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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?"
obviously, netflix is the far superior value to what most cable companies offer.
Netflix isn't sucking about $2K/year out of me like Comcast.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
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 $1.50 (per day). If you don't bring the movie back they just ding your card a reasonable retail price and you're done. I hear they're considering video games as well. It's credit card only though.
/obviously no, I don't work for Redbox.
And yeah, Netflix is kicking butt. They're coming to some large numbers though and the studios are on to them now. They're going to see increasing friction. It remains to be seen if they can see it through. I hope they do well. I also hope they release an Android client.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The problem today is that at least in the US most broadband providers are TV providers also. The telecos who don't have a TV network have even gotten on board with "bundles" including DirecTV and Dish. They are smarter than consumers give them credit for though. You might think your poor service is proof of their incompetence- your wrong... sooo wrong. They will do anything to maintain a baseline of service that is merely tolerable because raising the bar costs them money and frankly where the hell will you go? To the other massive evil teleco/cable, overpriced wireless (3G/4G) or satellite? Dial-up perhaps? Of course not, they've got you buy the nuts. So expect Comcast's already pathetic 250 gig limit (even for 100$ monthly subscribers BTW) to go down (in GB per month), AT&T and Verizon are sure to follow (shocking!!). In the end, if they have their way, you will be able to watch Netflix, but it will cost in bandwidth fees nearly as much as it would cost to rent- with their respective pay-per-view fees. With today's government oversight and teleco mentality could it end any other way?
Why is it available on iPhone then?
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.
I, like many others dropped Comcast Cable like the flaming turd it was a couple years ago and went with Digital Antenna + Tivo for HD local network broadcast. I still use Comcast for my internet connection via Comcast Business, but hey.. that's a tax write-off. They give me decent enough upstream (10Mbps) that I can host servers, and higher than advertised downstream (I usually get about 24Mbps) with no bandwidth throttling.
HBO is run by shitheads who pretend that P2P lawsuits are an effective deterrent and somehow think their offering is enough to keep people bound to Comcast Cable. Well HBO: FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR GO SERVICE.
I pirate HBO's shows because HBO wont let me get their shows with an iTunes purchase, they wont put them on Netflix and they seem to think I'll happily bend over and let them and Comcast have their way with my anal sphincter. But I wont -- the shitfest that is Cable TV is not worth $100.00 a month. So fuck you HBO and fuck your GO service. I hope you and Comcast and Viacom die the painful and agonizing death you deserve
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.
Because Apple is Apple. Apple does not take on Microsoft territory, they do their own stuff and dont care about the other ecosystems. Yes, they are big, but they are a niche and are happy with their (quite big) niche. Android, on the other hand, is what microsoft used to be, a platform open for business from both hardware and software partners and everybody else who want to mess with it. Microsoft failed to be microsoft in mobile and came up trying to be Apple with Ms WinPhone7. Under the hood, the philosophy of Ms is similar to AT&T, a crumbling monopoly trying to regain their past strongholds to be itself again. Microsoft do not own the Operating System market anymore, nor does it own the office document viewing market (it still own the authoring part of this market).
that's why Ms exec hate Android deeply and dont care about Apple as long as Apple dont try to rob their stronghold. After all, Apple has so much success creating new ones that it doesn't need to push for the old ones.
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.
They've explained why...:
The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices. Setting aside the debate around the value of content protection and DRM, they are requirements we must fulfill in order to obtain content from major studios for our subscribers to enjoy.
So, yeah...it has nothing to do with it.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
For rich content on the web, Silverlight is not a bad technology. It's better than Flash in a lot of ways.
But not in the one way that matters to me. Flash is on Linux. In every other respect, Silverlight being better than Flash would be no great accomplishment because Flash is awful.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.