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But no, Netflix had to use Silverlight, which I refuse to install, and now they're going to an even more limited IE11-only extension.

No they aren't, where did you get that idea from? They aren't moving to an IE11 only extension, the extensions are browser plugins and will be available for many different platforms.

We've been working with Google to implement support for the HTML5 Premium Video Extensions in the Chrome browser, and we've just started using this technology on the Samsung ARM-Based Chromebook. Our player on this Chromebook device uses the Media Source Extensions and Encrypted Media Extensions to adaptively stream protected content. WebCrypto hasn't been implemented in Chrome yet, so we're using a Netflix-developed PPAPI (Pepper Plugin API) plugin which provides these cryptographic operations for now. We will remove this last remaining browser plugin as soon as WebCrypto is available directly in the Chrome browser. At that point, we can begin testing our new HTML5 video player on Windows and OS X.

http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/04/html5-video-at-netflix.html

Right on Man - you VP really straightened things out for you. To obad Netflix would think of a way to help out those poor ISPs.

Verizon already got paid, by their customers, the ones who are requesting to stream from Netflix.

Not only that... if you are ISP, and you have enough traffic to Netflix; Netflix will provide a 'local cache box' to install on your network. OpenConnect hardware appliance.

Netflix pays for the hardware and such.

Large ISPs such as Verizon, can potentially put multiple boxes on their network, so they save cost and do not transport large amounts of Netflix traffic long distances.

Verizon chooses not too. Obviously, they cannot think their customers do not value Netflix. Clearly, they don't care much about their customers -- or there's an alterior motive; or just plain ignorance, blindness, and stupidity.

TL/DR: "The relative cost of the two configurations shows that over-all there are cost savings using the SSD instances"

at least for their use-case (Cassandra).

At work we also use SSDs for a couple terabyte Lucene index with great success (and far cheaper than getting a couple TB of DRAM spread across the servers instead)

The guy who played Q in Star Trek tried to do it.

Obligatory Netflix link.

But most ISP's aren't really paying more for bandwidth anyways except at the last mile. The converstation I had with a few network guys was that they figured it was probably costing a few fractions of a cent more a MB than it was a few years ago.

The reason is, is that most of the major ISPs are part of netflix openconnect program. This reduces the cost to last mile bandwidth which isn't exactly as expensive to provide fast speeds for, though over subscription on a cable provider for your area could cause some serious over saturation.
https://www.netflix.com/openconnect

The openconnect I believe also saves netflix money too as they only have to update the openconnect instead of say 100 users. So when arrested development is out in the wild they will update the openconnect and everyone will be connecting to those to prevent over-saturation of netflix primary services.

At least that's my understanding.

Actually Netflix is trying to get past transit ISPs as much as possible via peering. Provide free peering and caching appliances to ISPs, they get their content closer to the customer, and cut down their transit costs.

Check out http://techblog.netflix.com/ if you want to know more. We're cloud-hosted, BTW, except for the actual streaming bits which are on a combination of our own CDN and public CDNs.

(And we're hiring).

Signed,
A Netflix Employee

Yep. Netflix has Open Connect CDN to help serve up content to the users at individual ISPs. As I recall, they give away server appliances that hold a bit over a hundred TB of video to the ISPs, who then host it at their own expense at a peering facility they share with Netflix. One appliance is roughly capable of covering 70-90% of the content requests, according to some of the other documentation.

Yep. Netflix has Open Connect CDN to help serve up content to the users at individual ISPs. As I recall, they give away server appliances that hold a bit over a hundred TB of video to the ISPs, who then host it at their own expense at a peering facility they share with Netflix. One appliance is roughly capable of covering 70-90% of the content requests, according to some of the other documentation.

This is the best response I've read in the entire thread. I just wanted to add, you are probably okay with SQL if you are familiar with that and you're expecting "thousands of users simultaneously." Postgresql 9.2 can hit around 14,000 writes per second. I'm sure MySQL is similarly capable. If you need more than that, then you have to have go with something like Cassandra.

Netflix has demonstrated Cassandra can hit 1.1 million writes per second on Amazon's commodity hardware. You just have to be willing to sacrifice consistency to get it.

Finally, curb your enthusiasm. When you first have an idea that seems big, it's easy to get carried away. Ask yourself, is this something I really want to work on for the next five years of my life? When you start to dig into the actual implementation, you're gonna get bogged down in details you didn't consider when you were so enthusiastic.

At that point, you're going to either think about the problem day and night until you find a solution, or you're going to say "This is stupid anyway" and want to move on. It's harder to move on once you've told friends/family/investors/etc. After doing it a few times, you look like someone who never follows through. When you DO have a really great idea that's solvable, you're the boy who cried wolf.

I got curious and am too lazy to go order a book so I fired up a search engine and found this:

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Camp_14_Total_Control_Zone/70264533?locale=en-US

I've watched a lot of documentaries and many of them have been about NK. This is one that I haven't seen but I'll watch it tonight. Thank you for bringing the title to my attention though, I appreciate it. I have read a lot of information about NK but I've never read a book about them. Odd I guess. Either way, your mentioning the book brought this to my attention and now I'll have something new and educational to watch. Thanks again.

This image of North Koreans being insane and doing insane things is itself a kind of propaganda.

"Insane" probably isn't quite the right word, but the North Korean people definitely are brainwashed to the point where they don't do a lot of rational thinking. This is a pretty interesting documentary about them.

I'm sorry, can you name one Microsoft executive on the Netflix board? Because I looked at http://ir.netflix.com/management.cfm#3562 and couldn't find any.

Isn't what the summary says exactly what people have always said?

Yeah, the summary could have been written by anybody who put Dogs Decoded into their Watch Instantly queue (great show, recommended).

Maybe the paper was more interesting but the submitter failed to make the sale.

The peering guidelines are publicly available here: https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/guidelines

In a nutshell, it specifies that an ISP must be connected to one or more peering facilities where Netflix has a presence, there are some minimum connection speed and throughput figures, and neither party will use the other's network to deliver non-Netflix related traffic. That's about it. Nothing onerous at all.

Netflix explicitly calls out Bell as being on OpenConnect:

https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect

RTFA. This is about a dedicated high speed connection only between the ISP and Netflix.

Yes, it's called peering. If you're an ISP you should be looking at your throughput metrics and finding those autonomous systems with whom you're exchanging a bunch of traffic.

"Hey look, we're pulling in 7Gbps from this operation called Netflix. I wonder if they'd be open to the possibility of peering with us. It would save both of us money since all that traffic could be moved off of the links we have with our pay-for upstreams. As an added bonus, our customers would be connected to that content via a much shorter network path... a single AS!"

"What's this, OpenConnect you say? That's exactly what we want! It almost like those wacky kids at Netflix understand how the Internet is supposed to work."

This is the hardware device. There is more information about CDN deployment (as well as some specs) available on that page as well.

https://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Fat_Sick_Nearly_Dead/70173634?locale=en-US

And netflix https://signup.netflix.com/superhd and iTunes and youtube.

1 Netflix does use multiple zones:
http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/04/lessons-netflix-learned-from-aws-outage.html

2 US-East-1 is the default zone, and it is the largest zone. It may even be larger than all of the others combined. It consists of more than 10 datacenters in the VA area. It is also the oldest, and it's where Amazon launches new services first.

> Try finding, say, classic Dr. Who. Nope -- fuck you, they say, it's not worth our time and effort.

Some classic Dr Who is now on Netflix: http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Classic_Doctor_Who/70231692?locale=en-US

They have to have 5Gbps of Netflix traffic. Based on the figures in TFA, maybe a couple thousand Netflix users. They're load balancing, so target is 5Gbps per box - the boxes can do a peak of 8Gbps. Netflix makes them available for free to reduce the cost of networking and improve the customer experience. Network operators take them for the same reason. There is more here, including an install guide and BOM.

I actually enjoyed "The Captains", which happens to be streamable on Netflix if anyone is curious. Not that it qualifies as high cinema by any stretch of the imagination...

Sure, Shatner plays Shatner - but still it was fun. I especially got a kick out of Avery Brooks turning out to be some sort of beatnik professor in real life. And Kate Mulgrew did seem capable of throwing Shatner off his game a bit.

Plus the editing in the convention scenes sure made it look like Shatner was having a bit of fun at his own expense.

Same reason why I will never have cable, and would cancel netflix in an instant if they ever showed a single advertisement on streaming.

Add The Wizard (1989) to your queue. Watch it. Realized you just watched a 90 minute infomercial for Virtual Console on Wii. Cancel Netflix.

http://blog.netflix.com/2012/02/update-on-captioning-for-our-members.html

Not. The hosted content is with BGP peering. Even though it is often on local 10gb links, it is still seen as a peer outside of your ISP. See NetFlix

Bill Nye

and

Beakman's World


Hey, can't be any worse than the "education" he's received up to this point...

Bill Nye

and

Beakman's World


Hey, can't be any worse than the "education" he's received up to this point...

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Breaking_Bad/70143836?trkid=2361637

It used to be -lots- better, at least on the PS3 and on a real web browser.

They gimped it, apparently in a successful attempt to unify the interface with that of the shittiest of Netflix clients: Discount BluRay players that just happen to have some sort of Ethernet connectivity.

It is, IMHO, just another failure of lowest-common-denominator.

That said: Thanks for the link. Here is an RSS feed which lets you see the latest in Netflix. With Firefox's Live Bookmarks functionality turns into a handy dropdown of new shit.

Having evolved to chew through solid rock... They bored into the earth, and have evolved to make sustainable life energy in the heat below the earth's mantle... What's that noise?... Come closer to the campfire.

If they are smart, they will evolve into goa'uld, and be preserved forever on Netflix...

That's not actually the case. Per Netflix 30 hours of full HD uses 67 GB (says "about 70" in the article body, but further down clarifies that it's actually 67). That works out to 2.23 GB/hour. Times 4 hours gives us just under 9 GB/day which works out to closer to 4 weeks before you hit the cap. Also, it's unlikely (but surely not impossible) that all the shows being watched are encoded in Netflix's highest HD quality, though these calculations preclude using the internet for anything else, which is clearly unreasonable. I hate to be pedantic, but if you're going to make a point your facts should be accurate.

That being said, a 250 GB cap does become an issue when multiple people are sharing a connection, and something is definitely going to have to give at some point.

No you haven't. You've only been using it since October 18, 2010, or no more than about a year and four months.

http://store.steampowered.com/
http://itunes.com/
http://netflix.com/
http://hulu.com/
http://spotify.com/
http://pandora.com/

An aquatic version of That Darn Cat. http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/That_Darn_Cat/70026374?trkid=2361637

No, but the highest rate Netflix streams at in the real world, less than 2.6Mbps on Verizion FIOS, is about 1.1 GB of data per hour. Downloading a two hour movie in high def is easily well over 2 GB, often twice that at 1080p with 5.1 sound. So really you're saving bandwidth by choosing to stream from Netflix.

Don't you mean http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The_Man_in_the_White_Suit/60029976 ?

Exactly. This historical blog entry sums it up pretty nicely. http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html
In order to get the content from the content producers, I presume Netflix had to provide some sort of promise that the streams could not be ripped. Since Silverlight was born in the DRM era, I can only conclude that DRM was a design feature rather than a bolt on. And when the Netflix techies and lawyers got together, Silverlight gave them the most confidence in living up to the UnRippable promise. We on Slashdot will no doubt question the validity of those choices because this is Slashdot, but we were not in the room at the time.

They do have a list of their prices for other plans, it on their pricing page.

Can you post a link to their pricing page? I can't find it.

ON their how it works page, they have two FAQs that give some pricing, but not pricing for multiple DVD's at a time:

http://www.netflix.com/HowItWorks

How much does it cost?

        For only $7.99 a month, you get unlimited movies & TV episodes instantly over the Internet to your TV or computer. There are no commercials, and you can pause, rewind, fast forward or rewatch as often as you like. It's really that easy!

Can I get DVDs by mail from Netflix?

        Yes. During sign up, you can add unlimited DVDs (1 DVD out-at-a-time plan) for only $7.99 more a month. With DVDs by mail, you'll get an even broader selection of movies & TV episodes. You can exchange each DVD as often as you want with no due dates or late fees — ever! You can add access to Blu-ray discs to your account at any time for an additional $2 a month.

The revised Netflix website is atrocious. It appears to have been designed by idiots for idiots. You can't find prices. For a while, you could not report a bad DVD because the website would log you out when you clicked on "account help." You can't browse movies as textual lists, but have to look at their stupid graphics... that are gigantic and load/scroll slowly. As a long-time subscriber, it drives me nuts. As a geek, it pisses me off to see a new implementation that is LESS usable than the prior one.

As a stockholder, they also have been driving me nuts lately. Hastings has been making some boneheaded PR moves. Hopefully there is some unexplained drama going on behind the scenes that explains things, because it really does seem like he is intentionally driving the company into the ground.

My personal opinion is that the company has been sacrificing the quality of their product in lieu of artificially increasing their stock price for a year or so and they finally ran out of hot air. Time will tell though.

They do have a list of their prices for other plans, it on their pricing page.

Can you post a link to their pricing page? I can't find it.

ON their how it works page, they have two FAQs that give some pricing, but not pricing for multiple DVD's at a time:

http://www.netflix.com/HowItWorks

How much does it cost?

        For only $7.99 a month, you get unlimited movies & TV episodes instantly over the Internet to your TV or computer. There are no commercials, and you can pause, rewind, fast forward or rewatch as often as you like. It's really that easy!

Can I get DVDs by mail from Netflix?

        Yes. During sign up, you can add unlimited DVDs (1 DVD out-at-a-time plan) for only $7.99 more a month. With DVDs by mail, you'll get an even broader selection of movies & TV episodes. You can exchange each DVD as often as you want with no due dates or late fees — ever! You can add access to Blu-ray discs to your account at any time for an additional $2 a month.

The innovation is fine. The problem is that Netflix' leadership has been unable to communicate with its customers in an intelligent way. They need to tuck us into bed, and tell a bed time story which ends "and then you bought our new product and lived happily ever after." This is what Apple does when they innovate.

Instead, you can look at the Quickster announcement. First paragraph: "I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation." Second paragraph: Talks about how they treated their customers like idiots by saying that they were lowering prices when the prices increased. Paragraph ten: Announce Qwikster.

Why even combine these two messages into a single product announcement?

There's at least one movie about it:

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Vanishing-of-the-Bees/70166291?trkid=438403

More bee transport is leading to more bee crashes, but the root cause of increased transport (including flying bees in from Australia to the USA) is colony collapse disorder. And, if the conclusions drawn in the movie are correct, CCD stems from the use of persistent pesticides in the growing of corn, soy, cotton, wheat, etc. They go on to describe bans on these pesticides in Europe and how the bees have bounced back there.

http://blog.netflix.com/2011/10/dvds-will-be-staying-at-netflixcom.html

Does Dreamworks have that much stuff? I look at the Netflix top 100 and only 6 of the movies are streaming. Netflix appears to be circling the drain to me.
http://www.netflix.com/Top100?lnkctr=mhT100

Who's chairman of the board over there?

Let's see.

Surprise! It's Reed Hastings.

Sorry. The link came from the email sent to netflix customers:
http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/explanation-and-some-reflections.html

Wow. Sounds like Netflix should've just stuck with DVD rentals . . . and then created a separate streaming brand in the first place. Would that have even helped?

Not sure that would have even helped.

http://www.netflix.com/NewWatchInstantlyRSS is what I have as a live bookmark and check it nearly daily for anything new. It only gets about 3-4 new movies/shows a day, if that, and most are ones I've never heard of, have no desire to see, or are so old as to create a negative reaction from me. Hey look, a couple of B rated movies that have been on Hulu forever!

http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/explanation-and-some-reflections.html

The customers in the comment thread REALLY seem happy. Everyone is going to love two bills, two services, two everything. I cancelled today.