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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."
As long as it's better than http://www.cinemanow.com/ Nothing worse than watching bad movies AND having to buffer every 5 minutes.
It's a screenshot of a login box. Exciting stuff.
This really shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone, since it was announced last fall that Tivo and Netflix had worked out some sort of agreement for downloadable movies...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
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.
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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
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?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
As the poster suggested, with the huge sales of iTunes it seems that DRM isn't something that a lot of consumers care about too much. Interesting as a lot of slashdotters seem to feel the opposite.
Apple's iTunes demonstrated many people are willing to live with some DRM and hardware/vendor lock-in.
People don't mind this as long as the DRM allows the consumer to do what they want with the media. As long as I can listen to my music when and where I want it's no problem. When the DRM is used to limit where and when I use what I purchased, that's when people get upset.
It will be interesting if netflix learned this. If I pay a fee and can only watch the movies when, where, and on what netflix decides, they won't get my money. We'll see.
How do we know this isn't a Photoshop hack?
And you can garuntee that the population will accept it because the consumer population will have no choice but to accept CSS and Macrovision and other forms of DRM.
They won't allow the viewing public to use the 1080i resolution unless they can lock in down as much as they can. However ethically repugnant and offensive it may be to someone informed.
Because its convienent, becausee its easy.
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?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
http://economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story _id=4149765
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.
Movielink has been doing downloadable Hollywood films for a long time now. Not sure why everyone overlooks them when talking about the iTunes Movie Store and NetFlix, but they've been in this game for a while.
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.
My site
My films
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.
or will they cut their noses off to spite their faces? (i.e. or spend loads of money on the extra bandwidth they need).
Rob http://scullyshouse.tblog.com
The screen capture also has the name of the new device: Netflix Player.
Mikek / http://www.hackingnetflix.com/
Netflix plans were also discussed in the economists this weeks issue. Here is a link to the an excerpt of the article :
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http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_i
I download movies from Starz Ticket on RealOne all the time. They don't have the latest or the greatest, but at any given time there are over 300 movies (plus all the extras you get on DVDs), and that's more than enough to choose from. A typical (500-600MB) movie takes about 25 minutes to download on my 10Mbps OptimumOnline connection. I play them on my PC, turn off the monitor and switch to the TV out display. Plus I can watch a live Stream of Starz (the channel) with more latest movies that aren't available on demand. I pay only $13 bucks a month for that.
So now, if Blockbuster can make it this simple for me without asking me to shell out more bucks for Tivo service, I'd jump ship... otherwise I'm happy with next day home delivery of DVDs with all those deleted scenes.
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
This could be good for Netflix customers, if they work out the techical and structure issues.
Personally, I want to be able to download certain shows and get the rest in standard DVD format. For example, if I rent an MST3K show then I don't care where I watch it - computer or TV - chances are good that I will only watch it once. A movie like Million Dollar Baby I want to watch on the large screen TV with the whole audio setup.
If they let me specify what shows to download vs. mailed DVDs then I will be very happy with the service. Otherwise I'll just stick to mailed DVDs that I can watch wherever I want.
Does anybody else see bittorrent playing a role in this movie download business model? Think of when a hit movie comes out in Blockbuster-they have walls of a single movie because they know that everyone will want it. Bittorrent would be perfect for a big release like this - thousands of people nationwide downloading the same file. Sounds good to me!
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
If Netflix and TiVO work this out correctly, this is going to jam a sharp stick in the eye of pay-per-view AND Blockbuster. It may not seem convenient to you at a quick glance, but I'm guessing you haven't re-organized your TV usage through a Tivo or Netflix subscription. I'm not criticizing you, but pointing out that this makes sense to people who have.
Sure, downloading a movie is annoying to satisfy an immediate whim craving for a film. That's where the local video store cannot be beat. The TiVO-Netflix partnership trounces the local video store in new releases, however. Blockbuster may carry 100 copies of Batman when it's eventually released on DVD and make a big promise about availability. But Blockbuster doesn't do this for the smaller movies that you and every other film nerd in your neighborhood want to see. It'll stock two copies that'll be perpetually checked out.
Online Netflix means that you'll be able to create wish lists prior to the release of movies on DVD so that you'll be assured of getting them the day of their release. When you turn on your TiVO, you'll be greeted with a list of movies that have already downloaded, so it's not some deal where you have to actively select an online movie and wait for it to be transmitted. Besides, with Fiber-to-the-home looming in the future as well as IP-over-electric lines, our bandwidth future will speed up the download process for that scenario.
Seth
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Movies to go Jul 7th 2005 From The Economist print edition
Can Netflix's Reed Hastings succeed in the battle to deliver movies online?
LATER this year, Netflix will launch a new service for downloading movies from the internet. "It will be underwhelming," promises Reed Hastings, chief executive of America's leading online DVD-rental company. Despite a recent ruling by America's Supreme Court that gives entertainment companies more ammunition to fight against illegal file-sharing, movie studios are likely to remain extremely cautious about what films they make available for a fee on the web.
For now, that suits Netflix. Mr Hastings believes that the humble DVD--and, eventually, high-definition versions of it--will remain popular for some time, not least because that is what the movie industry wants: sales of DVDs and fees from rentals are an essential source of the studios' profits from new releases. But Mr Hastings is also betting that by the time movie-download technology becomes more mature and online titles more widely available, his subscriber base for DVD rentals will be big enough to put Netflix in a strong position to prosper in the online marketplace--where he is likely to face new competitors such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, the studios themselves and, no doubt, many start-up firms offering rival download services.
Changes in technology encourage start-ups with innovative ideas to enter markets, just as Netflix did in 1999 when--having been stung with a $40 late-payment from a Blockbuster video-rental store--Mr Hastings launched its subscription service. He was already a successful entrepreneur, having built up a software company before he started Netflix. For its most popular service, Netflix charges users $17.99 a month for an unlimited number of DVD rentals. Titles are ordered via the company's website and dispatched overnight. Customers mail them back in a pre-paid envelope, which releases the next movie on a personalised list of films to see. Subscribers can have up to three DVDs out at any time. Needless to say, there are no late fees.
The Netflix business model has proved to be such a simple and highly effective combination of the online and offline worlds that it has spawned imitators in Britain, France, Germany, Australia and Japan. Netflix, which is based in Los Gatos, California, was about to launch in Britain last year when it decided it had better withdraw from going international, for now, in order to concentrate on a life-threatening war on its home front. The all-conquering retailer, Wal-Mart, and Blockbuster, the world's biggest chain of video-rental shops, both decided to offer online DVD rental at lower prices. Amazon has since started to experiment with a DVD-rental service in Britain--but has not yet launched a similar service in America, and some suspect it may instead team up with an existing competitor.
Certainly, the cost of entering the market has gone up. Netflix has slashed its own prices and launched a one DVD out at a time service for just $9.99 a month. In the past year its share price tumbled as investors saw profits being pumped into an aggressive marketing campaign (costing nearly 20% of its revenues). The company expects to make a net loss of $5m-15m this year. Nevertheless, Mr Hastings says Netflix has $175m in cash and no debt. "We can sustain this for a very long time," he adds. Indeed, Netflix is showing signs that it is getting the upper hand. In May, Wal-Mart pulled out, awarding its online DVD-rental business to Netflix. Yet, tempting as it might be, Mr Hastings declines to trumpet that Netflix beat the world's biggest retailer. Indeed, Wal-Mart's bosses say they merely took a strategic decision to focus on selling DVDs rather than renting them. Netflix and Wal-Mart will now promote each other's products.
Meanwhile, Blockbuster, which lost $1.2 billion last year, hopes
DRM only becomes a problem when it inhibits the actual use of the product. ITunes and the IPod have been wildly successful because the average person is almost totally unaware that there's DRM involved. They download music, it plays on their computer and it plays on their IPod so what do they care.
The most recent effort I saw for this was a service where you could download a movie file for a fee but could only play it within 30 days and once played it would only remain playable for like 24 hours. That's problematic. In this case though, I should think the downloads would be consistent with the NetFlix style of movie watching where you can have so many movies available at a time but for an unlimited time. If that's the case it will be far more viable.
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.
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Okay, so I'm a Blockbuster apologist (to a point) because I worked there for a while...
If the movie didn't come out in the last year, they probably don't have it. This is odd, since about ten years ago they used to have just about everything.
Ten years ago, they didn't have to try to stock all thier movies in two different formats. I was assistant manager of a store while they went through this transition, and trust me, hard decisions are made. Generally, the only movies we'd get rid of were either titles that haven't rented a single time in a full year, or additional copies of movies that don't rent often (pruning them down to two usually, which is the max that will fit neatly behind a single coverbox).
I actually saved a few non-renters that I knew were out of print and that I considered to be "must-haves," and convinced her to instead get rid of some occasional renters on VHS that we also stocked in DVD...better to have it only one format that neither.
I could go on, but I might get teary-eyed when I talk about how they used to have a copy of "Evil Dead" during the loooooong period of time it was out of print, but then they got rid of it to make room for more copies of the same 5 New Releases. It's too late... I promised myself I wouldn't cry...
Generally New Releases and "Favorites" (the old movies) don't compete for shelf space, though of course sometimes older movies get bumped when movies come down off the New Release wall. Still, are you sure they got rid of it (did you ask?) More likely, it was either stolen or destroyed by other customers...I could list several OOP titles that suffered one fate or the other in my store while I worked there. Yes, if they sold it off that's pretty bad, but it would take a pretty brain-dead manager to let that one happen.
Granted, I worked at a franchise rather than corporate, and in a small town...it's likely myself and the employees there cared a little more than the average BBV.
Blockbuster is a shitty store, I won't argue too much with that one. But it's pretty difficult to make everybody happy in a video store, which is why they focus on new releases...that's a category that's pretty easy to nail (generally).
On a side note, regarding the Police Academy and Cube examples...with Police Academy I wouldn't be surprised to find out the the original was out of print but the sequel wasn't...that does happen every now and then (Cannonball Run sticks out in my mind as an example, but I could be wrong). Though another problem you run into is that at BBV the store manager often has VERY little to do with what movies get ordered/replaced...they can request, if I remember correctly, but the final say comes from outside the store. And unfortunately district managers don't care if an indidual store carries "Police Academy"...especially in a bigger city, where another location is likely to have it anyway.
This is why I enjoyed a smaller video chain I worked at...their store managers were given an allowance monthly to order movies that they felt their store needed...it could be additional copies of something that was renting strongly locally, or some older movie that had been lost or stolen. Ours generally asked for suggestions from all the employees, and more often than not followed them. Good stuff.
Anyway, to make some sort of point, there is a reason that a large, centralized online rental company can carry a MUCH better selection than a chain that is trying to keep thousands of brick-and-mortar stores stocked.