Netflix To Offer Streaming-Only Service Plans

MojoKid writes "Debates are raging as to what the future of movie distribution will look like. There are those who claim that physical discs, like DVDs, Blu-ray, and whatever format will eventually supplant Blu-ray, will always deliver a superior viewing experience versus anything that will be available via streaming. Pundits on the other side of the debate say that as broadband's footprint continues to expand, quality is improving. Interestingly, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is siding firmly with the latter camp, and it would even appear that Netflix is gearing up to move all of its eggs from the mail-distribution basket to the online streaming basket. Hastings indicated that perhaps as soon as later this year or sometime in 2010, Netflix might start offering online-streaming-only subscription plans beyond just its current Starz plan."

Comments

ok

[Starteck81]

I think that's a great idea but they need to get a much larger part of their DVD library avilable on the streaming side before that will become popular.

Re:ok

[NeverVotedBush]

I don't remember where I saw it - probably somewhere when I was researching the Roku player - but there was something about the reason NetFlix didn't have the newest releases was due to noncompete in their contracts. The DVD/studio people want time to market the DVDs to consumers.

With pay per view and DVD rentals, there is apparently a payment made that keeps them happy. I don't know if that is currently true with the stuff NetFlix streams. What they offer on streaming might be pretty similar to what is made available through broadcast TV.

I could see this as an opportunity for NetFlix to offer a tiered subscription, though. Free streaming of older, less mainstream stuff, and then pay a higher subscription price for the same stuff they mail out on DVDs. Maybe they are waiting on a sufficiently large installed base of NetFlix streaming compatible players.

Not to malign what they offer through streaming - I am a long way from running out of movies and such that I want to see that are already available.

Re:ok

[commodore64_love]

>>>I think that's a great idea

I don't. My internet connection only offers 0.8 megabit/s quality, while Bluray averages ~40 megabit/s, Clearly the physical option offers the best picture quality, and also the cheapest option ($180/year for internet versus $0 to have amazon.com deliver the discs to me). Plus the convenience of owning the TV show or movie for multiple viewings.

Re:ok

[porcupine8]

No kidding. I have mostly TV shows on my queue - I believe that currently something like 8 out of 110 discs in my queue is available for instant viewing. Which doesn't actually matter, since it still doesn't work on Macs. I think it'll be a long time before they get to a point anywhere near dropping the DVD service.

Re:ok

[ehinojosa]

Actually, Netflix made streaming to Macs available late last year. Unfortunately, it requires you to install MS Silverlight, which is pretty irritating to many Apple aficionados.

Re:ok

[daseinw]

Actually it's been working on Macs since October of 2008...fyi.

Re:ok

[porcupine8]

Ah - Silverlight doesn't work on 10.3.9, which is what I have.

Re:ok

[WuphonsReach]

BlueRay only requires 40 megabits/sec if you're using the old, outdated MPEG2 codec.

More modern codecs can give you that level of quality in anywhere from 1.5-3.0 megabits/sec. DVD quality can probably fit into a 768 kbit/sec stream, maybe as low as 600 kbit/sec.

Re:ok

[CharlieHedlin]

I have had Blueray at 30mbit on mpeg4. I'm sure its overkill, but the stuff at 1.5-3 is sub par.

How exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

can Blu-ray supplant itself?

Re:How exactly

[narcberry]

Re-read the summary about 3 times, like the rest of us, and it will start to make grammatical sense.

"all their eggs"

[Anonymous Coward]

Offering a streaming-only option IN ADDITION TO their regular mail+streaming option isn't putting all their eggs in one basket. In fact, it's the opposite. They're offering their customers more diverse options.

Re:"all their eggs"

[perlchild]

Exactly...

In fact Netflix may just be showing us the future of content monetization.

Offer, for a fee, media people are willing to pay for, not based on your technology choices, leave it, as much as possible, to them.

Netflix has the distribution platform, check, the client base, check, the mindshare, check. They are waiting for the MPAA licenses etc... But as long as they give more freedom to the consumer(not necessarily for free) and keep it as much a "I gave you my money, I just want it to work" experience, they will print money with it.

Re:"all their eggs"

[Mozk]

I do not think monetization means what you think it means.

Not ready for prime time

[thered2001]

I've used the Netflix service and I'd have to say the quality is OK but not nearly good enough to replace DVDs. It's especially poor at the beginning of films. And while they have a lot of titles, there are still notable absences.

In my experience, Fox TV's service is far better w/r/t quality. It frequently looks as good as DVDs.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[cyberprophet]

If you manually set the bit-rate of the Netflix stream the quality will be better and more consistent though you may have to wait for it to buffer.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[SlashdotOgre]

Have you only viewed it on a computer (which limits you to standard def), or have you actually used one of the third party devices that connect to HDTV's and support HD streams? I have both an Xbox 360 and a Tivo Series 3, they each support Netflix's streaming service in HD, and they both look fantastic. Now not everything is in HD, but at least most new TV series (Heroes, The Office, etc.) are all supported. Even non-HD stuff looks pretty good, although again that may just be due to the Tivo or Xbox 360, since they don't support Linux, I really can't comment too much on the desktop.

I signed up in November when the Xbox 360 started supporting it, I'm on their lowest plan (1 DVD out at a time), and haven't even watched one disk. However I've finished two seasons of the office, and watched a handful of movies through streaming. If they offered a streaming only plan for like $5.99-7.99 a mo I would downgrade to it immediately.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[NeverVotedBush]

How do you set the bit rate? I haven't seen it in the Roku menus. I have set my screen type which I am sure would affect bit rate. Is that what you mean or is this on a different player?

Re:Not ready for prime time

[NeverVotedBush]

I have the Roku player and pipe it into a Sony HDTV. It looks beautiful on most Netflix offerings.

Even with the HD offerings, though, the quality isn't as good as a DVD in my upconverting DVD player but it is better than non-digital cable or broadcast.

I love my Roku player and it's probably the best $100 I've spend on entertainment. I've also been watching the various TV series (Star Trek is in HD too), lots of documentaries (History Channel, PBS, etc) and some movies. It is certainly easily watchable.

There are some artifacts in the images, though, especially when the screen is mostly one color or shade - you will see the digitization as blockiness. But that's generally not an issue and easily overlooked for the kind of viewing I use the Roku for.

I have the single DVD but unlimited tradeouts (which gets me free streaming), and anything I want to see in really high quality, I just get as a mailed DVD. I can wait a day or two.

Other than that, the only other issue I've seen is on Saturday evenings, the image quality can go down a little but I think that is due to heavy load on the NetFlix servers or through network choke points near them.

As an aside, I started out with the Roku on a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection through Qwest. During movies, the load held fairly constant at about 1.3 Mbps. With so little headroom, and since I've been pining for faster speeds anyway, I upgraded my service to 7 Mbps. Now, instead of a constant 1.3 Mbps, I see pulses of download traffic up to around 5-6 Mbps and then periods of no activity in between. The average still comes out around 1.3 Mbps.

But I have no problem recommending streaming NetFlix and I love the little Roku player.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[The Great Pretender]

Our house uses a combination of netflix (3 DVD's plus a lot of streaming) and hulu, which accesses most things that we would want. We pump that through the xbox 360 with playon and my LCD TV has a built in digital tuner. To be perfectly honest I have very little reason to have cable and the quality coming out of the xbox to the screen is as good as anything we used to get on cable (we don't need HD). I should say that HULU is better quality in most cases than Netflix, but both appear to be as good as the delivered Netflix DVDs. (Note: Comcast as ISP with 17+ (sometimes 23-26) download speed)

Re:Not ready for prime time

[TooMuchToDo]

You haven't tried the Roku box with the HD update. The quality is on par with 480p. Amazing.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[NeverVotedBush]

Regarding not needing cable, I recently updated my Roku firmware and it mentioned that Amazon was going to also be streaming through the Roku and they were going to be streaming network TV as well.

From the Roku "What's New" menu page:

By now you've noticed our new Home screen. This screen will become your launching pad for a number of great new channels that will begin to appear on your player in early 2009. In addition to the hugely popular Netflix channel, you'll see new movie channels, TV channels, web video channels and more!

We've also upgraded your player to support an advanced video format that will deliver better video quality, especially over slower Internet connections.

Finally, your player is now fully HD capable. If you have an HDTV, select "update display type" below to get the full HD experience. (Tip: visit www.netflix.com/instantHD for HD movies from Netflix.)

Re:Not ready for prime time

[Tintivilus]

I also signed up for the 1-DVD plan just for access to the streaming library via my Tivo HD. When it works, it looks pretty good... but maybe 20% of the titles I've tried to watch have *horrible* problems. I don't mean "zomg it's not HD" sort of problems, but things like audio and video being out of sync by multiple seconds, or the video looks like an analog-scrambled premium channel.

For DVDs they have a "Report a Problem" button right in your queue and respond very quickly to any issue, but streaming video seems to be a best-effort, take-it-or-leave-it sort of proposition. If the quality were a little more consistent maybe I'd consider dropping the DVDs by mail, even with the current limited streaming selection.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[Lumpy]

the fast foreward and rewind also suck massively. It's ok for a film you dont know about, but I still out anything I really want to watch in my que for home delivery.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need FF & rewind, you shouldn't be streaming *that* kind of movie.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody seems to comment on the video quality which, don't get me wrong, deserves talking about, but audio is also a huge part of it. There is no doubt in my mind that we will get more an more HD video before any providers consider multichannel audio. While I welcome this direction (as I don't have a Blu-ray player and have no intentions of getting one anytime soon), the fact that 2-channel is the only audio available for streaming is what truly makes DVD my preference for viewing.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[the eric conspiracy]

The video is not on a quality level with a good upconverted DVD, and the sound is still only two channel. And it is bogs years behind some of the new BluRay players with interpolated deep color and DTS-MA audio.

Not to mention that the catalog available does not compare. Ar the studios going to give up on physical DVD sales? Seems unlikely to me.

Netflix may want to move to streaming exclusively, but I think that many of their customers will have differing ideas.

Personally I think Netflix may be jimping the shark here.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[TooMuchToDo]

Well there's your problem. You care more about quality. I don't. I rarely pick Blu-ray when I have a choice (and Blu-ray player/disc sales seem to indicate I'm in the majority). I'd prefer more content cheaper than higher quality content. Ooooh, only two channel sound. So? I'll enjoy what Netflix can offer and get content they or Hulu don't have through other methods.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[The Grim Reefer2]

Netflix may want to move to streaming exclusively, but I think that many of their customers will have differing ideas.

Actually I think Netflix is more interested in augmenting their current plans with a streaming only option. The summary is, well, contradictory to say the least. The second to last sentence which states that "it would even appear...to move all of its eggs..." Is followed up by, "Hastings indicated that perhaps as soon as later this year or sometime in 2010, Netflix might start offering online-streaming-only subscription plans". To me this doesn't sound like they're ireally in a hurry to implement this, let alone gearing up to dump the mailing service all together.

Personally I think Netflix may be jimping the shark here.

More like the summary screwed the pooch.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[Kadin2048]

I disagree completely with the quality assessment.

I have never viewed anything on a computer (and have no desire to), but I own a Roku hooked up to a 720p projector and the quality out of it is fantastic in HD mode. I have a standard 3Mbit cable modem connection from Comcast and it has never dropped out of HD mode on any show that has it as an option.

I can't compare the service to Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) because I don't have a player, but it's an obvious step up from DVD. The SO and I watched the first season of Heroes on DVD, and recently started watching the second season in HD on the Roku, and have been very impressed at the difference. If you look closely and know what to look for, you can sometimes see compression artifacts, but it's better than most "HD" programming on digital cable.

The SD programming is inferior to a DVD but not by much; it's the sort of thing I'll notice but most non-geeks don't. It's better than NTSC (analog) cable, at least in my opinion. It's not bad for watching TV shows and 'popcorn flicks' that aren't all about the photography or visual spectacle.

If your only experience of Netflix's streaming service has been on a computer or through their browser-based service, I would give the Roku a fair shot and view it practically as a separate deal altogether.

I didn't give two squirts to the idea of streaming video until we got the Roku; now I'm open to the possibility that it may be the future if they can knock down or subsidize the initial investment. I wouldn't be surprised if within the next few years, we start to see Netflix do some sort of cellphone-esque contracting program, giving you a free Roku (or other streaming box) in return for a 1 or 2-year commitment.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[socsoc]

I'd prefer more content cheaper than higher quality content. Ooooh, only two channel sound. So?

I'd say that you are definitely in the /. minority on that one, how's that AM radio treating you?

Re:Not ready for prime time

[tgibbs]

I use the streaming quite a bit. I'll wait for Blu-ray disks to arrive in the mail, but there are plenty of older titles available in DVD quality. The often-imperceptible improvement in quality is not worth waiting for mail delivery of the physical disk. Aside from the limited streaming catalog, the major negative is the unavailability of DVD extras.

It is obvious that streaming is not going to completely replace physical disks in the short term, and there is no indication of Netflix discontinuing its physical disk delivery program. But I think that Netflix's vision of online delivery gradually replacing disks is accurate, and they are wise to establish themselves as the leaders in this area.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[yodleboy]

with my 65" 1080p DLP, blu-ray, 7.1 surround system i've come to the conclusion that a crappy hi-def movie is still crappy. unfortunately, crap reigns supreme in Hollywood these days. endless mediocre remakes of mediocre movies. The quality of transfer to BR is also extremely hit or miss. yes, some of that is related to the quality of the source, but too many BR movies look like someone recorded a stream from the regular dvd played on an upconverting player...

No, my Roku box isn't the best quality picture sometimes, but if the movie/tv show/concert is enjoyable, I've found the image quality isn't as important to me. My only REAL complaint is the selection is only a fraction of the Netflix catalog.

Re:Not ready for prime time

[rainsford]

It's a trade-off. It's almost 11 PM right now. If I suddenly get the urge to watch a particular movie right now, the fact that I could see it on Blu-ray with higher resolution and multiple channels of high quality sound is totally useless to me, because the Blu-ray disk is sitting on the shelf at Best Buy...which is closed. Sure, all else being equal, I'd rather get higher quality picture and sound. But all else is NOT equal, because streaming offers a convenience that a physical or broadcast medium can't possibly match. And the reason on-demand delivery is being deployed at such a glacially slow pace is because content providers KNOW how vastly superior it is for consumers, and they're absolutely terrified of the loss of control it represents for them.

Support more Systems

[JackieBrown]

With Hulu letting us watch on our Linux boxes, will Netflix move towards this as well if this is going to be their new distrubution model?

I hope so.

Playon does not help us.

Re:Support more Systems

[iminplaya]

Hulu and several other media sites don't work outside the US, and finding an adequately responsive proxy is a bigger pain than I thought.

Re:Support more Systems

[at_slashdot]

Netflix doesn't have ads, Hulu has. I moved away from TV to Netflix exactly because of ads.

Re:Support more Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Hulu has like five 30 second ads per episode.

Cry me a river.

Re:Support more Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

and how long until ads are added? Remember when they got added to VHS tapes and now added to DVD's? At least the newer Disney DVD's have "fastplay" so that a few trailors play then movie starts with no need for remote but other other DVD's you can't skip trailors, or ads, and especially can't skip or ffwd thru the stupid WARNING message.

The future

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks a lot like http://thepiratebay.com/ today only with fibre optic broadband.

Re:The future

[rainsford]

What really amuses me about sites like the Pirate Bay and other less well known torrent sites is that they're basically a bunch of random guys who have developed a more comprehensive and user friendly content delivery system than the entire multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. Of course the goal of torrent sites is to deliver content to users, while the goal of media companies is to protect at all costs their existing revenue streams.

I think...

[uxbn_kuribo]

Maybe they should focus on making their software work on Firefox. I mean, hell, it works on XBox360. Now what could Xbox360 possibly have in common with Internet Explorer?

Re:I think...

[mail2345]

The amount of users?
Or perhaps the amount of "bonuses"/"punishments" that Microsoft gives to companies.

Re:I think...

[Firethorn]

I've been running netflix on firefox without any problems; you just have to install the silverlight plugin

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blog.netflix.com/2008/10/opt-in-for-new-netflix-movie-player.html

Re:I think...

[_ivy_ivy_]

It doesn't work on Firefox? To think that I've been using it for all this time with it...

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Silverlight?

But it works on Tivo too, so that would imply a working Silverlight 2 on Linux...

Re:I think...

[superslacker87]

I mean, hell, it works on XBox360. Now what could Xbox360 possibly have in common with Internet Explorer?

Umm.... Microsoft?

Re:I think...

[stfvon007]

It works fine on firefox, and has for about a month with the silverlight plugin. It may even be usable on linux soon when moonlight 2.0 comes out.

Comcast

[nurb432]

That is my ISP, need i say more?

Re:Comcast

[Belial6]

Apparently there is a solution to the Comcast problem. The solution is to call their business line. I just switched to them because my old ISP could not provide reliable service, and what I found out was that, at least in my area, all of the packet filtering and packet forging is restricted to "residential" accounts. I run my own mail server, and spent the first month pounding the connection with bittorrent. I would download Linux distros and then just delete them so that I could stress test the connection before disconnecting my old service. I pretty well saturated my 6mb line for almost an entire month with no noticable slow downs. There were a few times that it went down to 4mb, but there were a few times that it was a fast as 10mb, so on a whole the speed was what I would think I should expect.

I know that Comcast treats different customers in different areas differently, and I would rather use someone else just to keep choices available, but since I had no other choice, I can't really complain about what I am getting. At the time I signed up, the residential rates were $40/month and the business rates were $60/month. I am now paying $70/month because I needed 4 static IP addresses. (which are officially available to business accounts)

Not trying to convince anyone to switch here. Just saying that if you MUST go with Comcast, make a point to check out their business offerings, even if you are only going to use it for residential uses. For me, the extra $20/month is well worth not having to worry about the shady practices they pull on residential accounts.

Re:Comcast

[jtgd]

Right, and a Blu-Ray is what? 50GB? 5 of those and you're done for the month.

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Just saying that if you MUST go with Comcast, make a point to check out their business offerings, even if you are only going to use it for residential uses. For me, the extra $20/month is well worth not having to worry about the shady practices they pull on residential accounts.

But, you are forgetting that most people were taken in byt the "unlimited" part of the ISP advertising. so why should they have to pay MORE to utilize the connection they've already bought?

Where I live, one of the major ISPs is planning on rolling out bandwidth capping later this year, and the other has been testing it in Texas. If Netflix goes to a Streaming-only plan...then I guess it's bye-bye Netflix, welcome back Blockbuster.

Unwatchable

[pete-classic]

Between the video quality and the quality of the selection, "watch instantly" is just about unwatchable.

The visual quality doesn't even begin to compare to DVD. There's a huge gap to make up to even consider comparing it with Bluray.

The question is, does a significant portion of the movie watching population care? It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

-Peter

Re:Unwatchable

[Killer Orca]

The video quality really depends on how the show/movie was filmed and your connection.

When I watched Season 3 episodes of Heroes and my connection was at the peak the episodes were streaming HD and they looked good, not as good as over-the-air but nothing too shabby, but when I watched with a medium connection, the quality on the TV went down but was acceptable; not on the computer though very noticeable.

Re:Unwatchable

[timeOday]

The question is, does a significant portion of the movie watching population care? It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I consider this whole issue almost moot, since we already know how it will play out: streaming video will win.

Selection: It's obvious why selection will be so much greater without having to carry huge inventories of discs.

Image quality: again, it's only a matter of time. Online, software-based formats will have better quality since they can more easily evolve. For me this is already the case; since I haven't bought a blu-ray, the only way to get better-than-dvd quality is by downloading something in high-def and watching on a laptop. Bandwidth seems like a big-issue at the moment, but compared to the text-only Internet of the early 90's, we're already about 90% of the way there.

So what is this whole discussion about? Whether supplanting discs with streaming will take two years vs. five years?

Re:Unwatchable

[moosesocks]

I'll concur with this.

My (completely unscientific) observation was that Netflix HD streaming is about on par with a DVD. Because it presumably uses VBR encoding, some scenes are better than what you'd see on a DVD, and some are a bit worse.

Overall, however, the quality's considerably better than what you'd see via a analogue SD broadcast, comparable to a DVD, but worse than a true 1080i HD broadcast. Given the convenience, this is "good enough" for me, especially considering that it's fairly easy to bump up the video quality without having to change the hardware.

Re:Unwatchable

[Anonymous Coward]

Between the video quality and the quality of the selection, "watch instantly" is just about unwatchable.

What's wrong with the selection? You get to see real cinema instead of the facile pabulum you're fed at the theaters.

Re:Unwatchable

[ghjm]

Riddle me this, though: Why do people buy DVDs when nearly all of them are available through Netflix for less money? If buying DVDs is a financially worse option, why do so many people do it? For that matter, before Netflix, why did people ever buy DVDs rather than rent them from Blockbuster?

The answer is: Because for emotional reasons they want ownership of the DVD. Renting or borrowing from Netflix is temporary. They want to put the DVD in their collection and have it always and forever available whenever they want to watch it.

How exactly are streaming services going to satisfy this?

Re:Unwatchable

[The Grim Reefer2]

The question is, does a significant portion of the movie watching population care?

Judging by the number of HD televisions I've seen set to vertically stretch SD programming to fill the screen, I'm not to sure the general public will care.

Re:Unwatchable

[timeOday]

for emotional reasons they want ownership of the DVD... How exactly are streaming services going to satisfy this?

Probably by letting people save a copy for an additional fee, just as iTunes lets you burn to CD. There is no new ground to break here.

Re:Unwatchable

[socsoc]

Do you mean horizontally stretch?

Re:Unwatchable

[leabre]

Actually, for me, one who likes to own DVD's, I'm okay to ditch the collection as long as I can stream it online. I've been aching for a way to pay some fee (I'd rather not pay-per-view), and have access to a complete inventory of content I can watch/stream anytime I want. To me, that is the same as having it on my shelf, albeit I'm at the mercy of my ISP and Net Nuetrality. I'm also at the mercy of the content provider to change their pricing structure and limit availability of certain content to which I'll be interested. Also, Netflix doesn't stream the "extras" but not that I care, I don't watch them most of the time, anyway. But in DVD's that have A and B versions of a scene, Netflix doesn't provide that also.

My larger point though, is eventually someone will have a complete library of content that I can subscribe to and stream whenever I choose, and for me, that is the same as having a complete library of DVD's, and is more cost-effective then renting the media or buying the media and eliminates the desire to pirate the media (for many I'm sure, but not everyone).

Re:Unwatchable

[Anonymous Coward]

Video Quality: I stream on my XBox 360 all the time from Netflix, I was getting 720p for most of the night last night. Netflix's service degrades automatically if it ever has to buffer. I don't use their new browser player, but I understand it works on Linux. I had to call my local Netflix support center and speak to a rep (spoke english and lived near me) about how to enable the new player on my computer, I don't know if they've made it more brain dead, but he was able to give me a URL that had a big fat "Enable" button in the middle of the page and that's all it took.

Selection: They need to add far more new releases, but if you like TV shows minus the commercials you literally have weeks of 24x7 watching ahead of you, not to mention tons of movies. Last I checked they were putting up Heroes episodes the day after they aired on TV. The selection is mostly going to depend on taste, that's about it.

In addition they have a way to work throw their site just for Instant Watch (or whatever it's called) material. I hear their service sucked when launched, but I can assure you it's been top notch since they launched the new XBox 360 dashboard in Nov. of last year (the new dashboard allowed the Netflix streaming app for XBox 360).

Enormouse Amounts of Material

[HTH NE1]

"Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens...? They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on.... [W]hen you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts in... enormous amounts of material."
-- United States Senate Commerce Committee Chairman

ROUS Amounts of Material

[HTH NE1]

enormous amounts of material.

Yeah, couldn't have managed to spell that in the subject correctly as well, could I.

Re:ROUS Amounts of Material

[houstonbofh]

It could have been a pun... Roars like a lion. Fights like a mouse... :)

Re:ROUS Amounts of Material

[DrSkwid]

Enromouse is a character in The Beano strip The Nibblers

NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Registered Coward v2]

The real challenge is how do you give users the flexibility to watch multiple movies at the same time or watch without an active internet connection?

BB advantage is that not only do you get videos by mail but you can return at stores for an instore rental plus 2x month I get free game/video rental coupons. As a result, BB is a better deal since I get about 2x the DVDs at a time, plus a large mail back catalog of stuff not in the store. As a result, I get the latest releases from the B&M and the older stuff by mail. BB has so far leveraged the online/ B&M model quite well with something NetFlix can't match. So for only a few bucks more than NetFlix I get a better deal.

The challenge I see for NetFlix is dealing with the moves towards bandwidth caps - a movie a night is likely to rapidly push people to the cap; and they are likely to be mad at NetFlix, not their ISP. As a result, I see pressure form larger ISPs, at least, to pressure NetFlix in paying for bandwidth or working out a revenue split where NetFlix is bundled with the service.

Of course, once WalMart buys NetFlix and RedBox all bets are off for BB. You read it here first.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Anonymous Coward]

I can watch (for example) an A-Team/Knight Rider marathon anytime I want over the tubes from Netflix and I don't have to pay extra for it. I'm also pretty sure Netflix doesn't censor its movies.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[at_slashdot]

Why would I be mad at Netflix because my ISP set too low bandwidth limits?

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[jcnnghm]

The challenge I see for NetFlix is dealing with the moves towards bandwidth caps - a movie a night is likely to rapidly push people to the cap; and they are likely to be mad at NetFlix, not their ISP. As a result, I see pressure form larger ISPs, at least, to pressure NetFlix in paying for bandwidth or working out a revenue split where NetFlix is bundled with the service.

That's precisely why cable ISPs have been pursuing bandwidth caps so aggressively, and net neutrality is so vital.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[shmlco]

Net neutrality is about treating all of the bytes and protocols the same. Caps and pay-per-use are different animals entirely.

And personally, I think ISPs should be able to shape traffic so that video streaming and VIOP have priority over email and http, which in turn is handled before unanttended background crap like torrents are delivered.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Registered Coward v2]

Why would I be mad at Netflix because my ISP set too low bandwidth limits?

I think most internet users will see it as a content provider, not ISP issue. At any rate; they'll be faced with "pay an additional $25/month for higher caps" (about what it is in my area) or forgo NetFlix d/ls. My guess how that will play out?

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Registered Coward v2]

Net neutrality is about treating all of the bytes and protocols the same. Caps and pay-per-use are different animals entirely.

And personally, I think ISPs should be able to shape traffic so that video streaming and VIOP have priority over email and http, which in turn is handled before unanttended background crap like torrents are delivered.

Of course, if they can shape traffic (I'm no saying that's good or bad) then they can shape "preferred providers" preferentially; degrading service for companies that don't kick in some cash

Now, if they could shape classes of traffic such as VOIP / video but had to do it on a non-preferential basis with the class then I'd say that is an idea worth exploring.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Anonymous Coward]

But cable providers imposing caps gives an anti-competitive advantage to the content they provide as cable subscription services. We need ISPs that aren't also in the content business themselves.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Anonymous Coward]

But Netflix's advantage is they don't have to pay for stores and store employees.

That's why they are profitable and blockbuster is slowly fading away. Smaller cities near here don't even have video rental stores anymore.

Broadband caps need to be stopped by government regulation or actual competition in that market. I'm fine with caps as options, but this idea of controlling customers has got to stop.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[ion.simon.c]

I think most internet users will see it as a content provider, not ISP issue.

I really doubt this. Back when I was using dial-up at my parents house (in 1997), my computer-illiterate father didn't blame our ISP when they charged us extra for going over our hourly limit... he blamed the folks in the house who pushed us over said limit.

Also, your ISP has put a price tag on add'l bandwidth? Who's your provider?

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Anonymous Coward]

i had blockbuster and hated it. Instead of adding features they kept taking them away. BB deserves to die. Netflix is growing and BB shrinking for a reason

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Anonymous Coward]

And why would your crappy tv show be more important than my email?

Besides that, there will a torrent-variant whose traffic looks exactly like a video stream sooner than you can say slartibardfast

It needs to be completely neutral, or all is lost.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Registered Coward v2]

I think most internet users will see it as a content provider, not ISP issue.

I really doubt this. Back when I was using dial-up at my parents house (in 1997), my computer-illiterate father didn't blame our ISP when they charged us extra for going over our hourly limit... he blamed the folks in the house who pushed us over said limit.

I think your comment illustrates my point - ISP limits will not be seen as an ISP issue but rather a content issue and thus limit the use and or adoption of high bandwidth using services such as videos. We currently have pretty much unlimited usage for a flat rate; but that's really because most users don't use a lot of bandwidth. I think ISP's will need to be clearer about caps and limits and the pricing of added use; but I think people will look at the pricing and decided movies are not worth an extra XX dollars and let NetFlix try to sort out the model. That's why I say it's a content provider, not ISP issue.

Caps actually work in ISP's favor if they are also in the video business since they can stream video over their line without having the customer worry about internet usage; that's why I see a NetFlix / cable company hookup a more viable business model.

Also, your ISP has put a price tag on add'l bandwidth? Who's your provider?

It's a major provider; right now pricing is tiered by speed; not use although there is probably a high use clause in my service agreement (I mainly do email so it's not an issue for me).

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[jamstar7]

Comrade, you seriously need to get out more.

Or watch Startrek/BSG/Charlie Jade marathons...

Remember, in Soviet Russia, TV watches you, covered in Natalie Portman's hot grits...

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[ion.simon.c]

I think your comment illustrates my point - ISP limits will not be seen as an ISP issue but rather a content issue...

That wasn't my point at all. My father knew that my ISP offered higher monthly limits for more cash. He also knew how much monthly usage he signed up for, and the rate for exceeding that usage.
My point is that he didn't say "Oh, those damn web sites, why don't they make everything smaller so it downloads quicker?" He said "All right, family. If you want to spend more time on the Internet, you have to fork out the cash to do so." He didn't focus on the ISP or the content. He focused on the terms of the service agreement that he entered into.
Did it limit our usage of New Media? Yes. I don't see how you can point the finger at the content providers, though.

Caps actually work in ISP's favor if they are also in the video business...

Aye. I know this. Most of slashdot probably knows this as well. :) Most of slashdot probably wishes that the cablecos would drop analogue cable and do everything over IP... we *might* end up getting either cheaper or faster access.

Also, your ISP has put a price tag on add'l bandwidth? Who's your provider?

It's a major provider; right now pricing is tiered by speed; not use

I'm confused. *Does* your ISP currently have a "pay $25/mo for higher caps" policy in your region?

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Registered Coward v2]

I think your comment illustrates my point - ISP limits will not be seen as an ISP issue but rather a content issue...

That wasn't my point at all. My father knew that my ISP offered higher monthly limits for more cash. He also knew how much monthly usage he signed up for, and the rate for exceeding that usage. My point is that he didn't say "Oh, those damn web sites, why don't they make everything smaller so it downloads quicker?" He said "All right, family. If you want to spend more time on the Internet, you have to fork out the cash to do so." He didn't focus on the ISP or the content. He focused on the terms of the service agreement that he entered into. Did it limit our usage of New Media? Yes. I don't see how you can point the finger at the content providers, though.

Which is why I say that this is ultimately a content provider, not ISP, issue even though ISP's are the ones who will cap usage. If it slows the adoption of the services then the content providers will either have to find ways to either:

Lessen the size of downloads; which for videos would result in some degradation of the quality; or,

find a way to pay providers for the extra bandwidth.

Why do I say pay providers rather than get users to pay for excess usage? Let's use Comcast's announced 250GB cap as an example. That's about 30HD movies. Other services are talking much lower caps, from 5 - 40 GB - which isn't enough to watch many movies, even at DVD quality. While none have announced tiered pricing; Comcast was rumored to want $15 for each extra 10GB. That's roughly an extra $11 per HD movies; a price I doubt most people would pay.

Get one bill with unexpected overage charges and I bet most consumers respond by cutting back on usage; not looking for a higher tier usage rate.

In the end, the ISP's have the content providers over a barrel since they control the pipe and people are likely to look to the content provider as the way to control usage rather than the ISP. While they may not say "make the d/l's smaller," the end result is less usage and business challenges for providers, not ISPs.

So, in the end, the content providers are the ones who will suffer from caps not the ISP.

Regards my provider - as far as I can tell my service is tiered by speed, not usage but I probably don't get above a few GB/month usage.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[stephanruby]

BB advantage is that not only do you get videos by mail but you can return at stores for an instore rental plus 2x month I get free game/video rental coupons. As a result, BB is a better deal since I get about 2x the DVDs at a time, plus a large mail back catalog of stuff not in the store.

With the Netflix online offering, I'm watching 5x the number of movies I would normally watch. Netflix has not only replaced Blockbuster, it has also completely replaced TV. And since I'm on DSL, I have no risk of getting my bandwidth capped, in fact my DSL provider just doubled my speed while keeping the price the same -- since the technology is improving in that area. Now, I guess that if I had cable, I might have a problem, but I really doubt it. If I had cable, I would probably be watching a lot more cable, and so my consumption of Netflix movies would be automatically smaller. And as it stands, Netflix doesn't censor movies like Blockbuster does, so I've been re-watching many of my favorite movies that I had watched during my Blockbuster days -- to see the parts that I've been missing.

Re:NetFlix vs Blockbuster

[Registered Coward v2]

And as it stands, Netflix doesn't censor movies like Blockbuster does, so I've been re-watching many of my favorite movies that I had watched during my Blockbuster days -- to see the parts that I've been missing.

While I've heard a lot of people say BB censors, beyond not carrying certain movies (such as NC17) I've never seen any hard evidence that they force studios to edit films prior to carrying them.

Now, studios may edit a movie with an eye towards will WalMart/BB et al carry it; but that's noting new - they've worried about what rating a movie will get before videotape.

I'd be curious to her about verified examples of BB editing a film before carrying it; not just refusing to carry a certain rated film or carrying an edited version that was released to general sales and not BB specific.

Good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The video quality doesn't have to be that great. The BBC's iplayer is easily good enough for me for watching tv shows already and the same quality would be fine for movies too. The technology's already there - that it's likely to get even better in the future is just a bonus.

5 yr plan

[retech]

Considering that he went on record in the end of the year shareholders meeting to say that in 5 yrs Netflix will be completely done with physical media of all types, I don't find this to be remotely surprising or even eyebrow raising.

I'm not sure that's quite right

[93 Escort Wagon]

There are those who claim that physical discs like DVDs, Blu-ray, and whatever format will eventually supplant Blu-ray will always deliver a superior viewing experience versus anything that will be available via streaming

While this is the argument that gets bandied about a lot, I don't believe it's actually the crux of the matter. But I think it's more accurate of the situation to frame it this way: For the majority of people, is the (overall) streaming experience good enough? Because for a lot of folks, convenience may be more important than a small uptick in quality.

For a somewhat analogous situation, I look to my teenage daughter's friends and their music buying habits. They almost exclusively buy their music from iTunes, even though no one can really argue that an iTunes or iTunes Plus encoding is as good as a CD, and the costs are more or less equivalent. But the quality difference is quite small (subjectively speaking, of course), and the convenience factor is huge.

There will always be some people for whom absolute quality trumps all else. The REAL question is, is this group large enough to sustain an ongoing market of manufacturing and selling physical media?

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[SleepingWaterBear]

There will always be some people for whom absolute quality trumps all else. The REAL question is, is this group large enough to sustain an ongoing market of manufacturing and selling physical media?

Actually, this isn't likely to be a serious question a few years from now the way things are going. In the short term streaming media may be lower quality than physical media, but I would be surprised if 5 years from now your average internet connection weren't fast enough to handle streaming high def video.

At least unless all the FUD Comcast and the like are spreading about the internet collapsing is true, but I've never seen a shred of solid evidence for it.

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[the eric conspiracy]

Well right now streaming quality stinks. It doesn't even include 5.1 sound and I get better resolution from my upscaling DVD player. And the catalog available is a small fraction of what is on physical media through Netflix.

Plus how do I stream if I am on vacation somewhere, or in an airplane?

Then of course there is the problem of DRM. What if the producer decides to withdraw the film from distribution? We have already seen this type of nonsense with George Lucas.

Don't get me started with music downloads - these are the purview of the Top 40 crowd. Anyone who is a bit older and has more sophisticated tastes in music isn't buying from iTunes. While CD sales of pop tunes has cratered, CD sales of other genre is still going strong and has hardly been affected by online distribution.

Then of course there is the substantial percentage of the population that does not have access to broadband, due to either location or lack of desire. These people may still desire to rent or purchase movies.

Much like what has happened in music we will continue to have physical media.

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[93 Escort Wagon]

Plus how do I stream if I am on vacation somewhere, or in an airplane?

I understand (and agree with) your point - but I'm assuming that alongside the widespread adoption of streaming will come the ability to purchase digital versions of movies, or some sort of "offline viewing" mode for exactly these situations - similar to how Google is working on offline viewing for mail and docs that are "in the cloud".

Then of course there is the problem of DRM. What if the producer decides to withdraw the film from distribution? We have already seen this type of nonsense with George Lucas.

Agreed, although I think this might be less of a problem with movies than with music, simply because (I suspect) most people will want to see a movie once and then never again. My only frame of reference is with my family - I know we buy very few movies anymore now that Netflix is available, and the number we've watched more than once (over the past few years we've been members) can be counted on one hand. But while the typical pop movie is watched soon after release and then quickly forgotten, it certainly would be problematic with good films that have staying power - like if Orson Welles had been able to pull the original versions of Citizen Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons out of distribution a decade after release, or (more likely) Ted Turner had bought the rights and then made sure only his colorized and personally re-edited version was the only option available.

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[shmlco]

"...even though no one can really argue that an iTunes or iTunes Plus encoding is as good as a CD..."

256kbps AAC? It's damned close. Besides, if you're walking around listening to music on an iPod or in a car ambient noise will pretty much kill any perceived differences in quality.

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[gemada]

The difference between audio and video is that i think your ears will put up with lower quality than your eyes are willing to.

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[JoeMerchant]

There will always be some people for whom absolute quality trumps all else. The REAL question is, is this group large enough to sustain an ongoing market of manufacturing and selling physical media?

In the dying days of the vinyl record, there was a premium product, something like "Original Master Series" or whatever, they'd charge maybe a 50% markup for marginally better materials that, in my opinion, did deliver a product that was noticeably cleaner sounding and longer lasting. If you played your albums to destruction and then replaced them, they were actually a good value.

Maybe one title in 100 was made available in the premium format, and even when the premium version was available, the regular version outsold it many times over. The press and the critics harp on quality, the bulk of the market buys whatever is convenient, cheap, and not outright horrible (8 tracks?).

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[JoeMerchant]

Actually, this isn't likely to be a serious question a few years from now the way things are going. In the short term streaming media may be lower quality than physical media, but I would be surprised if 5 years from now your average internet connection weren't fast enough to handle streaming high def video.

The last-mile physical wiring hasn't improved much over the last 10 years, and I doubt it will over the next 10. Fiber to the home ain't coming soon.

Cable internet service started living up to its potential a few years back, they had horrible main-office problems before that which (in my experience) made DSL more attractive, at least until the telcos took it over. If you have cable internet service, you might expect to upgrade to 15 or 50Mbps in the next 5 years, depending on the quality of the wires to your home, much less than that if you're stuck with DSL.

I don't see cable modems making the technological leaps and bounds that voice line modems did in the 80's-90's, there's just not the same incentive to improve after they can stream "acceptable" video.

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[SuperMog2002]

Fiber to the home ain't coming soon.

Strange, I was under the impression that I've had 15 mbps fiber to the home for the past three years. Verizon even kicked that up to 20 mbps a few months ago.

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[benwaggoner]

The difference between audio and video is that i think your ears will put up with lower quality than your eyes are willing to.

Actually, the converse is true. Research shows people will quit watching something with bad audio and good video way before they quit something with bad video and good audio. Hence YouTube.

By example, a dropped frame here and there isn't that horrible, but if you lose a 1/24th of a second of audio every few seconds, you'll bail out pretty quickly.

It's just that the bitrate required to saturate our requirements for audio quality are trivially achievable with modern compression and bitrates. WMA 10 Pro and HE AAC v2 @ 64 Kbps are pretty much transparent for most people with most content. the 256 Kbps AAC-LC used in iTunes is well past the "entertainment-grade with good headphones" point - 128 Kbps would be fine most of the time, and 192 Kbps nearly all the time.

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[JoeMerchant]

I've moved around a bit in the last 7 years, in my last 5 houses the options were

• DSL or bad cable, 1998-2002
• bad DSL (600kbps) only, 2002-3
• DSL or cable, 2003
• DSL or cable, 2004-6
• cable only, 2006-present

you can also always get satellite, but it's not even as good as bad DSL, and marginally more expensive.

What cities have fiber to the home? (not just to the neighborhood node - which, admittedly, has improved actual service quite a bit.)

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[SuperMog2002]

Your last move was actually around the time they started ramping up fiber installations in my area. I haven't really kept up with it nationwide, but here in the suberbs north of Dallas, Verizon began rolling out their fiber to the premises service (FiOS) a bit over three years ago. I think they're pretty much done now. When I moved in to my house in May of 2006, 15 mbps down / 2 mbps up was available for $45 a month, and 30 / 5 service could be had if I really wanted it. They've now bumped that up to 20 mbps down. I forget what the new premium speed is, but I want to say 50 mbps.

There's really not much to it. There's a fiber line running from the alley where the main line is all the way to my garage, where's it converted to a plain old Cat-5 Ethernet run to my router. They installed it for free with a 1 year contract, and even threw in a cheap wireless router.

You might find this interesting: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios. It's a Google map with all the spots Verizon has FiOS installed at pinned. AT&T's equivalent product is called U-Verse. Here's a map for them too: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/uverse.

Hope that helps!

Re:I'm not sure that's quite right

[JoeMerchant]

Cool, maybe there's hope after all. I've just gotten jaded after hearing all the fiber-to-the-home-hype that was running around in 1997-1998. It's still not near me today, nor most places I've lived, but they might actually achieve a decent rollout by 2020.

In the end, fiber is so much better than twisted copper or co-ax, especially when it gets wet. All you really have to guard against is cutting it. And, of course, even if the node can't fill the pipe to the house, it's better to have the extra capacity rather than having to train techs how to juggle cable channel numbers, tune DSL modems to available bandwidth, etc.

Current internet too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way the current infrastructure can handle the load when everyone now watching physical media (or worse: tv) starts doing so over the internet in high-def.

One day it will be here but I don't see this happening within 5 years.

Why does there have to be a 'winner'

[Bearhouse]

OK, business leaders and others have to back the right technology and/or business model, but things seem to me to be less clear-cut than the old 'what will kill DVD like it kiled VHS' debate.

Things are less simple, with content available from a bewildering variety of sources, for an equally wide range of target devices. Streaming TV to your cell phone, DVD/Blueray for home via rental or mail, or streaming/download, low-res mp3 or music videos for the kids on PC/iPods/phone...whatever.

So the question is perhaps, without pissing off their customers with court cases or DRM, how will content creators manage to make their offer available to the widest range of people - in the widest range of formats - and still make some money?

Re:Why does there have to be a 'winner'

[Killer Orca]

Offer them as free and DRM free downloads with embedded video advertising that is pause-able but not skip-able. If it's free and can be played on everything and the advertising is minimal in proportion to the length of the content, then most people would be content with it, and only a small percentage would resort to ripping the ads out. Hell they could even offer a premium edition of the content for $1 a copy. At the same time they could also produce box sets of collectors editions and things that a portion of people like to collect. That will never happen though, content producers/providers are too greedy and shortsighted and so are ISPs.

Re:Why does there have to be a 'winner'

[shmlco]

"... as free and DRM free downloads with embedded video advertising that is pause-able but not skip-able...."

If they're going to be "pause-able but not skip-able" then they're also going to have to be DRM'ed in some fashion. You couldn't enforce the rule otherwise.

Re:Why does there have to be a 'winner'

[Killer Orca]

If they're going to be "pause-able but not skip-able" then they're also going to have to be DRM'ed in some fashion. You couldn't enforce the rule otherwise.

For the DRM I am thinking more along the lines of no restrictions on play-counts, number of copies and what devices it can be played on. I'm aware that there has to be some form of DRM for the embedded unskip-able ads, but it is only to prevent people from removing ads from a free version. If they did it like hulu with 30-60 ads and only 5 per hour show and 3 per half-hour most people would put up with it, and those who didn't would either buy the ad-free ones for $1 or whatever, rip out the ads themselves or download a pre-add-removed version. Which in most cases will be a small number of people who do remove the ads.

USB Stick movies?

[TurtleBlue]

Considering they already exist and are format neutral, can somebody tell me why solid state media, particularly USB keys and such, aren't viewed as the next logical step in all this? Hell, they've already done it with ghostbusters supposedly, with DRM even. Why wouldn't blockbuster just load up your USB key with whatever movie you rented that night if your connectivity sucked enough to not download it? Why wouldn't you buy "The Rock" on a key if it was important enough for you to own it?

I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'm sure the studios are drooling over streaming "pay-as-you-go" models, but Blu-Ray isn't exactly compatible with my laptop when I'm on a plane. And it's still a way to let me carry the bits home ("ownership") without Sony dictating the terms.

Of course, I may have answered my own question with that last part.

Re:USB Stick movies?

[Firethorn]

Cost for the media, in all likelihood. A pressed CD/DVD is on the order of pennies. A USB key with the same capacity is still like $10.

What I would see is some sort of itunes style system with cached storage of the video. That way the user is paying for the storage of the stuff they want to cache. A $100 1TB drive should be able to store 100 not terribly compressed HD Movies, giving you a storage cost of $1 each.

Re:USB Stick movies?

[Deagol]

This past holiday season, my local Wal Mart had an entire end-cap of 2GB (or was it 4GB) black Kingston DataTraveler sticks for $5/each. I'm sure in large enough quantity, distributing compressed movies in this fashion could be profitable.

Imagine collections of hundreds of decent-quality movies on USB sticks (or, even better, mini-SD) fitting in a cigar box? I could see myself paying $2.50 to *maybe* $5 per film in this format, assuming the Netflix high-quality stream format (they weigh in at around 1000MB per hour in size). When I need some mindless background entertainment, I can deal with the lower quality. If there's a movie or series that I want to watch over and over again in DVD+ quality, I'd splurge for the better format.

More format options would be a win for all parties involved. Seems to be working for the music market. I just wish the music distributors would lower their prices. I'd love to jump on the Amazon MP3 offerings, but not until a full album purchase is no more than 50% the price of the physical CD. This $1/track offering (on average) is still way too high.

Re:USB Stick movies?

[symbolset]

Panasonic is working on a 64GB SDXC in the SD form factor. This would make a nice carry home from the supermarket format for HD video.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes.

Prime time.

[Ostracus]

Well I'm ready to jump onto [buffering...] this right away. I kid but at least with OTA, cable, or satellite I've never had that particular issue. I think online has a ways to go before it's a replacement.* At least with DVD's , Satellite, and OTA when the weather knocks out service, a generator fixes that.

*There's also the quality issue. Buying a HDTV set but getting at most 720p content.

Re:Prime time.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have cable, then get a DVR. Then, I think you'll find that you tend to buffer about 16 minutes of programming before watching an hour long show.

Re:Attn Moderators: You Suck

[RichardJenkins]

OMFG!!1! Now I just went from 0 to MINUS 1!

What is up with these people? Don't you know insighful when you see it.

I don't know why I bother grumble fumble

Support more Countries.

[Ostracus]

"Hulu and several other media sites don't work outside the US..."

The irony I had the other day with the BBC is I got a message saying it couldn't play a particular media clip due to the country I was in. So no I wouldn't say it's a "US only" phenomenon.

I also find this complaint interesting as in I rarely hear "[non-US] content is inaccessible in my country". Guess we've raised our standards from "It's so awful I'll not even torrent it" to "I'll watch it over what other countries produce. Further propagating US culture".

Re:Attn Moderators: You Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Jenkins, You deserve the Oscar tomorrow.

Snort...

[way2trivial]

no.. 2gb usb keys? fastest cheapest I easily found online sale price was 7.5 when purchased in quantites around a few hundred from a promo-imprinting company

A large corp could easily generate 1000's of consistent usb keys for far less.

you are correct, it's at least an order of magnatude, but it's also at least half of what you suggest.

Re:Snort...

[Firethorn]

2gb isn't really enough; DVDs are 4.7/8.5 depending on whether they're dual layer or not.

Thus, you're stuck going to 8GB sticks, and those are still at least $10.

Bandwidth is key

[certain death]

I have a solid 6 mbps connection dedicated to my Netflix/Media systems. Just watching a HD movie via the Netflix Roku box, it constantly buffers...how much bandwidth do I _really_ need to get HiDef?!?

Re:Bandwidth is key

[westlake]

I have a solid 6 mbps connection dedicated to my Netflix/Media systems. Just watching a HD movie via the Netflix Roku box, it constantly buffers

Is the link as solid as you think it is - or are you in competition with everyone on-line at 9 PM Eastern Time?

Re:Bandwidth is key

[certain death]

Nah, I watch movies when I should be working from home. :o) Really tho...the normal content is fast enough with good quality, but the HD is B A D ! !

Re:Bandwidth is key

[NeverVotedBush]

I run with a DSL connection and a Roku Netflix player.

I can monitor bandwidth on my router (Tomato firmware on a Linksys router) and I originally was signed up for 1.5 Mbps download / 678 kbs upload service tier from Qwest. Testing against www.speakeasy.net/speedtest always showed pretty close to 1.5 rated speeds.

When I hooked up the Roku, I monitored bandwidth to see how much I was using and the stream was holding a fairly constant 1.3 Mbps download rate during an HD movie.

As I noted above, I wanted a little more headroom so switched to 7 Mbps download DSL service tier and now, while the average download speed is still around 1.3 Mbps, the usage shows peaks to around 5-6 Mbps for about ten seconds then about 30 or so seconds of nothing.

As an aside, Star Trek season 1 in HD over the Roku is amazing! I've never seen it look this good before.

Re:Bandwidth is key

[NeverVotedBush]

I know those numbers don't quite add up. I have seen the quality "dots" drop down when launching a show so the 1.3 Mbps numbers might also represent a lower quality image than HD.

Concerns - Bandwidth Caps and Selection

[Xian97]

With several recent stories about bandwidth caps by several major ISPs and trials by others, I can see that being a problem. Say you watched a movie a day and the stream averaged about a gigabyte (just guessing), that would be 30 gigabytes a month, about half of the allowance I have seen mentioned for some ISPs. I can see you hitting your cap pretty quick.

Currently I have nearly 100 movies, tv shows, documentaries, etc in my queue. Of those only 2 have the PLAY button beside them. They are going to have to increase the selection of titles before it will replace physical DVDs.

As I RTFA...

[Thrakamazog]

I go to the Netflix site and get this: We're sorry, the Netflix website is temporarily unavailable. Our shipping centers are continuing to send and receive DVDs , so your movies will be processed as usual. And you can still instantly watch movies via your Netflix ready device. Our engineers are working hard to bring the site back up as soon as possible.. We appreciate your patience and, again, we apologize for the inconvenience. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-866-636-3079. They have other issues to work out before they consider a streaming only plan.

What about their customers without broadband?

[rivercityrandom]

If Netflix went to a streaming-only service it would kill it for me. I subscribe to Netflix precisely because I don't have broadband internet suitable for streaming. I live in a rural area where dialup, and Verizon wireless internet with a 5 GB/month cap, are the only options. The closest chain video store is also about 15 miles away from my home. They need to realize that their DVD by mail service opens up a world to entertainment to millions of rural customers who have a mailbox but no broadband, and moving to streaming only would definitely affect their bottom line. Of course, if the Rural Broadband Initiative brings a T1 or FiOS line to my doorstep, I'll be all for it.

Re:What about their customers without broadband?

[rivercityrandom]

Yes, I did RTFA. Here is what it says about Netflix's desire to cut out their DVD service:

In an interview with Bloomberg.com, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, is siding firmly with the latter camp and it would even appear that Netflix is gearing up to move all of its eggs from the mail-distribution basket to the online streaming basket. Hastings indicated that perhaps as soon as later this year or sometime in 2010, Netflix might start offering online-streaming-only subscription plans (beyond just its current Starz plan--see below). The Bloomberg report states:

"The company's success hinges on its ability to transition to online video from DVDs, Hastings said yesterday in an interview in San Francisco. Netflix faces a challenge similar to the one AOL had as it lost subscribers who shifted from Internet service via a telephone connection to high-speed access, he said." (emphasis mine)

It sure sounds to me like they will eventually phase out DVD mailing entirely. I wonder if any other service (besides Blockbuster) will be able to fill in the gap.

Re:Attn Moderators: You Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

2/10

Quality, download, caps, etc.?

[antdude]

How are the HD quality for streaming? Can we download instead of streaming to avoid lags, skippings, artifacts, etc.? I know some ISPs (e.g., Comcast, TWC in some areas [probably everywhere eventually]) have caps so this streaming service would be useless if the downloads are huge.

The need to work on soundtrack and subtitles

[sodul]

I watch a good amount of anime and foreign movies which are awful for me to watch online because they are dubbed or if they are not I don't always want the hardcoded subtitles (try to watch a movie with a different version of the dialog popping up before the actor speak).

I would not say I'm the typical user (US person but not citizen) but the better soundtracks and better choice of soundtrack is one of the main reasons I still keep my 3 disk subscription.

The library need to be improved of course, but they are doing a good job at adding stuff already and long term that mean less need for a huge inventory of physical disks. For example you can buy music on iTunes that you could not mail order if you wanted to.

Quality will improve with a faster Internet, it might get a boost thank to the new administration and it's something that is supposed to happen 'naturally' anyway. Just look at the speed available in Tokyo, we are way behind.

Too bad their current selection sucks

[hamburgler007]

I am a netflix subscriber, and their streaming video is a nice add-on, but far from a replacement to their dvd selection. They do have some excellent movies available for streaming, but far too few, and from the limited selection they offer 90% of it is crap. I don't see them having a selection large enough to warrant having a streaming only subscription in the next year.

No, they really don't...

[judolphin]

Don't get me wrong, it would be nice if Netflix streamed all movies ever known to mankind... but I humbly disagree. To me, the main competitors to Netflix streaming are pay-per-view, HBO, Showtime, etc. A limited selection of movies that can be played on demand for ~$8/month beats the hell out of (and is cheaper than) premium cable channels and pay-per-view.

Re:No, they really don't...

[TheUser0x58]

Yes, but Netflix's competitors all offer a large percentage of recent popular/blockbuster movies. Netflix online library, on the other hand, gives you random foreign, indie, and old films with a smattering of contemporary Hollywood B-list fare. No e.g. Dark Knight or Harry Potter.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly enjoy Netflix's hodgepodge assortment of online content. But for Joe Sixpack, they've got a ways to go to replace DVDs.

IMO it's better quality than digital cable

[judolphin]

It probably has something to do with your internet connection. I have a home theater PC using MyNetflix and there's no discernable difference between watching it online and on a DVD, and is often better than the signal I get from Comcast.

So what.

[man_ls]

Does Netflix have anything good on VOD yet? Last time I checked, it was nothing but movies that flopped at the box office, were > 10 years old, or were direct-to-video releases or niche films in the first place.

I canceled my subscription to Netflix after I stopped watching DVDs (Blockbuster is much easier, and my movie-renting tends to be spontaneous rather than planned) and their VOD service had nothing at all of interest on it.

Re: BBC

[l2718]

The BBC specifically is funded by taxing UK citizens who own TV sets. It thus makes sense for them to restrict some offering to the UK -- just to the paying customers, as it were.

Hulu and such are funded by ads. The only reason they are US-only is the way distribution rights for movies are subdivided by the rights-holders (the movie studios). In other words, the "domestic" (US) and "international" (non-US) rights are usually sold separately. In particular, Hulu only has a license to stream to people in the US, but it is entirely due to the wishes of the movie studios and not because Hulu couldn't get paying (i.e. ad-watching) customers outside the US.

Netflix can send physical DVDs anywhere in the world they want (they own the physical DVD after all). Whether streaming the movie requires a license or not is complicated, but as long as it does the studios will control that too. If Netflix is showing you a film based on a physical DVD they own then they probably don't need an extra license.

Disclaimer: IANAL

Here's a sample of 6 Mbps 1080p24

[benwaggoner]

The last-mile physical wiring hasn't improved much over the last 10 years, and I doubt it will over the next 10. Fiber to the home ain't coming soon.

Eh? 10 years ago, I had the best DSL money could buy - 640 Kbps for $120/month. Today I have the best DSL money can buy - 20 Mbps for $60/month. I think a 30x improvement in a decade is pretty darn material :)! Although the copper to my house isn't different, Qwest has brought in fibre to the node, so that there's a much shorter loop between my house and my internet access.

When we move over the summer, I'll have 50 Mbps cable.

20 Mbps is PLENTY to delivery perfect 1080p quality. Really, 10-12 Mbps is enough for most movie content, and it'll be 8-10 Mbps next year due to further codec improvements.

Here's a sample I did a couple months ago with some widescreen movie standard test content at 6 Mbps average 8 Mbps peak, including 5.1 audio. Other than the opening "confetti credits" shot, which is purposely designed as a codec-buster, the quality is quite good throughout.

http://silverlight.services.live.com/31260/StEM%206-8%20Mbps%201280x800p24/video.wmv

Given the intersecting curves of improving bandwidth and improving codecs, 1080p delivery to more than half of USA households should be possible in 2010.

Re:Here's a sample of 6 Mbps 1080p24

[JoeMerchant]

For my purposes, on a 42" 1080p screen viewed from 12' away, 2.5Mbps average (with peaks up to 7Mbps) is what I feel is "adequate". In a side by side with higher data rates you can notice the difference, but without the sharper reference, I'm not missing what's not there. Of course, I'm not enough of an audiophile to have more than 2 speakers (though they are pretty decent 6.5" units driven by an adequate amp), so I'm probably not on the picky end about the video, either. On the other end of the argument, BluRay discs are capable of delivering 72Mbps and more, and there will always be the high-end crowd that demands more fidelity than their eyes, ears and brains could possibly perceive.

Back on the issue of "the pipe" - those 6+Mbps peaks are just enough to oversaturate my 802.11g network - not all the time, but enough to be super-annoying, so I ran a cable. Let's not get into the question of why the file fetcher can't pre-fetch enough data to get past the challenging spots, I've been pissed at Sony engineers since 1991 when I bought their top of the line car CD changer and it only had 1/2 second of pre-buffering. They're still pinching the pre-buffer penny, even now that RAM is what, $10 a GB?

So, then, yes, bandwidth to the home has improved, no doubt, but it's still delivered from the node to the house over those ancient wires that have issues when it rains, etc. We're located 2 miles from our cable office, not sure if there's an intermediate node or not. The cable company could give single homes more bandwidth, but there's still a lot of sharing going on in the co-ax wires, and if every subscriber wanted 50Mbps right now they'd have to do something to improve the infrastructure. I think our service is a nominal 10Mbps now, but reality varies widely, 10 is more the cap, 6 to 8 is the average, and of course there are the occasional virtual outages.

As long as (most) people are happy with the quality from Hulu and Fox TV, they can be serviced by 2-3Mbps pipes. Higher bandwidth to the home (like 50Mbps) will probably remain at a significant premium due to the infrastructure demands - and, thus, it may be cheaper to continue to ship discs via USPS for quite a while.

Besides, people are creatures of habit. They stick with what they know, and if the new thing can't give them 100% of what they're used to for the same or lower cost, they'll be very slow to change.

Re:Here's a sample of 6 Mbps 1080p24

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus fucking christ, 20Mbps for $60/month? $60 US? That's insane. I have to pay $50 a month for a shitty 1.5 Mbps DSL line here in Minneapolis, I could drop it to like $37 a month if I sign a two year contract, but still...

"You hear that Mr. Anderson?"

[Tumbleweed]

"... That is the sound of inevitability."

This is what I've been waiting for. If they can get this going with a good catalog (unlike what's available now), in HD (720p or 1080p, no interlacing for me, thanks; I'm a recovering Amiga user!), I'll be all over this. Getting a good HD catalog going is going to be a big 'if', I suspect. :(

secret keys ...

[jameszhou2000]

it seems a lot of people here complain about the video quality. you need to check two things 1. make sure you have a broadband, at least a 1.5Mbps connection. 2. when the movie begins, press "shift B" to enable a bandwidth selection menu, and switch to a higher bandwidth

Roku and Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a Roku box. So do some of our friends. Each of them has downgraded their Netflix accounts to the most basic account: One DVD at a time. They're not pinching their entertainment pennies. Most of them have DirecTV with all the movie channels and an NFL premium package.
Netflix will have to begin charging for streaming titles, if only to make up lost revenue from streamers who downgrade.

After a few months with a Roku in the house, here's what I think. The user interface gets the job done but it's ugly. There's no way to add movies to the Roku instant queue from the Roku player. (That's a medium-sized obstacle to enjoying the service, but there's a computer in almost every room in the house so we can cope.) The Roku box itself cries out "Radio Shack project case", to those of us old enough/nerdly enough to remember such things.

Perhaps the XBox Live client is better.

They need to get their heads out of Ballmer's Ass!

[macs4all]

I signed up for Netflix partially to enjoy streamed content, only to find out that, since they use Silverlight to ensure their DRM, my PowerPC Mac is platforma non grata.

It's not like my 1.8GHz G5 Dualie lacks the power, nor my 15Mbps internet service lacks the bandwidth, either. The lazy fucks at Macroshaft simply don't want to compile Silverlight for PPC.

So, no. I'm not impressed.

And I agree that Netflix's streamed catalog is but a faint shadow of their physical DVD offerings.

Great for where US Mail service is unreliable

[Brian Stretch]

I restarted my Netflix subscription a couple months ago so I'd have some Blu-ray discs for my LG BD-ROM drive. Unfortunately, out of the last 8 discs only 1 arrived. I only received a few discs in total, nearly all of them late. Twice Netflix received discs back marked "undeliverable" despite my living in the same condo for 12+ years and having no such trouble with Netflix delivery before. Complaints to US Mail didn't change anything. Returns to Netflix were reliable though. I gave up and shut down the subscription.

THAT'S the reason to build a decent online delivery option. But it'll require decent FTTH networks and lots of regional video servers directly connected to the various ISP networks to do it right. Streaming 40Mbps Blu-ray video is doable under those conditions. DOCSIS 3 might work. Of course, the ISPs would probably try to do everything in-house and screw it up, in the unlikely event they'd build proper networks in the first place (AT&T, grrrr).

Re:Great for where US Mail service is unreliable

[NeverVotedBush]

I had a similar experience with the mail part of my subscription. Unfortunately, the post office where I live has a well-earned reputation for being unreliable.

I had DVDs arrive late, not at all, and had Netflix not receive DVDs back. I cancelled my account with Netflix so I could avoid having them cancel it for me due to too many lost DVDs.

I contacted the postal inspectors to see if complaints would help and they seem to have. Eventually all of the DVDs made it to their destinations and I decided to risk re-upping my subscription. I also had a new person in my neighborhood bring a DVD that had been misdelivered to what had been an empty mailbox.

The post office, at least where I live, has been having problems with missing mail and shoddy delivery. My wife had a registered letter just get left in the curbside mailbox without being signed for - which is a violation of Federal regulations. Mail with tracking would be misdelivered and show up about a month late. It's really bad at least here.

I can understand why merchants, utilities, and Netflix would want to switch to Internet options for bill pay and service delivery. It avoids a lot of problems, missed payments, lost shipments, etc. I try to never have anything delivered by mail carrier and pay as many bills as possible via online methods.

I think the post office has given people sufficient reason to avoid using them and I hear the same thing from lots of other people. Certainly not all mail carriers do crappy jobs, but enough do that I would expect their mail load to continue to move more to junk mail (which I really don't care to receive anyway) and cause rates to continue up - providing yet another reason for people and businesses to abandon the U.S. Mail.

Netflix à la carte?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only who isn't into Netflix simply because they do not offer prepaid à la carte service? I simply do not watch enough content to justify a reoccurring monthly subscription fee and would much rather prepay for a set number of rentals/streaming sessions. Looks like OnDemand service from my cable provider will keep getting my business until Netflix decides to compete with them.

not a problem

[speedtux]

The challenge I see for NetFlix is dealing with the moves towards bandwidth caps - a movie a night is likely to rapidly push people to the cap;

Online distribution is already widespread in other countries, and there doesn't seem to be a move towards "bandwidth" (volume) caps. Instead, providers actually seem to be competing for offering better QoS for streaming and downloading.

The only volume caps companies seem to be implementing are caps on the top 0.1% of users, people who really use many orders of magnitude more volume per month than the median user. That seems reasonable and shouldn't be a problem for Netflix.

Re:not a problem

[Registered Coward v2]

The challenge I see for NetFlix is dealing with the moves towards bandwidth caps - a movie a night is likely to rapidly push people to the cap;

Online distribution is already widespread in other countries, and there doesn't seem to be a move towards "bandwidth" (volume) caps. Instead, providers actually seem to be competing for offering better QoS for streaming and downloading.

The only volume caps companies seem to be implementing are caps on the top 0.1% of users, people who really use many orders of magnitude more volume per month than the median user. That seems reasonable and shouldn't be a problem for Netflix.

While a 150GB (ATT's trial cap) or 250GB (Comcast) currently applies to only a handful of users; as streaming and downloading become more popular more and more users will hit the caps. 150GB is less than 20 HD movies, for example. At $1/GB above the cap, a movie can run anywhere from a couple to eight dollars just to view it.

I see providers in the US using caps to increase their revenue; which means people will use less content and things such as NetFlix's video download service will suffer as a result. I'm not convinced providers will chose to compete on QoS; especially since they already are in the video on demand business in most cases. It's a perfect way to increase revenue and hurt your competitor in one fell swoop.

By moving to caps now they already have the precedent set for when usage starts climbing; and can make the argument that they should not be forced to subsidize NetFlix or anyone else's business model by upping capacity.

Tried Netflix for 5 minutes...switched to Amazon

[whitehorsedigital]

I don't qualify for a Netflix trial membership because I had a regular membership back in 2004. I cancelled it because it sucked. Now I am interested in the video on demand and primarily for certain shows. So I did a search on Netflix for Stargate Atlantis Season 5 under the streaming video search area. SG Atlantis Season 5 showed up in the list and it didn't say "not available" so I went ahead and signed up and paid money. Then I find out that when it showed up in the search results under the streaming video search function, that was for the DVD and it was not even available yet. So I thought I would watch something else then that I haven't seen and then cancel my membership. So I clicked on a movie that was available, and to my horror Netflix requires Silverlight. So I said a few choice words in the direction of my computer screen, made a few finger gestures at it too, and immediately canceled my membership. Then I went over to Amazon and tried out their video on demand service and have been happily watching Stargate Atlantis Season 5 episodes with an interface (based on Flash) that is unbelievably easy to use.