Leaked Screenshots Show Netflix Downloads

Mike1024 writes "US DVDs-by-post company Netflix appears to be planning a service that will let users download movies over the internet. Hackingnetflix.com has some accidentally-revealed screenshots, and the Netflix jobs page includes a product manager position, saying "The Electronic Delivery Service (EDS) will augment Netflix's current DVD delivery model with high quality movies delivered to consumers' home TVs through the Internet, on a subscription basis". Apple's iTunes demonstrated many people are willing to live with some DRM and hardware/vendor lock-in."

Comments

Hopefully not overzealous

[jasonhamilton]

The problem with efforts like this is that they tend to be overzealous with the copyright efforts to make sure nothing is copied. Ultimately their efforts sabotage the product and no one buys.

What is interesting is that they are claiming internet downloads to be watched on TV - which is quite different than internet downloads to be watched on a computer.

That's a Lot Of Bits

[DanielMarkham]

Downloading movies seems like a lot of bits to push over the average consumer's pipe. Tie in a pre-constructed box for it (and who exactly wants to buy yet another home appliance when the computer will do?) and it sounds like an infrastructure mess.
I wonder if consumers will be happy waiting for hours while their movie is delivered? Especially if the Blockbuster is just around the corner. Of course, it beats going out, but at what price? Something about the business model just doesn't add up to me.

Night Of The Living Parrots

Re:That's a Lot Of Bits

[BioCS.Nerd]

I don't think there's a problem with bandwidth. What does your computer do all day with the bandwidth? Nothing. Most everyone has plenty of bandwidth to spare.

Especially if the Blockbuster is just around the corner. Of course, it beats going out, but at what price? Something about the business model just doesn't add up to me.

As another poster mentioned, Netflix is in cahoots with Tivo. As such, I'd expect TV and movie delivery over the 'net. I'm intrigued to see how they'll price it out. I'm not sure how much I'd be willing to pay to rent a show or movie via this mechanism. I would, however, be interested in purchasing movies and TV shows.

O/T Addendum: it just occurred to me that the Xscale processor would be more than able to handle video playback on a PSP-like device. Could this be further impetus for Apple's IBM -> Intel switch? i.e. a forth coming "Apple PSP", if you will, with ensuing iTMS service for movies/TV/games?

Re:That's a Lot Of Bits

[DogDude]

What I don't understand is why people put up with going to the store to rent a movie that turns out to be unusable so much of the time.

You should probably find a better video rental store. Our local stores (NOT a nationwide chain) do a *great* job keeping their DVD's in good shape, and giving refunds when any of it is fucked up. So, I don't know how big of a problem it is, or how difficult it is for a store to work around, but we have a local chain that handles it just fine.

Re:That's a Lot Of Bits

[iainl]

For a full Dual-Layer disc (and I really can't remember the last time I saw a retail movie come on a single layer) it's 9Gb, not 4, so the numbers are even worse.

Besides, basic broadband packages in the UK usually have monthly download limits in the ~3Gb range. So it's not the 24-hour wait for the download, it's the 30-day wait until your ISP will let you have the next one.

Re:That's a Lot Of Bits

[Mike Bridge]

you ever used netflix? you understand that queue thing? so lets say for this hypothetical download to a tivo box dealie, you can have 3 'active' movies at a time. once you delete one, you get the next one... which was already downloaded, since netflix already has your queue, so as long as they buffer a couple movies ahead on your queue list, the consumer would never see the actual downloading, and without extra (behind the scenes, audio tracks, etc), the basic movie would be still be large for decent picture quality, but still easily doable in 2-3 hours off the average broadband connection (coming from dedicated netflix servers that have the bandwidth to serve up the juice. or have the background downloads scheduled during the nonpeak times during the day)

Re:That's a Lot Of Bits

[stienman]

Using mpeg4 and supply barely broadcast quality (not even DVD quality, nevermind HDTV) means a typical 90 minute movie would run between 1/2 and 2 GB. At today's brodband speeds this will range from 40 minutes (500M @ 3Mbps) to 5 hours(2G @ 768Kbps).

The sweet spot will likely be right around 1.5Mbps broadband and under 1GB movie size. Delivery would take less time than watching the movie, and so you order the movie, let it buffer for 10-15 minutes while you pop popcorn, etc, then start streaming the movie.

Delivery isn't a concern as long as the bit rate of the movie is about half your download rate, and a 300Kbps bit rate is bearable, a 768Kbps stream is about what you expect for ok cable TV.

While they won't be delivering at great quality, they will be getting consumers by the ability to get content on demand, for low cost, with a huge selection. Even home theater buffs will use the service simply because it's more convenient than waiting for the disc in the mail or leaving the house to pick it up - especially if the local video store is out of copies. Further, it'll probably be similar to the current system, but limited somewhat since the mailing delay is not built in. Pay $17.99/mo to get 12 movies per month (about 3/week). You can only have up to three movies on your player at a time, and can watch them at any time until you fill the slot with another movie.

What would be really nice is if one could select the quality and trade off downlaod time for quality, as well as queuing up movies so they are available on the player at the time of release (new movies are released on tuesday - download starts at high quality monday afternoon and unlocks at midnight).

And if they get large enough to push at the movie studios they may even be able to get movies before video store release dates, and possibly simultaneous with theater release. But these are very unlikely, due to the huge video store market.

But the biggest change for NetFlix will be that they can (if they work out licensing correctly) get around the limitation of their current list system. Right now you won't necessarily get the movies you want in the order you prioritized them. With downloads there's no limit - you can get the movie you want, when you want it.

-Adam

Re:That's a Lot Of Bits

[Rude Turnip]

"That and they'd have 9000 copies of "Adam Sandler Acts Like A Total Fuckhead, And Women Still Spead Their Legs For Him" and one copy [MAYBE] of that obscure independent film I'd been looking for."

I've noticed that different Blockbusters will stock different titles based upon the neighborhood they're in. In my general area, there are three Blockbusters, one in each socioeconomic area: one in the upper class area, one in the middle class area and one in the lower class area. Having been to all three, it was very evident to me that the quality of selections slides downhill as you go down the economic ladder.

The "good" store has tons and tons of indie films, as well as all the popular and standard catalog titles. Large foreign, special interest and anime sections. Virtually all titles are DVD and widescreen-only. Only a small handful of VHS titles for much older and obscure films.

The "middle" store has a smaller selection of indie films. There are some foreign titles intermingled among the catalog stuff by genre (how it really should be, IMO). There is a greater emphasis on new release, pop culture titles and there are both widescreen (16:9) and full screen (4:3) DVDs. Most titles are on DVD only, but there is a visible amount of stuff on VHS still.

The "bottom" store has a significant focus on new release pop titles, with very little in the way of independent films. Good luck finding foreign films, regardless of quality or genre. Most of the older catalog titles are VHS, whereas the same titles are on DVD at the better stores.

The question is, does Blockbuster cater to the demands of the neighborhood they're in, or do they simply follow socioeconomic demographics (ie stereotypes) when they stock a store with videos?

BTW, the "middle" store recently shut its doors for good, which signals to me the widening gap between rich and poor in this country, but that's another discussion :)

Re:That's a Lot Of Bits

[Toby_Tyke]

Most good codecs can squeeze a movie down to 1.4 gigs or so, so downloading is entirely an option.

Have a look on any bit torrent site, and you'll see stacks of movies encoded using DIVX / XVID clocking in at around 700 MB. Say a few hours to download a full copy?

Re:That's a Lot Of Bits

[Damek]

Hey, I'm Adam, stop that!

Back to the topic, if Netflix did this, pretty much as you described, I'd actually stay with them. I joined up with them when I got four months free as an xmas gift last year. I've been enjoying working through a list of movies I've wanted to see, but once that's done I plan to cancel; I'm not a big movie watcher and hardly rented more than 3-4 movies a year before Netflix. I watch more with Netflix, but because of the slight delay, I find that upon receipt of a new disc I'm usually not in the mood I was when I put it on my list, so it sits around for a while, and, rarely, gets returned without watching so I can move on to the next item.

On-demand would solve that. The important thing would be selection, though. My local cable has an on-demand service (that I had for a year, and gave up to get a lower bill). It works OK but they only had a small selection of popular titles. I'd love to see even just half of Netflix's catalog made on-demand.

Especially TV shows. That's really the killer thing for me. I like watching old series I missed or picking out a few favorite episodes of shows I like. It's why most of the DVDs I own aren't movies but TV collections. If TV shows were on-demand, I'd jump on that service in an instant. For example, I just got into Farscape thanks to Netflix, and have made it almost all the way through the series in 5-6 months. I'd love to be able to watch it over again in the future, or at least just some of the best episodes, but the DVDs are too expensive to buy, and I'm not that into it. But if Netflix could on-demand the series, that'd be a perfect solution.

Too bad licensing issues will likely cripple the service to much less than what it could and should be.

I imagine such services will exist one day, but for another few decades at least, after the entertainment industry goes through a whole lot of shake-up.

Unintentinal "publishing" ala Harry Potter?

[putko]

This reminds me of that Canadian Harry Potter injuntion: until the book has been "published", you can't do stuff with it. So a Canadian court issued an injunction to those who got it early, saying they can't copy/sell or talk about the contents --- until it gets "published" --- 4-real, in a few days.

How is the unintentional "leaking" of information via a website any different? Can Netflix say they haven't "published" anything yet, and then have the DOJ beat you down for Copyright violations?

Greencine doing this already?

[Robotech_Master]

I subscribe to Greencine, and the little tear-off flier that you remove to convert the receiving mailer into the sending mailer has a little inset image of a DVD player with a "DivX Video" logo on it with the captions:

"IF YOU OWNED A DivX® Certified DVD PLAYER, YOU COULD HAVE WATCHED THIS MOVIE YESTERDAY!

"Download, burn, and enjoy GreenCine movies in hours with DivX VOD.

"FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT VOD.DIVX.COM/HOW"

Of course, when I try to go to that URL, it times out, so who knows?

I hope it is not exclusive to Tivo.

[Gannoc]

I reluctantly dropped Tivo a month ago to switch to the cable company's offering. My new DVR can record two HDTV channels simultaneously, while the Tivo hadn't seen significant updates since 2001. (Besides their HEAVILY DRMed copy to PC. You need to enter in a password everytime you watch a show.)

Hopefully someone will provide an inexpensive way to show these movies. Perhaps a small set-top device provided by netflix in exchange for a service contract that can download a movie or two for later viewing.

Re:Net downloads have their place

[durbnpoisn]

That's exactly what I was thinking. I don't think that the internet is quite ready for this kind of service. The bandwidth just isn't up to snuff yet.

Also, what's the difference between this and Pay-per-view? If the current system would upgrade to make more movies available, then there wouldn't be a need for Netflix to even do this at all...

I still am feeling mighty surprised that the video rental industry is slowly dying off. They really screwed themselves with that whole "late fee" thing. For all who don't know, that's where the real money was in rentals... Until, companies like Netflix made it much more cost effective for consumers to use their service.

Re:pretty cool

[treerex]

ideally i'd like to get movies through itunes, pay something reasonable like $4.99 for _just_ the movie no special stuff. IMO that would be as good a deal as the .99 per song thing.

So you think it is OK to pay $4.99 to download a 130 minute movie that you can then watch as often as you want? Weird.

I would expect a different pricing model, similar to the iTMS "books-on-tape", where the cost appears to be a function of the length of the book.

Will they be using BitTorrent for this....

[$cullyshouse]

or will they cut their noses off to spite their faces? (i.e. or spend loads of money on the extra bandwidth they need).

Re:Goodluck...

[anagama]

2. Find the video you want that is currently in. 10 minutes.

I used to have terrible times in a video store if I didn't know what I wanted to see before I went in. I would start browsing for something interesting, fail, keep browsing and browsing and browsing -- after a while nothing looks good at all. An hour later I'd leave with something picked out of frustration rather than desire. Netflix solved that problem for me -- I'll just load up my queue every now and then. It doesn't fix the problem of seeing random bad movies, but it does save me many hours of frustration standing around in the video store.

Re:Not necessarily

[zonker]

My ideal would be if I could take a netflix downloaded rental and play it on my TiVo. If I have to hook up a computer to my TV, it's a bit more of a hassle. I haven't been a NetFlix member for a while now because I got tired of discs piling up that I never got around to watching, but if I can download a movie in a few hours I may resubscribe.

I'm thinking out loud here but yeah, seems to me that TiVo ought to have a module that you can download to your unit that allows this function. Then you would either log in anywhere in the world to NetFlix using a browser and tell it to deliver the content to your TiVo box.

The same functionality could be designed into the TivO module with the TV front end to browse the NetFlix system and add movies to your queue. The TiVo would download the movies to its harddrive at its leisure and alert you when a movie is available for viewing.