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Netflix Users Experience Paradox of Abundance
prostoalex writes "The deal seems to be rather simple — you pay a monthly fee, receive a certain number of DVDs, and as soon as you watch them, and send them back, there's more coming. This simple model made Netflix into a $1.4 bln company, but now, Wall Street Journal reports, some Netflix users are experiencing the abundance paradox — the movies arrive, collect dust on the customer's desks, and then are sent back for the new set of movies to face the same fortune. From the article: "'It's a paradox of abundance,' said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. 'When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice.'"
We hav Zip.ca up here in Canada. It's kind of interesting to hear about this because I have a different approach to how I do things, and Zip's somewhat *ahem* silly queing system does have an option to make it useful: Park.
What I do is arrange on my active "Can send" list (Normal priority in Zip speak) the stuff I know I would watch, and then use ASAP priority to move up things I definitely will watch if I receive it. Anything else I feel I wouldn't watch, I send to the Parking lot (Park priotiy).
Arbitrarily ranking the queue (which I understand Netflix allows) is handy if you know you're going to watch things, but maybe they need to ask the user: I REALLY want to watch this, I wouldn't mind watching this, and "Eh, a friend told me i should watch it".
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Are you sure about that? that they're actually throttling people? i was under the impression that they put low-volume users higher in priority for disks compared to high-volume users for the same film, so you should only notice a slow-down if your queue is short and you've picked popular films.
Of course, I haven't had netflix in a while, so i guess they could've changed it or i've been mistaken, but I was a pretty heavy user when I did have it and never noticed any throttling. I did notice that the post office box I dropped the disks into seemed to affect the delivery time quite a bit though. I shaved off a day or two by dropping off at the main branch instead of my own.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
As a netflix users, yes, I can attest to the throttling. My wife and I had a feeling that was happening before I read the stories on /. We rent TV series on DVD and we easily go through 10 disks in a two weeks, thereby hitting the limit quickly. They slow down service by not acknowleging returned disks (it takes 2 business days in the beginning of the month and over 4 busniess days in the latter part--all being returned to the same local address.
Oh, and for the official gobbeldy-gook, go here http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse?hnjr=8#how and scroll down to Allocation. They don't make throttling a secret. The result of giving priority to low renters is slowing down top renters. Nevermind that top renters tend to go through DVD fast thereby keeping a scarce resource in circulation.
Oh, what I would give for an on-demand digital medium. I would gladly use it, DRM be damned.
http://replaylink.com/ is a service where you can purchase and then sell used DVDs (as well as CDs and video games). They send you postage paid mailers just like Netflix, so the convenience is about the same. The shipping and seller fee cost about the same as renting. Since you own the DVDs you keep them as long as you want and only pay for what you use. If you only watch a few movies a month or go on vaccation or something, it's cheaper than the Netflix subscription fee.
DVDShrink
Just copy them one after the other after the other and slide 'em into a disk wallet and when you get the urge just watch one.
I of course would never violate copyright law in such a flagrant fashion. Just saying...
Yup - a number of years ago I had my ISP screw up my billing and instead of withdrawing $29.95, they took out $350. I was a poor student then and their mistake caused me to bounce a bunch of checks and nearly miss my rent payment.
The bank said they could do nothing because I had granted the ISP EFT access to my account, and there was no way they could distinguish a valid transaction from an invalid one, so I'd have to talk to the ISP.
ISP said "Yup, sorry, our bad - we can fix it in 2-4 weeks". After a lot of complaining and going to supervisors I finally got someone to cut me a check for the refund and I picked it up in person.
Lesson learned. NOBODY gets direct access to my bank accounts. EVER.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle