if you are accessing the service via the web. Just click on Browse and choose a genre and you'll be able to sort by rating, year of release, maturity rating, or alphabetical order. You can also access these genres by clicking on the section titles in the recommendations. Otherwise, your best bet is to use one of the many external sites such as allflicks.net.
  - 12y ago
donpdonp 12y ago
This is a great write-up and a wonderful precedent for netflix to set. That being said, I feel the post is mostly promises, as Netflix is in the middle of another year-long 'content desert'. I cant remember the last time I got excited about The Matrix or Iron Man coming back into the queue. My process is to check http://instantwatcher.com/ http://instantwatcher.com/ and then go to netflix. The thing is I've been disappointed by whats at the top of the charts for so long, I've considered dropping netflix. The top 50 is uninteresting sounding documentaries, low budget horror, and everything else that rounds out the discount DVD bin at the grocery store. Netflix excells at one thing - Television. I get that its likely not Netflix's fault. The cut for movie studios each month from an $8 subscription cant be very much. I feel Amazon's pay-to-play model is more realistic, though less consumer friendly. I remember the deal announced last year of netflix getting first run Disney flicks (starting in 2015 I think?) and thats exiting, but the daily reality of netflix besides TV is the entertainment equivalent of hot, soupy gruel.
- GrinningFool 12y ago
  I don't see Amazon's model as less consumer-friendly - particularly as I remember well the days of having to go to the local video rental place, making sure to return it on time, paying late fees, etc. I'm happy to pay $3-5 for a few days in which to watch a movie, and then not think about it when I'm done. The price is right, and the convenience can't be beaten.
  - chc 12y ago
    You could buy a lot of movies outright for only a bit more than Amazon charges, so the price seems a bit steep to me. Obviously not back-breaking, but the price feels wrong.
    - jacobr1 12y ago
      I've never understood buying a movie, though. Once I've seen it, I'm done. No need to ever see it again. One of the best things about Amazon's service is the hybrid model. Prime for tons of content and when that fails you can rent a la carte. While everyone is fighting the content purchasing wars this seems to give the consumer the most content albeit with inconsistent total pricing.
princetontiger 12y ago
I interviewed here, and it was by far among some of the best group of people I've ever met. I think some of the HR people are a bit rough, but the teams that contribute to the bottom line are top notch.
danso 12y ago
OK, a little OT and minuscule, but kind of gels with in with Netflix's overall future...has anyone else noticed that Netflix's predicted ratings seem to be a bit inflated, since perhaps last year? For previous years, I could count the number with one hand of movies/TV-shows that Netflix rated more than a 4-star for me...now there are dozens and dozens of things that Netflix thinks I would give a perfect rating to. Maybe it's because I've become less discerning or have unconsciously changed in the way I rate things...but I don't think so...it used to be that anything predicted to be 4-stars or above --which was very rare -- was indeed something that I would love. Now I'm seeing many preemptive 4.8 to 5-star ratings for things that I know I don't like (because I've seen them before). (I think we can agree that the effect of seeing more high-rated content is not the result of Netflix actually getting more quality content...the number of good movies has remained constant or gone down, especially since the Starz day) The cynical user in me thinks Netflix has tweaked its algorithm to encourage me to watch more things. However, at least they don't seem to have tweaked it in favor of their exclusive content, as none of those (such as Marco Polo) are predicted to rate highly with me.
- codewell 12y ago
  dvd.netflix.com seems to still use the old reliable ratings predictor. Downloading (netflix.com) uses a much inflated predictor that seems designed to push popular stuff. I imagine they have to do this to obscure that the selection is so much poorer for download.
Shivetya 12y ago
I am amazed at the dollar amounts the give. I never expected it to so much to market such a service. The technology side I could see, expanding their reach and such.
- ctdonath 12y ago
  $800M just ain't what it used to be. And persuading potential customers who are not naturally inclined toward your service is much harder & more costly than attracting those seeking what you provide.
- joshuapants 12y ago
  Shooting a commercial can cost a million bucks. If you want prime advertising slots, it might cost from a few hundred grand up to a million for a 30 second spot. Print and online advertising is cheaper, of course, but I don't think their advertising budget is unreasonable considering how large a company they are and how difficult it may be to get new subscribers.
sandworm 12y ago
My family uses netflix. I don't. Every time I want to watch something I cannot find it. 10,000 titles is nothing in a world where The Simpsons has several hundred. Netflix needs more and deeper content. I won't admit to ever downloading something without full written permission of the copyright holder, carved in stone and witnessed by three saints, but last night I did watch "Black Books" after not finding it on Netflix or any other service. (If you are a fan of 'Father Ted' or 'The IT Crowd', Black Books was done by the same people and contains many of the same jokes.)
- smeyer 12y ago
  It looks like Amazon's video service has Black Books. Do they only have some of the episodes? Did you just not find them or not want to pay for them?
  - sandworm 12y ago
    When I looked I couldn't find it on Amazon. It might be a licensing issue as I'm in Canada. (A VERY common issue north of the boarder.) Using a VPN to bypass such a restriction is just as much a copyright violation as downloading from thepiratebay.
    - mxfh 12y ago
      It's a contract-, TOS-, trade- or tax-code-violation but not "as much a copyright violation" as plain old piracy.
      - sandworm 12y ago
        That's up for debate. Some rights groups (the mpaa etc) see a vpn as "bypassing technical protections". Once upon a time some claimed it a CFAA violation in that you were accessing a computer system under false pretences, ie you were fibbing about your location. BS imho and CFAA law has moved on from such interpretations, but some still call for netflix to block VPNs. Either way you are creating an unlicensed copy, or at least a performance, of the work. It would be the local license holders right to go after you, or Netflix, for violating "their" copyrights.
Malic 12y ago
"long-term-view.cfm"!? Cold Fusion? That's still a thing?!
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  I was surprised to see it on a Netflix property, but ColdFusion very much is alive and well otherwise. I think even Linode uses it.
- tshtf 12y ago
  If you do a dig on ir.netflix.com, you'll see this is hosted at shareholder.com. It is not uncommon for publicly traded companies to host this stuff through third-party providers.
throwaway150219 12y ago
So, what is happening faster: 1) Deployment of AFFORDABLE highspeed broadband or 2) Decreasing local storage costs Why do I need to stream something if I can store 6TB of data locally for less than $150 (and decreasing daily). How much storage space will $200 buy you in 10 years? And how many decades of video and audio could one store on such a device?
- SG- 12y ago
  How much do you want to pay to purchase and store all that video? That's where Netflix's value comes in.
  - r00fus 12y ago
    > How much do you want to pay to purchase and store all that video? That's where Netflix's value comes in. It's not clear to me that mr. throwaway was planning on purchasing any of that content.
- tempestn 12y ago
  You still have to get that content from somewhere. Storage space isn't really the limitation there. Plus, even if you could, what would be the motivationto store eeverything locally, when 1) you rarely watch a show more than once, and 2) you can stream it instantaneously anyway?
  - DennisP 12y ago
    Maybe you have better internet than me, but my streaming quality isn't always HD, and if I fastforward/rewind I generally have to wait a while to rebuffer. Do an advance download of everything in my watchlist, and the next episodes of the series I'm watching, and everything will by high quality, no wait, all the time. Besides that, just because something's available on streaming doesn't mean it'll stay there forever.
- ctdonath 12y ago
  This was kicked around on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507566 TL;DR - rough-guess numbers say the entire Netflix library can fit on 24TB, and would cost (content + hardware pricing) around $2500 per copy.
mc32 12y ago
One of the things they bring up, which is that apps are replacing channels, annoys me. I'd rather do a global search and then present me with delivery media (channels/apps/whatever) instead of having to pick the app and then do individual searches. It's a pain point. Also, if they want to capture the hotel market, I mean people on the road staying in temp accommodation, they'll have to deliver blue content (or yellow as they say in Asia). People on the road want pornographic content, more so than at home. Their current most likely option is to get it at high markup via hotel operator delivery systems.
- raisedbyninjas 12y ago
  Roku has global search, but apps have to support it, which the big names do.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  This is one of the things Roku gets right compared to other set top boxes. You can search across services. Unlike on other boxes like Amazon's which lets you search Amazon and will always push their content above anyone else's. It's especially annoying if something is available on Netflix and is paid content on Amazon... it's still going to tell you to buy it on Amazon even when you already have access to it for no additional cost.
  - wmeredith 12y ago
    It's a platform seller, too. I've had an Apple TV, Fire TV, Fire Stick, Playstation 4, and a Roku box. This singular feature is the reason why we watch TV and movies on the Roku box more than anything else. It's like magic.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - zwentz 12y ago
    Interestingly, Roku was create by Netflix, at first it was Netflix TV, but they spun it off.
- 12y ago
ctdonath 12y ago
This is a huge shift for Netflix. Until recently, the motivating impression was that Netflix just plain had every movie out there (which its continuing DVD service kinda does). I subscribed because it was a cheap replacement for buying anything I wanted to see: they had everything I wanted and could want. My to-watch list was very long, and I thought it would remain. Now, studios and competitors are making that model untenable. Netflix can't carry _everything_ because studios/distributors want an ever-larger cut of the profits, and competitors are willing to pay for exclusivity. Suddenly, I find large sections of my to-watch list disappearing off Netflix as contracts expire and don't renew (the biggest blow was when "Toys" disappeared - something old & obscure enough that I thought surely they'd manage to keep that license). Netflix just pivoted. They're no longer the long-promised "long tail" of movies, hosting all but the latest & biggest (yeah, I'm willing to pay extra individually for those). They just gave up on that model. Now they're becoming a "channel" focused on hosting a curated collection, including their own productions. That's a big shift.
- ericflo 12y ago
  It happened a long time ago, at least I became aware of this shift when an exec from Netflix was quoted saying "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us" http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201302/netflix-founder-reed-hastings-house-of-cards-arrested-development http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201302/netflix...
  - joshuapants 12y ago
    And honestly, I think Netflix is most of the way there. HBO Go is a pain to use, the tablet app won't let me output to a TV or monitor, and it is frequently slow for me. I can't remember the last time I needed to wait for Netflix to buffer, and it seems to happen constantly for HBO. Netflix is solid on the technical side, and their original series (in my opinion) eclipse what HBO currently offers. HBO has one show that really interests me (Game of Thrones, of course) and Netflix has a handful (House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Bojack Horseman, hopefully with more new interesting series on the way). The only reason I'm even subscribed to HBO at this point is because Verizon gave me a few months for free, and I'll be ditching it once that expires.
rogerbinns 12y ago
Am I the only one who finds finding something on Netflix to watch increasingly difficult, and contradictory to what they say in that piece. My experience is mostly using Roku (a spinoff from Netflix) and Android. For example if I watch a WWII documentary, then they feel the need to recommend every one they have, for a long time. Oh and "watch" means "seen more than a second or two of", so you get all this crud even if you didn't like it. Perhaps the biggest sin is showing me stuff I have already watched, outside of the "watch again section". My home screen is mostly things I have seen, and I have to keep scrolling past to see if there is anything interesting deeper in the sections. It is especially annoying that there is no "do not show this again". My home screen is a collection of content I have already seen, or do not want to see. It makes Netflix look dumb and is very user hostile. Most amusing is that they don't provide a way of finding content that you want to watch now. For example you would like to watch something funny and light for the next half hour, or a date night movie. Sometimes those categories randomly show up on the screen, but usually not. I'd go on, but the overall vibe is a very dumb experience of recommendations that I don't want, no useful content exploration, and it feels like I watch stuff despite them, rather than because of them. Maybe I should cancel my account again.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  Huge Netflix fan, but you nailed one point: they should let us edit the "recently watched" and other lists. After I watch something, I would like to take it off of my 'recently watched' list instead of waiting a month for it to eventually disappear.
  - jaredsohn 12y ago
    As of this past fall, you can remove entries from Recently Watched, at least via the web. Just click on "Recently Watched" from the homepage and click X next to something you want to remove.
    - rogerbinns 12y ago
      You can also mark content as Not Interested on the web. But these kind of things aren't possible in their other interfaces, and having to make a mental note to later go to a browser to do things is annoying.
ebbv 12y ago
> As such, we are actively curating our service rather than carrying as many titles as we can. I hope this is true. Because the quality of content that has been added to Netflix over the past year has mostly been god awful. A lot of the movies that have been added are not even D-grade quality. They are straight to video dreck. On top of the bad movies there's been reams and reams of awful reality shows as well. When I first signed up for Netflix they had full libraries of HBO and Showtime shows. NBC shows. Movies that people actually went to see in theaters. I understand that having HBO and Showtime's libraries is going to be hard now that those companies are pursuing their own subscription services. But that doesn't mean Netflix needs to resort to the crap it's been adding lately. Honestly, if things don't improve in 2015 there's a good chance I'll cancel my Netflix subscription.
jader201 12y ago
Maybe it's just me. But one thing about linear (live) broadcasts -- and this also applies to an extent to live radio vs. mp3's -- is that there is just something engaging about watching a program that you know other people, at that moment, are also watching. It's also missed when watching a show that you DVR'ed, after the fact -- like the series finale to Lost, or the Super Bowl. If/when live broadcasts are completely a thing of the past, I think this sense of engagement will be lost forever, and people won't even realize what they're missing out on. In a way, it's sort of like watching someone play a video game live on Twitch vs. watching it on Youtube. Does anyone else know and also feel this sense I'm talking about?
- nbush 12y ago
  I think this might be something that Netflix is overlooking. The community-like aspect of watching something simultaneously with the rest of the word is extremely powerful. The Twitch generation could prove that live broadcasts or some kind of time-locked release schedule is much more likely to build momentum. Granted, Netflix's data is probably much more convincing than any vague feeling of community, but I wonder if the "indulgent viewing" they mention is the side-effect of our brains failing to cope with sudden overflow of stuff to consume.
  - mentos 12y ago
    I totally agree Netflix is overlooking this aspect of live programming. I would love to see a Netflix 'channel' that loops randomly through the top 100 shows/movies and plays the content live for everyone.
- lukifer 12y ago
  I experience this phenomenon on a less immediate time scale: in the days following a new episode of Breaking Bad, etc, there is discussion and camaraderie with other fans. With the "binge-only" model of House of Cards, that same social experience is not possible.
  - slig 12y ago
Igglyboo 12y ago
I wonder when they are going to close down their DVD division.
- Animats 12y ago
  Since the online catalog started shrinking, the DVD division is more useful. The DVD rental business has first-sale-doctrine rights; Netflix can rent those DVDs even if the studio doesn't like it. They don't have that right online, and have to cut a deal each title.
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    Yes but are people still using it? Personally I don't really care how big of a catalog they have, I'm not going to wait 2-3 days for a movie to arrive.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Use the DVD system to recommend, then torrent? That's isomorphic to having Netflix drop the DVD into a block device and letting you access it over a long cable, so you shouldn't have any ethical issues.
    - Thrymr 12y ago
      Yes. I like movies, and a service that only has a limited selection of crappy movies isn't that interesting to me. I don't really care if it takes a couple days to arrive. I can see the attraction of the streaming service if you are into the TV series that they have, but it's not even a competitor for movies. I would love to sign up for a full catalog streaming service, but it looks like that will never happen.
    - duderific 12y ago
      Well... you can get a few movies at a time, so you're not waiting once you get them all... you just return the one you're done watching and the next one arrives so you always have a "stash." If you're watching more than two or three movies every two days, maybe you should get out a bit more.
Touche 12y ago
Can someone tldr; this?
yazaddaruvala 12y ago
If someone from Netflix is reading: > We win those moments of truth when members expect Netflix to be more pleasurable than their other options Can you please make it easier for me to find my "Recently Watched" TV Shows? That would definitely make my experience "more pleasurable". Also, please stop showing me movies I've already rated. I've seen those. Just show those to me in the "watch again" list. Platform: Website
- ben010783 12y ago
  I've been confused about why the website seems so counterintuitive. I really hope someone at Netflix understands this problem and pushes for a fix.
- jaredsohn 12y ago
  Just click on "Recently Watched" at the top left of the homepage. It links to here: https://www.netflix.com/WiViewingActivity https://www.netflix.com/WiViewingActivity
  - yazaddaruvala 12y ago
    So for me that page is broken. It reads "My Activity" and then its just a grey page.
    - jaredsohn 12y ago
      Some ideas: * Check for Netflix extensions and disable them in case they are breaking the page. * Turn off "Test participation" in Your Account * Open the console and see if there are any error messages. * Contact Netflix Support (there is a link from Your Account and when I've tried it I have gotten a response right away.) Normally, for me the page looks very similar to https://www.netflix.com/MoviesYouveSeen https://www.netflix.com/MoviesYouveSeen (and is linked to from there.)
- dangrossman 12y ago
  This is a link, if you've never hovered over it: http://i.imgur.com/Bs4B4Ch.png http://i.imgur.com/Bs4B4Ch.png
ForHackernews 12y ago
> As we’ve gained experience, we’ve found that the 20th documentary about bicycling will mostly just take away viewing from the other 19 such docs, and instead of trying to have everything, we should strive to have the best in each category. As such, we are actively curating our service rather than carrying as many titles as we can. This sounds like a bad move to me. Maybe carrying a huge breadth of content is a good way to attract new users, but unless they have depth of content, they aren't going to hold onto those users. Most people aren't that eclectic in their tastes, so if you only have one film in each category (even if it's the "best" one) people are going to drop them after they've watched everything they like. Put another way, bicycling-documentary fanatics aren't going to keep paying $8/month indefinitely for access to one great biking doc.
Poiesis 12y ago
Given their example scenario ("moment of truth"), I'm far more likely to just buy an episode of something for a few bucks on iTunes. That way I have a much better chance of finding what I'm looking for, and I can watch something current if I want. I'd prefer a subscription, and I don't really care to own a random episode, but if I was watching so many shows that the money would be an issue, I would have a cable subscription (I don't).
yalogin 12y ago
Why are people raving about this? It has no new information and sounds like a marketing release. What am I missing?
drawkbox 12y ago
Eventually, as linear TV is viewed less, the spectrum it now uses on cable, fiber, and over-the-air will be reallocated to expand Internet data transmission. Satellite TV subscribers will be fewer and more rural. The value of high-speed Internet will increase. This is something that has always bothered me, internet bandwidth only takes up a small amount of spectrum in place of channels and the cable companies could cut lots of channels and improve broadband dramatically. The days of someone dictating what you watch and at what time are over, why all the spectrum hoarding. Even when I got my first broadband cable connection, one of the first on the node in Chandler in 1996, the cable guy said it only used the space of 2 channels for internet data and the rest for broadcast/cable channels.
- __david__ 12y ago
  My cable company dynamically allocates the bandwidth on the last mile cable so that it only broadcasts what people are currently watching. This ostensibly lets them show much higher bandwidth HD shows and have more channels available than they actually have bandwidth for. So in this particular case, it's not as wasted as it could be. I even think this might be why they were recently able to bump up all the internet speeds in my area.
- greg5green 12y ago
  Even now, with the 300/20 service TWC offers, it only uses 20 channels (16 down, 4 up -- equivalent to analog channels afaik).
schnevets 12y ago
I wonder if Netflix is preparing to offer services to studios/businesses as a contingency plan. Their infrastructure seems to be amazing, especially compared to the bug-riddled Hulus and Crackles of the world. I don't have cable, so I'm not sure how it compares to HBO Go and other studio-centric sites, but it can't be easy to maintain those kinds of services. Maybe we'll see a future where studios leverage Netflix's cloud, but offer their own distribution/revenue schemes?
Yen 12y ago
The thing I find most interesting is their strategic take on piracy - they recognize it as a competitor. When a 'moment of truth' rolls around, it's an option potential customers might choose, depending on content available and user experience. They dive into detail on the 'competitors-for-content' category, with whom they could compete both on the available content and user experience fronts. On the other hand, the only advantage they can eke out over piracy is in the user experience.
arianvanp 12y ago
Must be hard for netflix sometimes. Here in The Netherlands for the past 5 months only Lord of the Rings part 1 and part 3 have been available due to licensing issues or something. I've called customer support a few times and they keep saying " We're working on it. but we have issues obtaining the license". Seriously. How can a studio only license Part one and three? This stuff makes me mad. Contacted customer support for the last time today and the person I talked to once again told me the same thing but then surprisingly started openly ranting about "How te studios can be such a pain when we ask them to renew licenses. And that it's diffucult not to get in trouble with them". Anyhow. they'll personally contact me once they have fixed the license again. That's some nice customer support right there. Quite saddening to see studios stand in the way of a solid product. I just want to watch my darn triology on friday evening.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > How can a studio only license Part one and three? They probably have licensed all three parts for streaming, but perhaps, in your region, someone paid for an exclusive license on the second part that hasn't expired, so Netflix isn't able to get a license.
throwaway420 12y ago
Netflix employs many smarter business people than me that operate with a lot more information, so my opinion may be completely incorrect, but I've always thought that they erred by being scared off of the criticism they got when they increased their pricing a tiny bit. Less than ten dollars a month is an incredible bargain for the vast number of hours of content that they provide. Netflix should double, triple, or quadruple their price and get themselves in financial position to meet the demands of all of the studios going forward for all of their content. You can't do that if you're pricing yourself out of that game though. I want to pay Netflix more money for a catalog that has virtually every movie/tv show ever. But that's just me.
vasilipupkin 12y ago
What confuses me is this: Why doesn't Netflix allow me to pay a little bit more, as an option, and, in exchange, have every single movie available to watch online? I mean, sure, they can produce their own shows, but only some of them will be good. So why limit content so much? I pretty much stopped using Netflix, instead I go to Amazon Instant Video I may be missing something, but strategy of producing original content, while limiting the catalog, doesn't make sense. Why not have infinitely large online catalog AND produce original shows?
- Perceptes 12y ago
  The producers of the other content are not willing to license it to Netflix anymore, because they want to sell it via similar services themselves.
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
    ok, great. What are the services? I mean, I don't care about netflix. I just want to be able to access a website where I can watch any movie ever made, any time, for a price. If the price is 20 bucks, fine.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > What confuses me is this: Why doesn't Netflix allow me to pay a little bit more, as an option, and, in exchange, have every single movie available to watch online? Because much of the content they don't have is because the content owner is competing with Netflix and won't license it, or because some other Netflix competitor has purchased an exclusive license. Some of it is Netflix managing in-total licensing costs, which could be addressed by having "premium" content (either as a tier or pay-per-title or pay-per-view), but that's not the case in general. > Why not have infinitely large online catalog Netflix's former, deeper catalog was only possible because content owners were less aggressive in attempting to capture all the value of online streaming of their property.
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
mxfh 12y ago
Can someone tell me how geo-fencing within the EU is still a thing to stay when one of the EU's main digital agenda goals is to establish a digital single market market? https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/our-goals/pillar-i-digital-single-market https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/our-goals/pillar-i-di... [Edit] Some sources: Geographical Restrictions, (and different pricing) for digital goods within the EU are clearly discriminatory against the customer. As stated here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/imco/dv/ppt_descrimination_consumers_/ppt_descrimination_consumers_en.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/i... Under intellectual property law, right holders may geographically restrict licenses. Therefore intellectual property law allows businesses to compartmentalise the market. Restrictions of passive sale are contrary to the consumers’ freedom of access to goods and services on the DSM, and are not permitted under European law. Prohibiting geographical restrictions would not require fundamental changes to the international system of intellectual property rights. It would simply ensure that all licences granted for the territory of one Member State are valid for the whole territory of the EU. The tendency to market compartmentalisation is inherent to territorially restricted IP rights. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2013/507456/IPOL-IMCO_ET(2013)507456_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/201...
- Atropos 12y ago
  The EU's competition authority has actually launched an antitrust investigation into this in January 2014: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-15_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-15_en.htm It's a really complicated issue though, but hopefully, geo-restrictions will vanish at some point in the EU, either by legal or political force.
zanny 12y ago
Just a tangent, but the 600m for advertising and 500m for product development is not a Netflix only thing, but it always pisses me off so much to read it. That first number, the bigger number, is a black hole. Advertising is the worst, with its only competitor in my book being the legal system, industry in the industrialized world. It produces nothing of value, because all it tries to do it move money from predisposed destinations to the advertisers. It is buying market share, without making anything with the money. The later is actual productivity, goods and services people can use and want and experience and benefit from. I'd go into another tangent about how advertisings size is out of control and it only gets worse due to how people are getting poorer on average (less money per individual) while wealth concentrates in the rich (ie, those that would own a company like Netflix) which means that when you rake in huge profits and a big money pot, what do you spend it on? Making goods and services is pointless if there is no money left in the market to explore your products and buy new things. Instead you throw those profits into advertising, into a non-productive discipline whose only job is to manipulate people into giving you money they would have spent elsewhere. But this post is already long enough that nobody is going to read it anyway! What a colossal waste, everywhere advertising happens. And it is only on track to get worse.
- punee 12y ago
  > It is buying market share, without making anything with the money. Erm. Yes, it's doing something with the money. Buying market share.
dude_abides 12y ago
My attempt at a tl;dr: We cannot afford to license all content from all studios (and compete with Comcast/AT&T etc), so instead we will spend 5b trying to create our own content (and compete with HBO instead). Oh and we will be spending half a billion on marketing. (did I misread)
- kolev 12y ago
  Time to bid a farewell and switch my mindset to Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Instant Videos. I get less bang for my bucks with Netflix and I'm not into TV shows to justify with their "original" stuff. Why do they want to get into this game when all HBO needs is to open HBO Go to everybody for $7.99/mo?
4ydx 12y ago
Man this transition feels like it is going to take my lifetime. Years ago it felt like an internet based on demand (+cheap) option should have been available. It is a simple thing to fantasize about but a difficult thing to realize it seems. For me personally the price point still feels too high given that I never get to own any content.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
I wonder how long until they stop their DVD shipping side business.
JSno 12y ago
One day, I can pay less than 50 dollar per month, be able to watch NFL, MLB, NBA and EPL. Then I will switch to netflix.
bluebook 12y ago
This was interesting positioning from Netflix: We don’t and can’t compete on breadth of entertainment with Comcast, Sky, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, or Google. For us to be hugely successful we have to be a focused passion brand. Starbucks, not 7-Eleven. Southwest, not United. HBO, not Dish. Netflix is phasing out its DVD business over the next couple of years to focus on domestic and international streaming. International is where penetration is pretty low and they're targeting 15-16% penetration of broadband households over five years from its current 3%. In the last few quarters they've outperformed their own subscriber growth forecasts on the international side with country launches in France, Germany underway. The share price has jumped each time. Other markets they are likely to cover Italy, Spain, OZ & NZ. Massive markets like India, China, Russia and Japan really unlikely for the medium term at least with piracy, strong local incumbents and lower purchasing power. It's just made $270m in profits in December 2014, after 10 years of losses from IPO to 2012 and secured a $500m loan with $1.1 billion cash so it is only now becoming financially sustainable. I assume they are getting better at creating own original content and thought Marco Polo was pretty good, might be on my own there though. I think the future is bright though opening in each new country and having to license content in them way in advance means lots of upfront costs in unfamilar locations. Should be a long slog but they're on the right track as a focused, passion brand.
kriro 12y ago
Interesting read. I think they are slightly underestimating Amazon as a competitor. They mention them but from my point of view the edge that Netflix has is good engineering (including usability) and being attractive to good engineers. A somewhat random small, recent example is the fact that they were at reactconf, talking about interesting stuff (targeting non-DOM) and showing involvement in "hot" technology. That's an edge that HBO has a really hard time catching up to but Amazon doesn't. I think Netflix is putting a bit too much focus on the content side. It also reads a bit like they'll shift a bit more from customer to business partner focus which may or may not be a good idea.
merrua 12y ago
Netflix europe has terrible descriptions of the films/shows which you may as well ignore. Also their catalog really isn't that impressive. It would be rather easy to replace it if anyone tried.
cheriot 12y ago
I'm building lazyfan[1] precisely because of how fragmented availability has become. Even when you want to pay to stream a specific movie, it might be available from iTunes, but not Amazon or vice versa. But you don't want to pay for something you have so you have to check Netflix or Amazon Prime. Forget comparison shopping, it's tough to even know what's for sale. [1] http://www.lazyfan.com http://www.lazyfan.com (beta)(a movie trailer autoplays)

313 points by _pius 12y ago

guiomie 12y ago

"we should strive to have the best in each category" ... this is certainly not happening in Canada.

jaddison 12y ago
Agreed, but this is true in any of their countries. Content licensing really gets in their way.
lordbusiness 12y ago
Completely agree with this. Fortunately there are ways around this for savvy people. But yes. Canadian Netflix is poor, and the price should reflect the diminished offering.
MichaelGG 12y ago
For a few bucks you can get a proxy or VPN in other countries. Pretty essential when traveling since Netflix cannot even keep their UI in a single language when I go on trips.

solutionyogi 12y ago

Winning moments of truth We strive to win more of our members’ “moments of truth”. Those decision points are, say, at 7:15 pm when a member wants to relax, enjoy a shared experience with friends and family, or is bored. They could play a video game, surf the web, read a magazine, channel surf their MVPD/DVR system, buy a pay-per-view movie, put on a DVD, use a piracy service, turn on Hulu, or launch Netflix. We want our members to choose Netflix in these moments of truth. --------------------------------------------------- This nails it. When I get home (especially if I had a long day at work), I first go to Netflix and see what's on my list. This is because Netflix app is beautiful, it always works and they have my list of things to watch. As someone who loves to watch documentaries, I am happy with the selection that Netflix offers. If I don't like anything on the list, I just watch an old Friends or Breaking Bad episode. I think Netflix has absolutely nailed the user experience and depending on your taste/location, their selection is great as well.

mhurron 12y ago
> their selection is great as well Hulu gets more of my bitching when related to selection, but Netflix gets it's share. Partial seasons, only a few seasons of shows that have long since ended, so many movies not offered. But basically when it comes down to I want to watch something, we have both a Hulu subscription and Netflix for a reason and I still have to torrent things. Also, their app sucks for finding things.
- DennisP 12y ago
  I had Hulu, but a paid service showing the same unskippable commercials over and over again was just too much.
  - mhurron 12y ago
    Well until the most recent update, I didn't see ads on Hulu. I haven't looked into making that happen again yet.
  - giggles_giggles 12y ago
    Hulu's commercials are the absolute worst. I'm not paying a monthly fee so I can watch that stupid Jack in the Box add about the bacon cheeseburger a thousand times. Even if there were more different ads it wouldn't be so bad, but the repeating commercials are absolutely what keep me from ever signing up for Hulu+ (again)
  - mark_l_watson 12y ago
    I hear you re: the commercials. It cost the networks less to show content on Hulu so the commercial time should be less. Also, as you say, they should not show the same commercials over and over again. I recently re-subscribed to Hulu+, and I will probably stick with them for a few more months, but really, they could make the service better and still generate good profits for the networks who collectively own Hulu+.
anatari 12y ago
Although I use Netflix all the time, it's in spite of their app. Outside of the "my list" I've curated myself, 98% of the things the Netflix app shows me, I'm not really interested in. I feel like that ratio could easily be made better if they allowed me to mark things I'm not interested in and never show me those things again + apply machine learning to display a better personalized catalog. Whenever I use Netflix I always feel like there is a lot of content locked away and I have to dig past the same stuff it always shows to find stuff I'm interested in.

spike021 12y ago

I personally don't really like the setup Netflix uses as much UI-wise. It seems as though nowadays services need to be all about personalization, where ratings, reviews, and content watched all factor into the new content that is shown to me, the user. I might only like one movie or tv show of a particular genre, give it 4 or 5 stars, and then there's a pretty good chance I'll keep being shown similar ones that I know I'll never be interested in watching. For myself, I think it would work really well if they had the more standard list of available shows, movies, etc in alphabetical order, or some other more sortable format, perhaps by release/airing year, or similar.

kissickas 12y ago
They wouldn't have to put so much work into fixing their UI if they had just left their API open. Now that it's gone Netflix has become much less navigable and while the words in this post sound nice to my ears, when I'm sitting on the couch I mostly just get pissed off at the experience.
blackkettle 12y ago
it's absolutely ridiculous that they don't provide this sort of basic functionality.
- bnejad 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure its intentional to hide the gaps in their collection and to show you new stuff they did manage to license.
jaredsohn 12y ago
They have a lot of this, at least if you are accessing the service via the web. Just click on Browse and choose a genre and you'll be able to sort by rating, year of release, maturity rating, or alphabetical order. You can also access these genres by clicking on the section titles in the recommendations. Otherwise, your best bet is to use one of the many external sites such as allflicks.net.
- 12y ago

donpdonp 12y ago

This is a great write-up and a wonderful precedent for netflix to set. That being said, I feel the post is mostly promises, as Netflix is in the middle of another year-long 'content desert'. I cant remember the last time I got excited about The Matrix or Iron Man coming back into the queue. My process is to check http://instantwatcher.com/ http://instantwatcher.com/ and then go to netflix. The thing is I've been disappointed by whats at the top of the charts for so long, I've considered dropping netflix. The top 50 is uninteresting sounding documentaries, low budget horror, and everything else that rounds out the discount DVD bin at the grocery store. Netflix excells at one thing - Television. I get that its likely not Netflix's fault. The cut for movie studios each month from an $8 subscription cant be very much. I feel Amazon's pay-to-play model is more realistic, though less consumer friendly. I remember the deal announced last year of netflix getting first run Disney flicks (starting in 2015 I think?) and thats exiting, but the daily reality of netflix besides TV is the entertainment equivalent of hot, soupy gruel.

GrinningFool 12y ago
I don't see Amazon's model as less consumer-friendly - particularly as I remember well the days of having to go to the local video rental place, making sure to return it on time, paying late fees, etc. I'm happy to pay $3-5 for a few days in which to watch a movie, and then not think about it when I'm done. The price is right, and the convenience can't be beaten.
- chc 12y ago
  You could buy a lot of movies outright for only a bit more than Amazon charges, so the price seems a bit steep to me. Obviously not back-breaking, but the price feels wrong.
  - jacobr1 12y ago
    I've never understood buying a movie, though. Once I've seen it, I'm done. No need to ever see it again. One of the best things about Amazon's service is the hybrid model. Prime for tons of content and when that fails you can rent a la carte. While everyone is fighting the content purchasing wars this seems to give the consumer the most content albeit with inconsistent total pricing.

princetontiger 12y ago

I interviewed here, and it was by far among some of the best group of people I've ever met. I think some of the HR people are a bit rough, but the teams that contribute to the bottom line are top notch.

danso 12y ago

OK, a little OT and minuscule, but kind of gels with in with Netflix's overall future...has anyone else noticed that Netflix's predicted ratings seem to be a bit inflated, since perhaps last year? For previous years, I could count the number with one hand of movies/TV-shows that Netflix rated more than a 4-star for me...now there are dozens and dozens of things that Netflix thinks I would give a perfect rating to. Maybe it's because I've become less discerning or have unconsciously changed in the way I rate things...but I don't think so...it used to be that anything predicted to be 4-stars or above --which was very rare -- was indeed something that I would love. Now I'm seeing many preemptive 4.8 to 5-star ratings for things that I know I don't like (because I've seen them before). (I think we can agree that the effect of seeing more high-rated content is not the result of Netflix actually getting more quality content...the number of good movies has remained constant or gone down, especially since the Starz day) The cynical user in me thinks Netflix has tweaked its algorithm to encourage me to watch more things. However, at least they don't seem to have tweaked it in favor of their exclusive content, as none of those (such as Marco Polo) are predicted to rate highly with me.

codewell 12y ago
dvd.netflix.com seems to still use the old reliable ratings predictor. Downloading (netflix.com) uses a much inflated predictor that seems designed to push popular stuff. I imagine they have to do this to obscure that the selection is so much poorer for download.

Shivetya 12y ago

I am amazed at the dollar amounts the give. I never expected it to so much to market such a service. The technology side I could see, expanding their reach and such.

ctdonath 12y ago
$800M just ain't what it used to be. And persuading potential customers who are not naturally inclined toward your service is much harder & more costly than attracting those seeking what you provide.
joshuapants 12y ago
Shooting a commercial can cost a million bucks. If you want prime advertising slots, it might cost from a few hundred grand up to a million for a 30 second spot. Print and online advertising is cheaper, of course, but I don't think their advertising budget is unreasonable considering how large a company they are and how difficult it may be to get new subscribers.

sandworm 12y ago

My family uses netflix. I don't. Every time I want to watch something I cannot find it. 10,000 titles is nothing in a world where The Simpsons has several hundred. Netflix needs more and deeper content. I won't admit to ever downloading something without full written permission of the copyright holder, carved in stone and witnessed by three saints, but last night I did watch "Black Books" after not finding it on Netflix or any other service. (If you are a fan of 'Father Ted' or 'The IT Crowd', Black Books was done by the same people and contains many of the same jokes.)

smeyer 12y ago
It looks like Amazon's video service has Black Books. Do they only have some of the episodes? Did you just not find them or not want to pay for them?
- sandworm 12y ago
  When I looked I couldn't find it on Amazon. It might be a licensing issue as I'm in Canada. (A VERY common issue north of the boarder.) Using a VPN to bypass such a restriction is just as much a copyright violation as downloading from thepiratebay.
  - mxfh 12y ago
    It's a contract-, TOS-, trade- or tax-code-violation but not "as much a copyright violation" as plain old piracy.
    - sandworm 12y ago
      That's up for debate. Some rights groups (the mpaa etc) see a vpn as "bypassing technical protections". Once upon a time some claimed it a CFAA violation in that you were accessing a computer system under false pretences, ie you were fibbing about your location. BS imho and CFAA law has moved on from such interpretations, but some still call for netflix to block VPNs. Either way you are creating an unlicensed copy, or at least a performance, of the work. It would be the local license holders right to go after you, or Netflix, for violating "their" copyrights.

Malic 12y ago

"long-term-view.cfm"!? Cold Fusion? That's still a thing?!

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
I was surprised to see it on a Netflix property, but ColdFusion very much is alive and well otherwise. I think even Linode uses it.
tshtf 12y ago
If you do a dig on ir.netflix.com, you'll see this is hosted at shareholder.com. It is not uncommon for publicly traded companies to host this stuff through third-party providers.

throwaway150219 12y ago

So, what is happening faster: 1) Deployment of AFFORDABLE highspeed broadband or 2) Decreasing local storage costs Why do I need to stream something if I can store 6TB of data locally for less than $150 (and decreasing daily). How much storage space will $200 buy you in 10 years? And how many decades of video and audio could one store on such a device?

SG- 12y ago
How much do you want to pay to purchase and store all that video? That's where Netflix's value comes in.
- r00fus 12y ago
  > How much do you want to pay to purchase and store all that video? That's where Netflix's value comes in. It's not clear to me that mr. throwaway was planning on purchasing any of that content.
tempestn 12y ago
You still have to get that content from somewhere. Storage space isn't really the limitation there. Plus, even if you could, what would be the motivationto store eeverything locally, when 1) you rarely watch a show more than once, and 2) you can stream it instantaneously anyway?
- DennisP 12y ago
  Maybe you have better internet than me, but my streaming quality isn't always HD, and if I fastforward/rewind I generally have to wait a while to rebuffer. Do an advance download of everything in my watchlist, and the next episodes of the series I'm watching, and everything will by high quality, no wait, all the time. Besides that, just because something's available on streaming doesn't mean it'll stay there forever.
ctdonath 12y ago
This was kicked around on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507566 TL;DR - rough-guess numbers say the entire Netflix library can fit on 24TB, and would cost (content + hardware pricing) around $2500 per copy.

mc32 12y ago

One of the things they bring up, which is that apps are replacing channels, annoys me. I'd rather do a global search and then present me with delivery media (channels/apps/whatever) instead of having to pick the app and then do individual searches. It's a pain point. Also, if they want to capture the hotel market, I mean people on the road staying in temp accommodation, they'll have to deliver blue content (or yellow as they say in Asia). People on the road want pornographic content, more so than at home. Their current most likely option is to get it at high markup via hotel operator delivery systems.

raisedbyninjas 12y ago
Roku has global search, but apps have to support it, which the big names do.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
This is one of the things Roku gets right compared to other set top boxes. You can search across services. Unlike on other boxes like Amazon's which lets you search Amazon and will always push their content above anyone else's. It's especially annoying if something is available on Netflix and is paid content on Amazon... it's still going to tell you to buy it on Amazon even when you already have access to it for no additional cost.
- wmeredith 12y ago
  It's a platform seller, too. I've had an Apple TV, Fire TV, Fire Stick, Playstation 4, and a Roku box. This singular feature is the reason why we watch TV and movies on the Roku box more than anything else. It's like magic.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- zwentz 12y ago
  Interestingly, Roku was create by Netflix, at first it was Netflix TV, but they spun it off.
12y ago

ctdonath 12y ago

This is a huge shift for Netflix. Until recently, the motivating impression was that Netflix just plain had every movie out there (which its continuing DVD service kinda does). I subscribed because it was a cheap replacement for buying anything I wanted to see: they had everything I wanted and could want. My to-watch list was very long, and I thought it would remain. Now, studios and competitors are making that model untenable. Netflix can't carry _everything_ because studios/distributors want an ever-larger cut of the profits, and competitors are willing to pay for exclusivity. Suddenly, I find large sections of my to-watch list disappearing off Netflix as contracts expire and don't renew (the biggest blow was when "Toys" disappeared - something old & obscure enough that I thought surely they'd manage to keep that license). Netflix just pivoted. They're no longer the long-promised "long tail" of movies, hosting all but the latest & biggest (yeah, I'm willing to pay extra individually for those). They just gave up on that model. Now they're becoming a "channel" focused on hosting a curated collection, including their own productions. That's a big shift.

ericflo 12y ago
It happened a long time ago, at least I became aware of this shift when an exec from Netflix was quoted saying "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us" http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201302/netflix-founder-reed-hastings-house-of-cards-arrested-development http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201302/netflix...
- joshuapants 12y ago
  And honestly, I think Netflix is most of the way there. HBO Go is a pain to use, the tablet app won't let me output to a TV or monitor, and it is frequently slow for me. I can't remember the last time I needed to wait for Netflix to buffer, and it seems to happen constantly for HBO. Netflix is solid on the technical side, and their original series (in my opinion) eclipse what HBO currently offers. HBO has one show that really interests me (Game of Thrones, of course) and Netflix has a handful (House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Bojack Horseman, hopefully with more new interesting series on the way). The only reason I'm even subscribed to HBO at this point is because Verizon gave me a few months for free, and I'll be ditching it once that expires.

rogerbinns 12y ago

Am I the only one who finds finding something on Netflix to watch increasingly difficult, and contradictory to what they say in that piece. My experience is mostly using Roku (a spinoff from Netflix) and Android. For example if I watch a WWII documentary, then they feel the need to recommend every one they have, for a long time. Oh and "watch" means "seen more than a second or two of", so you get all this crud even if you didn't like it. Perhaps the biggest sin is showing me stuff I have already watched, outside of the "watch again section". My home screen is mostly things I have seen, and I have to keep scrolling past to see if there is anything interesting deeper in the sections. It is especially annoying that there is no "do not show this again". My home screen is a collection of content I have already seen, or do not want to see. It makes Netflix look dumb and is very user hostile. Most amusing is that they don't provide a way of finding content that you want to watch now. For example you would like to watch something funny and light for the next half hour, or a date night movie. Sometimes those categories randomly show up on the screen, but usually not. I'd go on, but the overall vibe is a very dumb experience of recommendations that I don't want, no useful content exploration, and it feels like I watch stuff despite them, rather than because of them. Maybe I should cancel my account again.

mark_l_watson 12y ago
Huge Netflix fan, but you nailed one point: they should let us edit the "recently watched" and other lists. After I watch something, I would like to take it off of my 'recently watched' list instead of waiting a month for it to eventually disappear.
- jaredsohn 12y ago
  As of this past fall, you can remove entries from Recently Watched, at least via the web. Just click on "Recently Watched" from the homepage and click X next to something you want to remove.
  - rogerbinns 12y ago
    You can also mark content as Not Interested on the web. But these kind of things aren't possible in their other interfaces, and having to make a mental note to later go to a browser to do things is annoying.

ebbv 12y ago

> As such, we are actively curating our service rather than carrying as many titles as we can. I hope this is true. Because the quality of content that has been added to Netflix over the past year has mostly been god awful. A lot of the movies that have been added are not even D-grade quality. They are straight to video dreck. On top of the bad movies there's been reams and reams of awful reality shows as well. When I first signed up for Netflix they had full libraries of HBO and Showtime shows. NBC shows. Movies that people actually went to see in theaters. I understand that having HBO and Showtime's libraries is going to be hard now that those companies are pursuing their own subscription services. But that doesn't mean Netflix needs to resort to the crap it's been adding lately. Honestly, if things don't improve in 2015 there's a good chance I'll cancel my Netflix subscription.

jader201 12y ago

Maybe it's just me. But one thing about linear (live) broadcasts -- and this also applies to an extent to live radio vs. mp3's -- is that there is just something engaging about watching a program that you know other people, at that moment, are also watching. It's also missed when watching a show that you DVR'ed, after the fact -- like the series finale to Lost, or the Super Bowl. If/when live broadcasts are completely a thing of the past, I think this sense of engagement will be lost forever, and people won't even realize what they're missing out on. In a way, it's sort of like watching someone play a video game live on Twitch vs. watching it on Youtube. Does anyone else know and also feel this sense I'm talking about?

nbush 12y ago
I think this might be something that Netflix is overlooking. The community-like aspect of watching something simultaneously with the rest of the word is extremely powerful. The Twitch generation could prove that live broadcasts or some kind of time-locked release schedule is much more likely to build momentum. Granted, Netflix's data is probably much more convincing than any vague feeling of community, but I wonder if the "indulgent viewing" they mention is the side-effect of our brains failing to cope with sudden overflow of stuff to consume.
- mentos 12y ago
  I totally agree Netflix is overlooking this aspect of live programming. I would love to see a Netflix 'channel' that loops randomly through the top 100 shows/movies and plays the content live for everyone.
lukifer 12y ago
I experience this phenomenon on a less immediate time scale: in the days following a new episode of Breaking Bad, etc, there is discussion and camaraderie with other fans. With the "binge-only" model of House of Cards, that same social experience is not possible.
- slig 12y ago

Igglyboo 12y ago

I wonder when they are going to close down their DVD division.

Animats 12y ago
Since the online catalog started shrinking, the DVD division is more useful. The DVD rental business has first-sale-doctrine rights; Netflix can rent those DVDs even if the studio doesn't like it. They don't have that right online, and have to cut a deal each title.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  Yes but are people still using it? Personally I don't really care how big of a catalog they have, I'm not going to wait 2-3 days for a movie to arrive.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Use the DVD system to recommend, then torrent? That's isomorphic to having Netflix drop the DVD into a block device and letting you access it over a long cable, so you shouldn't have any ethical issues.
  - Thrymr 12y ago
    Yes. I like movies, and a service that only has a limited selection of crappy movies isn't that interesting to me. I don't really care if it takes a couple days to arrive. I can see the attraction of the streaming service if you are into the TV series that they have, but it's not even a competitor for movies. I would love to sign up for a full catalog streaming service, but it looks like that will never happen.
  - duderific 12y ago
    Well... you can get a few movies at a time, so you're not waiting once you get them all... you just return the one you're done watching and the next one arrives so you always have a "stash." If you're watching more than two or three movies every two days, maybe you should get out a bit more.

Touche 12y ago

Can someone tldr; this?

yazaddaruvala 12y ago

If someone from Netflix is reading: > We win those moments of truth when members expect Netflix to be more pleasurable than their other options Can you please make it easier for me to find my "Recently Watched" TV Shows? That would definitely make my experience "more pleasurable". Also, please stop showing me movies I've already rated. I've seen those. Just show those to me in the "watch again" list. Platform: Website

ben010783 12y ago
I've been confused about why the website seems so counterintuitive. I really hope someone at Netflix understands this problem and pushes for a fix.
jaredsohn 12y ago
Just click on "Recently Watched" at the top left of the homepage. It links to here: https://www.netflix.com/WiViewingActivity https://www.netflix.com/WiViewingActivity
- yazaddaruvala 12y ago
  So for me that page is broken. It reads "My Activity" and then its just a grey page.
  - jaredsohn 12y ago
    Some ideas: * Check for Netflix extensions and disable them in case they are breaking the page. * Turn off "Test participation" in Your Account * Open the console and see if there are any error messages. * Contact Netflix Support (there is a link from Your Account and when I've tried it I have gotten a response right away.) Normally, for me the page looks very similar to https://www.netflix.com/MoviesYouveSeen https://www.netflix.com/MoviesYouveSeen (and is linked to from there.)
dangrossman 12y ago
This is a link, if you've never hovered over it: http://i.imgur.com/Bs4B4Ch.png http://i.imgur.com/Bs4B4Ch.png

ForHackernews 12y ago

> As we’ve gained experience, we’ve found that the 20th documentary about bicycling will mostly just take away viewing from the other 19 such docs, and instead of trying to have everything, we should strive to have the best in each category. As such, we are actively curating our service rather than carrying as many titles as we can. This sounds like a bad move to me. Maybe carrying a huge breadth of content is a good way to attract new users, but unless they have depth of content, they aren't going to hold onto those users. Most people aren't that eclectic in their tastes, so if you only have one film in each category (even if it's the "best" one) people are going to drop them after they've watched everything they like. Put another way, bicycling-documentary fanatics aren't going to keep paying $8/month indefinitely for access to one great biking doc.

Poiesis 12y ago

Given their example scenario ("moment of truth"), I'm far more likely to just buy an episode of something for a few bucks on iTunes. That way I have a much better chance of finding what I'm looking for, and I can watch something current if I want. I'd prefer a subscription, and I don't really care to own a random episode, but if I was watching so many shows that the money would be an issue, I would have a cable subscription (I don't).

yalogin 12y ago

Why are people raving about this? It has no new information and sounds like a marketing release. What am I missing?

drawkbox 12y ago

Eventually, as linear TV is viewed less, the spectrum it now uses on cable, fiber, and over-the-air will be reallocated to expand Internet data transmission. Satellite TV subscribers will be fewer and more rural. The value of high-speed Internet will increase. This is something that has always bothered me, internet bandwidth only takes up a small amount of spectrum in place of channels and the cable companies could cut lots of channels and improve broadband dramatically. The days of someone dictating what you watch and at what time are over, why all the spectrum hoarding. Even when I got my first broadband cable connection, one of the first on the node in Chandler in 1996, the cable guy said it only used the space of 2 channels for internet data and the rest for broadcast/cable channels.

__david__ 12y ago
My cable company dynamically allocates the bandwidth on the last mile cable so that it only broadcasts what people are currently watching. This ostensibly lets them show much higher bandwidth HD shows and have more channels available than they actually have bandwidth for. So in this particular case, it's not as wasted as it could be. I even think this might be why they were recently able to bump up all the internet speeds in my area.
greg5green 12y ago
Even now, with the 300/20 service TWC offers, it only uses 20 channels (16 down, 4 up -- equivalent to analog channels afaik).

schnevets 12y ago

I wonder if Netflix is preparing to offer services to studios/businesses as a contingency plan. Their infrastructure seems to be amazing, especially compared to the bug-riddled Hulus and Crackles of the world. I don't have cable, so I'm not sure how it compares to HBO Go and other studio-centric sites, but it can't be easy to maintain those kinds of services. Maybe we'll see a future where studios leverage Netflix's cloud, but offer their own distribution/revenue schemes?

Yen 12y ago

The thing I find most interesting is their strategic take on piracy - they recognize it as a competitor. When a 'moment of truth' rolls around, it's an option potential customers might choose, depending on content available and user experience. They dive into detail on the 'competitors-for-content' category, with whom they could compete both on the available content and user experience fronts. On the other hand, the only advantage they can eke out over piracy is in the user experience.

arianvanp 12y ago

Must be hard for netflix sometimes. Here in The Netherlands for the past 5 months only Lord of the Rings part 1 and part 3 have been available due to licensing issues or something. I've called customer support a few times and they keep saying " We're working on it. but we have issues obtaining the license". Seriously. How can a studio only license Part one and three? This stuff makes me mad. Contacted customer support for the last time today and the person I talked to once again told me the same thing but then surprisingly started openly ranting about "How te studios can be such a pain when we ask them to renew licenses. And that it's diffucult not to get in trouble with them". Anyhow. they'll personally contact me once they have fixed the license again. That's some nice customer support right there. Quite saddening to see studios stand in the way of a solid product. I just want to watch my darn triology on friday evening.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> How can a studio only license Part one and three? They probably have licensed all three parts for streaming, but perhaps, in your region, someone paid for an exclusive license on the second part that hasn't expired, so Netflix isn't able to get a license.

throwaway420 12y ago

Netflix employs many smarter business people than me that operate with a lot more information, so my opinion may be completely incorrect, but I've always thought that they erred by being scared off of the criticism they got when they increased their pricing a tiny bit. Less than ten dollars a month is an incredible bargain for the vast number of hours of content that they provide. Netflix should double, triple, or quadruple their price and get themselves in financial position to meet the demands of all of the studios going forward for all of their content. You can't do that if you're pricing yourself out of that game though. I want to pay Netflix more money for a catalog that has virtually every movie/tv show ever. But that's just me.

vasilipupkin 12y ago

What confuses me is this: Why doesn't Netflix allow me to pay a little bit more, as an option, and, in exchange, have every single movie available to watch online? I mean, sure, they can produce their own shows, but only some of them will be good. So why limit content so much? I pretty much stopped using Netflix, instead I go to Amazon Instant Video I may be missing something, but strategy of producing original content, while limiting the catalog, doesn't make sense. Why not have infinitely large online catalog AND produce original shows?

Perceptes 12y ago
The producers of the other content are not willing to license it to Netflix anymore, because they want to sell it via similar services themselves.
- vasilipupkin 12y ago
  ok, great. What are the services? I mean, I don't care about netflix. I just want to be able to access a website where I can watch any movie ever made, any time, for a price. If the price is 20 bucks, fine.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> What confuses me is this: Why doesn't Netflix allow me to pay a little bit more, as an option, and, in exchange, have every single movie available to watch online? Because much of the content they don't have is because the content owner is competing with Netflix and won't license it, or because some other Netflix competitor has purchased an exclusive license. Some of it is Netflix managing in-total licensing costs, which could be addressed by having "premium" content (either as a tier or pay-per-title or pay-per-view), but that's not the case in general. > Why not have infinitely large online catalog Netflix's former, deeper catalog was only possible because content owners were less aggressive in attempting to capture all the value of online streaming of their property.
- vasilipupkin 12y ago

mxfh 12y ago

Can someone tell me how geo-fencing within the EU is still a thing to stay when one of the EU's main digital agenda goals is to establish a digital single market market? https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/our-goals/pillar-i-digital-single-market https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/our-goals/pillar-i-di... [Edit] Some sources: Geographical Restrictions, (and different pricing) for digital goods within the EU are clearly discriminatory against the customer. As stated here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/imco/dv/ppt_descrimination_consumers_/ppt_descrimination_consumers_en.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/i... Under intellectual property law, right holders may geographically restrict licenses. Therefore intellectual property law allows businesses to compartmentalise the market. Restrictions of passive sale are contrary to the consumers’ freedom of access to goods and services on the DSM, and are not permitted under European law. Prohibiting geographical restrictions would not require fundamental changes to the international system of intellectual property rights. It would simply ensure that all licences granted for the territory of one Member State are valid for the whole territory of the EU. The tendency to market compartmentalisation is inherent to territorially restricted IP rights. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2013/507456/IPOL-IMCO_ET(2013)507456_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/201...

Atropos 12y ago
The EU's competition authority has actually launched an antitrust investigation into this in January 2014: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-15_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-15_en.htm It's a really complicated issue though, but hopefully, geo-restrictions will vanish at some point in the EU, either by legal or political force.

zanny 12y ago

Just a tangent, but the 600m for advertising and 500m for product development is not a Netflix only thing, but it always pisses me off so much to read it. That first number, the bigger number, is a black hole. Advertising is the worst, with its only competitor in my book being the legal system, industry in the industrialized world. It produces nothing of value, because all it tries to do it move money from predisposed destinations to the advertisers. It is buying market share, without making anything with the money. The later is actual productivity, goods and services people can use and want and experience and benefit from. I'd go into another tangent about how advertisings size is out of control and it only gets worse due to how people are getting poorer on average (less money per individual) while wealth concentrates in the rich (ie, those that would own a company like Netflix) which means that when you rake in huge profits and a big money pot, what do you spend it on? Making goods and services is pointless if there is no money left in the market to explore your products and buy new things. Instead you throw those profits into advertising, into a non-productive discipline whose only job is to manipulate people into giving you money they would have spent elsewhere. But this post is already long enough that nobody is going to read it anyway! What a colossal waste, everywhere advertising happens. And it is only on track to get worse.

punee 12y ago
> It is buying market share, without making anything with the money. Erm. Yes, it's doing something with the money. Buying market share.

dude_abides 12y ago

My attempt at a tl;dr: We cannot afford to license all content from all studios (and compete with Comcast/AT&T etc), so instead we will spend 5b trying to create our own content (and compete with HBO instead). Oh and we will be spending half a billion on marketing. (did I misread)

kolev 12y ago
Time to bid a farewell and switch my mindset to Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Instant Videos. I get less bang for my bucks with Netflix and I'm not into TV shows to justify with their "original" stuff. Why do they want to get into this game when all HBO needs is to open HBO Go to everybody for $7.99/mo?

4ydx 12y ago

Man this transition feels like it is going to take my lifetime. Years ago it felt like an internet based on demand (+cheap) option should have been available. It is a simple thing to fantasize about but a difficult thing to realize it seems. For me personally the price point still feels too high given that I never get to own any content.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

I wonder how long until they stop their DVD shipping side business.

JSno 12y ago

One day, I can pay less than 50 dollar per month, be able to watch NFL, MLB, NBA and EPL. Then I will switch to netflix.

bluebook 12y ago

This was interesting positioning from Netflix: We don’t and can’t compete on breadth of entertainment with Comcast, Sky, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, or Google. For us to be hugely successful we have to be a focused passion brand. Starbucks, not 7-Eleven. Southwest, not United. HBO, not Dish. Netflix is phasing out its DVD business over the next couple of years to focus on domestic and international streaming. International is where penetration is pretty low and they're targeting 15-16% penetration of broadband households over five years from its current 3%. In the last few quarters they've outperformed their own subscriber growth forecasts on the international side with country launches in France, Germany underway. The share price has jumped each time. Other markets they are likely to cover Italy, Spain, OZ & NZ. Massive markets like India, China, Russia and Japan really unlikely for the medium term at least with piracy, strong local incumbents and lower purchasing power. It's just made $270m in profits in December 2014, after 10 years of losses from IPO to 2012 and secured a $500m loan with $1.1 billion cash so it is only now becoming financially sustainable. I assume they are getting better at creating own original content and thought Marco Polo was pretty good, might be on my own there though. I think the future is bright though opening in each new country and having to license content in them way in advance means lots of upfront costs in unfamilar locations. Should be a long slog but they're on the right track as a focused, passion brand.

kriro 12y ago

Interesting read. I think they are slightly underestimating Amazon as a competitor. They mention them but from my point of view the edge that Netflix has is good engineering (including usability) and being attractive to good engineers. A somewhat random small, recent example is the fact that they were at reactconf, talking about interesting stuff (targeting non-DOM) and showing involvement in "hot" technology. That's an edge that HBO has a really hard time catching up to but Amazon doesn't. I think Netflix is putting a bit too much focus on the content side. It also reads a bit like they'll shift a bit more from customer to business partner focus which may or may not be a good idea.

merrua 12y ago

Netflix europe has terrible descriptions of the films/shows which you may as well ignore. Also their catalog really isn't that impressive. It would be rather easy to replace it if anyone tried.

cheriot 12y ago

I'm building lazyfan[1] precisely because of how fragmented availability has become. Even when you want to pay to stream a specific movie, it might be available from iTunes, but not Amazon or vice versa. But you don't want to pay for something you have so you have to check Netflix or Amazon Prime. Forget comparison shopping, it's tough to even know what's for sale. [1] http://www.lazyfan.com http://www.lazyfan.com (beta)(a movie trailer autoplays)