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Here's the actual blog post from Netflix instead of the Techcrunch blogspam that quotes it:

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

It's also on Netflix as well as on Hulu. Well worth watching; it's one of those that, like Firefly, got cancelled too early. They also did a movie later (made for TV, I think) that was pretty good.

Corn subsidies: 1) basically are a subsidies for beef, as corn is a major component in their feed. 2) Artificially lower the input costs of ethanol Sources: http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/King-Corn/70080822 http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Food_Inc./70108783?trkid=2361637

Corn subsidies: 1) basically are a subsidies for beef, as corn is a major component in their feed. 2) Artificially lower the input costs of ethanol Sources: http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/King-Corn/70080822 http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Food_Inc./70108783?trkid=2361637

It doesn't matter to Netflix, it matters to media companies, and if you want to make their content available you have to play by their rules.

Netflix was the one demanding DRM for `Sita Sings the Blues', which ultimately kept the film out of the `on demand' line-up even though it's in Netflix's DVD-rental library.

When Netflix approached the author (and copyright-holder) and asked for a streaming deal, the response they got was `yes, but only if there's no DRM'. Netflix wouldn't budge.

Actually Netflix is running away from Cisco and into Amazon's cloudy arms.

This a thousand times. If they had said, "Our licensing fees are going through the roof, and this new pricing scheme will help us build an even better collection of streaming content," I would have been happy to pay a little more. Instead they told me how great it was that I was going to pay more for the same service, with no suggestion that an increase in available movies might accompany the hike.

Fuck 'em.

So, Netflix won't work on my Roku. Get "internal services error" messages. Google gets me to this two month long thread. Been going on since mid June and still isn't fixed. There is some problem with the Netflix "instant queue"; looks like the server has a cache that is out of date somehow. Can be fixed by altering or deleting entries from a web browser. Problem pops up with several different clients. Thinking to myself; this is a caching problem in the Netflix web services stack; probably some multi-tier coherency problem and reckless programming. Things like NoSQL come to mind; Digg and Twitter learned the hard way in public too.

Then this story appears. More muddled thinking about databases. I decided to make the effort to see if my blue sky guesswork about Netflix and their screwups have any basis in fact. Result of Google query #1 ("netflix nosql"):

This is Yury Izrailevsky, Director of Cloud and Systems Infrastructure here at Netflix. As Netflix moved into the cloud, we needed to find the appropriate mechanisms to persist and query data within our highly distributed infrastructure ... move beyond the constraints of the traditional relational model ... high availability ... trumps strong consistency ... we have found ourselves braving the new frontier of NoSQL distributed databases.

22 weeks from that blog post to first damage.

This is just the sort of unthinking buzzword driven nonsense I have come to associate with all things NoSQL, the technology of celebrity wannabe PHBs. The results speak for themselves.

You're not paying more because netflix just decided to charge more. You're paying more because studios have increased their price and because of a weakening dollar. Netflix is just trying to stay in business.

Whatever the reason, I see an increase in cost for a decrease in service provided. And more to the meat of your post, if the move were solely the fault of the studios, Netflix could certainly have done more to point this out in their blog post announcing the change. As it is, I see a lot of blather about in-house pricing decisions, but nothing about studio licensing costs -- which makes the whole affair look more like it's all about Netflix's bottom line.

(NB: I'm not saying that a company can afford to be purely charitable -- but raising prices without noticeably increasing or improving your offering, while at the same time claiming that they are "offering our lowest prices ever", sounds precious close to corporate babble and bald-faced lying. There're happy lies ["you look mahvelous in those trousers!"] and unhappy lies ["lower prices!" when they're really higher], and this one is unhappy.)

Cheers,

The original article says that they will "no longer offer a plan that includes both unlimited streaming and DVDs by mail," but the example they cite only includes 1 DVD at a time. When they were DVD-only, it was usually 3 or 4 at a time.

The implication is that they're going to stop offering those plans at all come September. That seems premature: the streaming catalog is getting better, but it's far from complete.

I have the 3 plan and am currently paying $24 a month for it. Currently, each additional disk costs either $5 or $6. They could be planning to raise that to $8, or just not offering it at all, which would be kind of odd.

Seriously... Why would I want to pay $4 to rent a single HD movie or TV show from iTunes, when I can watch as many as I want from Netflix for $9 a month?

I can't imagine why. You'd be better off getting a Netflix streaming device like this one instead.

It is completely possible/practical to have zero downtime for a website

It is not, and no sane engineer would agree with your statement. Accidents happen. You talk about redundancy, but even EC2 have been down. Heck, even Google have been down last year in part of the world. A chaos monkey can screw up your servers, or maybe a old lady just cuts your country off the internet

Just bookmark https://account.netflix.com/WiViewingActivity. It will take you directly to the recently watched list, just like before.

netflix runs on any number of linux devices.
http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices?cid=Game+Consoles

What do you think those tvs, blu rays, etc run?

So I can make my own small Ubuntu server running Boxee or something and have a Netflix viewer in my living room? That I built myself?

You should still be able to sort by ratings. This link for example: http://www.netflix.com/WiAltGenre?fcld=true&agid=3979&vt=tl You just have to replace the movies subdomain with www and append the fcld=ture to whatever page you're on. Or, you can do what I did and set up auto-redirects for all of the pages using the new interface.

If you really want, you can replace http://movies.netflix.com/WiHome with http://www.netflix.com/WiHome?fcld=true to use the old interface. Note the www subdomain instead of movies and the ?fcld=true. I set up auto-redirects in Firefox so if I'm on the watch Instantly or Genre pages it will send me back to the old layout. From my end, you can't even tell that I'm being redirected or that the layout has been changed. Hopefully, they don't drop this and leave me stuck with the new UI.

If you really want, you can replace http://movies.netflix.com/WiHome with http://www.netflix.com/WiHome?fcld=true to use the old interface. Note the www subdomain instead of movies and the ?fcld=true. I set up auto-redirects in Firefox so if I'm on the watch Instantly or Genre pages it will send me back to the old layout. From my end, you can't even tell that I'm being redirected or that the layout has been changed. Hopefully, they don't drop this and leave me stuck with the new UI.

So you can make interfaces but they ultimately suck. Also I think most would agree that being able to play on Linux is a priority. I don't think it's paranoid to assume that Microsoft gave away a board seat partly to ensure that would not happen.

... I guess interfaces you make may suck, but I intend for mine to be exactly what I want. And it seems likely I'll do that. I'm a programmer.

As for shunning linux, netflix runs on any number of linux devices.
http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices?cid=Game+Consoles

What do you think those tvs, blu rays, etc run?

You are being facetious, right?

I'm part way through writing my own interface that will let multiple users view their queues and juggle between them (so that people in the same household can manage each other's queues and see/set both people's ratings at the same time).

This link works ok for now if you want the most of the older interface (hover is broke)

http://www.netflix.com/WiHome?fcld=true

Boy howdy, you and I are so entirely on the same page in this regard. There are really two issues there:

1. Having multiple people's tastes poisons Netflix's ability to come up with very good matches for both of them. I know this intimately well -- my wife and I share a profile (it's not a money thing, it's just that we're sharing devices). That means I get to deal with her love for depressing documentaries and she gets to deal with my love for Pixar movies (which she finds to be emotionally manipulative. Don't look at me, look at the lawyer I married);

2. It'd sure be nice if you could sit your kids in front of a Netflix device and not worry about them being recommended Dead Snow because they liked Snow Day;

The first problem is relatively harder to solve; once Netflix solves this in the protocol, the people who build Netflix boxes will need to incorporate these changes into their client. You'll likely first see this in PC and PS3 streaming (because we can update the client whenever we want to), followed by other devices.

The second problem should be easier (though, personally, I fear the inevitable point at which we'll screw up and a non-kids thing leaks into a kid profile accidentally).

And Netflix has said that it's actively working on both of these issues.

As for jobs ... I'm really not hot on publishing my work email address on slashdot -- that way lies madness -- but http://jobs.netflix.com/ is your friend.

Best,
-CF

http://www.netflix.com/FAQ?p_faqid=2902 they give you up to 4 streams depending on your plan

Reddit is down more than any other normal website, and seems something to do with some *magical words here* from Amazon.

No, it usually has to do with *f words here* bad programming and serious IT underhiring from Reddit. During at the time the most serious outage at the Amazon Cloud at least both Netflix and Heroku had almost nil trouble keeping their services up, while Reddit was down for around three days. This is because when designing infrastructure that scales on the cloud you must defensively design and code each component. You can find more about this particular way of designing scalable infrastructure by googling about a testing metodology netflix calls "chaos monkey". Reddit fails because its poorly designed and doesn't account for the reduced uptime that comes naturally together with "infinite" and cheap "just in time" scalability.

This is a well known fact and openly discussed by any engineer I know about that is seriously into AWS. It was even admitted in part by Reddit themselves here. You can also read more about that particular outage and how to design infrastructure that can resist it and keep scaling from netflix, and also google for deeply technical blogposts like this one that explain this in layman terms or in a technical way.

As a 30 year old engineer that has at least some experience with AWS and GAE I am completely baffled by how many of my peers still fail to understand what "the cloud" is about deep down to the bare metal. We are supposed to be trying to keep up with how technology changes, and mocking and downplaying new technologies we don understand with petty excuses such as "reddit goes down because AWS sucks" seems like really backwards excuses to stay behind.

DISCLAIMER: I'm posting AC because I'm involved with at least one of the businesses I mention (it's not Amazon BTW).

Nova Ep. 2 Making Stuff Smaller @ 21:30.

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Making_Stuff_Nova_Making_Stuff_Cleaner/70171398?trkid=2429429

How to make Graphene with a piece of scotch tape.

For a very well put together documentary on the irrational nature of economic value, watch this Nova episode, "Mind Over Money"

Sweet, it's on Netflix Watch Instantly, too.

Only for now, and only if you're one of the people that hasn't cut cable TV service from their budgets. The average American watches 153 hours of TV every month. Netflix HD streams eat up approximately 2GB every hour (source: Netflix themselves and verified by watching my own router traffic while watching HD Netflix streams).

Some simple arithmetic leads us to 153 hours * 2GB/hr = 306GB per month for an average American who gets their TV fix from Netflix streaming or another comparable service. And this is assuming that there's either only one person in the household, or at least that every person in the household is watching the same thing all of the time. Have a roommate who has completely different taste in television? Boom, 612GB/month. Household or family of four? Of six? Happen to lie on the upper half of the Bell curve? You're screwed. Nevermind the traffic used by, you know, actual internet usage.

I'm sure there will be some replies saying "People should go outside or read a book", but the fact remains that they don't. Still think 150GB or even 250GB a month is all that generous?

What is with that URL? http://blog.netflix.com/2011/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html

I'm assigning you homework

http://blog.netflix.com/2010/11/netflix-on-android.html

"The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android."

"Although we don’t have a common platform security mechanism and DRM, we are able to work with individual handset manufacturers to add content protection to their devices. Unfortunately, this is a much slower approach and leads to a fragmented experience on Android, in which some handsets will have access to Netflix and others won’t."

The lack of general platform content protection on Android makes them have to do it on an individual basis. The fragmentation of handset makes this difficult. Windows makes every comply with a base set of APIs. In Android you can mess with them as much as you want.

Netflix Subscriber Base Eclipses Comcast's

They've explained why...:

The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices. Setting aside the debate around the value of content protection and DRM, they are requirements we must fulfill in order to obtain content from major studios for our subscribers to enjoy.

So, yeah...it has nothing to do with it.

What programs are you getting in HD? Most aren't available in HD as far as I could tell (using my PS3).

Fullmetal alchemist brotherhood is in HD
Jericho is also in HD and has subtitles.
Airplane 2 was in HD AFAIR

http://www.netflix.com/WiHD?pn=1&dev=PC&ftr=false This is a list of media in HD in case you want to search titles :)

http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/01/netflix-performance-on-top-isp-networks.html

Has netflix shared their data with the FCC database used to create the The National Broadband Map?

http://blog.broadband.gov/?entryId=1278226&#respond

Instant over the Internet for $8/month is pretty decent. What I meant by starting to get decent is they're getting licenses to distribute their back catalog this way in Canada. http://ca.netflix.com/

Their badly configured server is redirecting to self in a loop.

telnet ipv6.netflix.com 80
Trying 2620:0:ef0:13::20...
Connected to ipv6.netflix.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: ipv6.netflix.com

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 22:03:29 GMT
Expires: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 22:03:29 GMT
Location: http://ipv6.netflix.com/
Pragma: no-cache
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Via: 1.1 nflx
X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive

I can look up ipv6.netflix.com, but trying to connect to http://ipv6.netflix.com/ from work (which has native IPv6 access) tells me too many redirects.

Either way, this only shows the problem. If I go to www.netflix.com and it only returns an IPv4 address, of course I'm going to use IPv4 to access it. In order for netflix to have any appreciable amount of IPv6 traffic, www.netflix.com would have to resolve to an IPv6 address (and presumably an IPv4 one also). Otherwise, am I expected to memorize for which sites I'm supposed to go to ipv6.*.com instead of www.*.com?

And also, most of netflix traffic is generated by their video servers, not accessing their main web page. That would have to use IPv6 too. And I just checked by playing a movie, it doesn't.

Does that work for you? I get an infinite redirection loop.

20:27:58 ~ > ping6 -c 3 ipv6.netflix.com
PING ipv6.netflix.com(ipv6.netflix.com) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from ipv6.netflix.com: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=191 ms
64 bytes from ipv6.netflix.com: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=196 ms
64 bytes from ipv6.netflix.com: icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=160 ms

--- ipv6.netflix.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 160.836/182.972/196.249/15.756 ms
20:28:05 ~ > curl -I http://ipv6.netflix.com/
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:28:09 GMT
Expires: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:28:09 GMT
Location: http://ipv6.netflix.com/
Pragma: no-cache
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Via: 1.1 nflx
X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge
Connection: keep-alive

Does that work for you? I get an infinite redirection loop.

20:27:58 ~ > ping6 -c 3 ipv6.netflix.com
PING ipv6.netflix.com(ipv6.netflix.com) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from ipv6.netflix.com: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=191 ms
64 bytes from ipv6.netflix.com: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=196 ms
64 bytes from ipv6.netflix.com: icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=160 ms

--- ipv6.netflix.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 160.836/182.972/196.249/15.756 ms
20:28:05 ~ > curl -I http://ipv6.netflix.com/
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:28:09 GMT
Expires: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:28:09 GMT
Location: http://ipv6.netflix.com/
Pragma: no-cache
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Via: 1.1 nflx
X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge
Connection: keep-alive

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Alice_in_Wonderland_An_Adult_Musical_Comedy/70107081?trkid=2361637#height1367

While Netflix says it is rated R, and that is what it would probably get today, the rating shown at the beginning of the actual movie is X.

They already have it on DVD and streaming. I'd know, I watched it :)

$8 per month per subscriber times 12 months in a year times 1,041,667 new subscribers equals 100 million dollars. Never mind promotional fees and product placement fees that companies could be paying them for placement in their original series; distribution deals with other outlets who pay a fee to show Netflix's new content, etc.

They have roughly 20 million subscribers according to their own investor relations page. Adding a million may take time, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that they'd pull in a million new viewers with a new (original/exclusive) series if it's well done and generates a lot of good word of mouth. Especially with Netflix coming native on internet-capable televisions and devices like Boxee Box, Google TV & Apple TV.

There is a pretty good documentary that NOVA did about this team (and others competing) called the Great Robot Race
Forgive if I mess this up but link here or here if you prefer Amazon.

The vehicle completing the DARPA challenge nicknamed Stanley, is currently in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

.od uoy yltnerappa ,seY

Weren't those systems rather primitive in terms of hardware/touch/motion sensors/cameras/gps though? The set of hardware features that the iPhone made common is one of the driving forces behind all the cool new apps.

I remember the first iPhone owners wowing folks by pinching and zooming, or tilting the phone to drive a car game. I can't recall any well advertised product prior to the iPhone having those sorts of "neato" features that made apps much more engaging.

Java is still the number one language in the world. I find it a little hard to imagine that the language and SDK's are the primary reason for the lack of apps. If I had to think of another factor that was related to the staggered release date, it would be device fragmentation. For instance, here is a Netflix developer explaining why there is no Netflix app for Android yet Netflix Blog. The summary: no unified DRM system.

I don't play many games, just a handful of the 'silly ones' that iPhone friends point out, like the birds one. In browsing around, I see what you mean now. Many of the hardcore games aren't on android. If that is important to someone, that certainly is a major deal breaker. Myself, I don't like playing anything serious/complex on a tiny screen.

No netlfix is probably a bigger issue for more people. And it sounds like progress will be slow. At least a year away. netflix blog on android

In what has to be an interesting twist on net neutrality and bandwidth throttling, Netflix has released their numbers for network throughput sorted by ISP. Clearwire comes in dead last out of 16 US ISPs: http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/01/netflix-performance-on-top-isp-networks.html

Well, there is your problem. When I first signed up for Netflix a decade ago, I put every movie I ever wanted to see on the list. When I finished with that, I put every movie I ever wanted to rewatch on the list. Once I had seen every movie I ever wanted to see AND rewatched every movie I ever wanted to, I was left with putting the movies I saw trialers for on the list so that I could watch them when they got released to video.

That is when I moved into watching the movies I didn't want to see. You may think that is crazy, but there is value in it. I get a frame of reference to what other people like, as well as every once in a while I find a gem that I would never have watched other wise.

Sometimes it's good to streach a little in what you expose yourself too.

Two good examples of movies that I very much enjoyed, but didn't expect to:

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Dr._Horrible_s_Sing-Along_Blog/70115760?trkid=2361637#height1765
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Netherbeast_Incorporated/70067394?trkid=2361637#height1448

Well, there is your problem. When I first signed up for Netflix a decade ago, I put every movie I ever wanted to see on the list. When I finished with that, I put every movie I ever wanted to rewatch on the list. Once I had seen every movie I ever wanted to see AND rewatched every movie I ever wanted to, I was left with putting the movies I saw trialers for on the list so that I could watch them when they got released to video.

That is when I moved into watching the movies I didn't want to see. You may think that is crazy, but there is value in it. I get a frame of reference to what other people like, as well as every once in a while I find a gem that I would never have watched other wise.

Sometimes it's good to streach a little in what you expose yourself too.

Two good examples of movies that I very much enjoyed, but didn't expect to:

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Dr._Horrible_s_Sing-Along_Blog/70115760?trkid=2361637#height1765
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Netherbeast_Incorporated/70067394?trkid=2361637#height1448

Battlestar Galactica is a good choice, and is available for streaming in HD. It has all 4 seasons (split into how they were released on DVD). Also in the Sci-fi genre, there's Babylon 5 (I've yet to watch it; I don't know if they have all seasons or if it's in HD, but it is streaming). There's Firefly and Serenity. How about Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels? ? If you look, you can find plenty of good things to watch. Their DVD selection is way better, of course, but that doesn't mean streaming is bad. It's especially good for classic films.

Battlestar Galactica is a good choice, and is available for streaming in HD. It has all 4 seasons (split into how they were released on DVD). Also in the Sci-fi genre, there's Babylon 5 (I've yet to watch it; I don't know if they have all seasons or if it's in HD, but it is streaming). There's Firefly and Serenity. How about Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels? ? If you look, you can find plenty of good things to watch. Their DVD selection is way better, of course, but that doesn't mean streaming is bad. It's especially good for classic films.