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Netflix Subscriber Base Eclipses Comcast's
NicknamesAreStupid writes "Netflix just announced its earnings and claims to have more subscribers than Comcast. 'Netflix's global subscriber base grew almost 70% over the past year, to 23.6 million users. ... More than 7% of Americans now subscribe to Netflix.' Does that go to show how great Netflix really is or, well, you know?"
It's a different format, but I'm liking the Redbox thing. It's handy and inexpensive, and importantly - commitment free. If you're going to do a rental and it's in your area, give it a try. The website will tell you what movies are available in your area, and which box to get it from. You can return the movie to any box. DVD's are $1, Blu-Ray is $1.50 (per day). If you don't bring the movie back they just ding your card a reasonable retail price and you're done. I hear they're considering video games as well. It's credit card only though.
/obviously no, I don't work for Redbox.
And yeah, Netflix is kicking butt. They're coming to some large numbers though and the studios are on to them now. They're going to see increasing friction. It remains to be seen if they can see it through. I hope they do well. I also hope they release an Android client.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
My tipping point was last year.
Why would they raise it? If anything they'd lower it, and not just to protect their profits.
Unicasting content is insanely wasteful. Even with CDNs with good placement (Akamai, etc) that's 1 unicast stream per TV. If you follow this to its logical conclusion and Netflix or some other IPTV provider usurps cable/satellite for subscription channels, what happens the next time Monday Night Football is on ESPN? They're going to stream it to unicast it to 11 million households, many of whom are going to want to do DVR things like skipping and pausing?
Multicasting is going to be around for a long, long time still. So long as it does, the cable/fiber/satellite networks are still the gatekeepers; they're not going to embrace IP multicasting when they have a perfectly good system that does the same thing.
A few weeks back, I finally got around to sending back the DVD that I had been holding for about the last six months, having never once been hassled, harassed, or charged extra by Netflix for holding onto it for so long. Two days later, Netflix let me know that they had sent me film X from my DVD Queue.
"Hmm," I said to myself. "Wasn't X #2 on my queue? Well, no matter, I must be confused since I was rearranging it the other day."
Before film X had even arrived, Netflix notified me that X had been my #2, but that they had tracked down a copy of film Y, which was the actual #1 on my queue, and as a result, they would go ahead and send me a copy of that as well, despite the fact that I only had the plan that allows for one DVD at a time. They sent it out at no extra charge to me, and the two arrived on back-to-back days. It was great. It may have been a simple thing, but I hadn't had a company treat me so well in quite awhile. Despite that, it was the sort of thing that seemed natural with Netflix, since everything they do is so oriented around the customer.
It was with great sadness that I temporarily suspended my account the day after sending the videos back, since I needed to spend less time viewing films in my Instant Queue and more time on my graduate research. Even in that however, Netflix was great and continues to be great. They let me suspend it for up to three months, charge me nothing during that time, allow me to manage my queues and rate movies while my account is suspended, don't harass me to come back, and give me immediate access to a button for if I do want to close my account entirely. Compare that to Facebook, which makes deactivating your account a chore, places access to the feature in an out of the way location in your settings, only offers to deactivate but not delete your account, and swindles you into reactivating it if you simply log in.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to being done with my research and back in the embracing arms of Netflix in a few months. Chalk me up as a fanboy.
As for a story of great customer service from Comcast...
Umm...
Yeah, I got nothing. My latest experience with them involved 2-5 minute Internet outages that happened a few times every hour while I was visiting with my parents for the Easter holiday. I'm glad Comcast doesn't have a stranglehold over my area yet.
To be fair there is a Win Phone 7 version and iOS (which has lots of MS apps thus far). I wouldn't scream fuck MS, but at the same time providing a Win7 Phone client before Android does suggest something. Perhaps the GP is biased, but reality doesn't seem too far off.
Here Here.
As I like to point out, for $8/mo not only can Netflix afford to pay the content providers for their content, it can also pay it's own internet bills. Yet supposedly for $45+/mo, local ISPs can't seem to provide enough internet access to home users. Every byte home users pay to download Netflix paid to upload. And if Netflix gets some sort of "bulk deal" on bandwidth (yeah, I don't know how that would work either), you'd think actual ISPs like AT&T and Comcast could get a better deal, yet all the ISPs do is complain about bandwidth and put download limits in place.
Eggs
Milk
Bread
Cat Litter
Soda
They certainly made me forget about Hollywood Video and Blockbuster back in 1995.
While their price rose to $19.99/mo this year, I'll always remember them for sending me an e-mail a few years back, saying their rates were going to be lowered from $17.99 to $16.99. There is also the way they like to send an extra "+" movie if something in my queue comes from another part of the country because of the delay.
Superior value indeed!
(I killed my cable back in 1999, but that was because most of my entertainment came from reading and writing on the net, as well as the previously mentioned video stores.)
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis