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Netflix Killing DVDs Like Apple Killed Floppies?
cheezitmike writes "While there has been lots of outcry about Netflix separating their DVD service from their streaming service, media expert Eric Garland says they're just doing to the DVD what Apple did to the floppy disk. 'I was reminded of so many precedents: Facebook revamping its user interface, the introduction of the first Blueberry iMac, the one with the conspicuously missing 3.5-inch floppy drive on the front. All of these were moments when there was a paradigm shift that led to an immediate public outcry. People made a lot of noise and had a lot of complaints. People were very upset about these shifts...until they weren't. In the news cycle, the outcry is significant and it is problematic, but it's also important to note how quickly these things are forgotten.'"
What did apple do to floppies?
Apple has never been relevant enough on the desktop to kill any desktop technology. PC CD-Rs and then the internet killed floppy drives.
No, it's nothing like that. CD-ROMs were already well adopted by the time floppies came along, and there was no licensing issue going from floppy to optical media the way there is when going from optical to streaming.
So no, the comparison isn't meaningful.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
So the premise of this article is that Netflix is separating out the DVD service in order to kill it and... makes less revenue? How does that make sense? Secondly, Netflix is a tiny player in the entertainment industry and would have negligible impact on the lifespan of DVDs anyway.
It won't really replace DVDs until the selection matches the DVD selection
with its amazing firewire technology!
Apple did not build their business model on providing floppy disks to people like Netflix did with DVDs. What's more, floppy disks faded into disuse due to higher capacity formats being available. With ISP data caps and poor streaming quality, DVDs are simply better for most people compared to streaming only service.
All Netflix is doing is chasing away customers. The reasons behind this can be debated, costs etc, but the end result is the same. More money for less service means fewer customers.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Considering that Internet access is FAR removed from Universal and it's prohibitively expensive for many areas to stream video, I think not.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Maybe if they offered their entire DVD library via streaming. But even then, there are still many people who don't have streaming hooked up to their TV or are in a rural area where they have no access to broadband.
The notion that Netflix has sufficient influence over DVDs to kill them is patently absurd.
Have you seen the lines at redbox units on the weekend? Four and five people deep at out local Kroger, with two redbox vending machines.
Did everyone forget? You could buy a cd-rom drive for like $50 in 1998. Who the fuck still wanted a floppy drive?
I think we are a long way from widespread streaming of HD movies. Until then, I want my Blu-ray.
Let me know when internet streaming gets a decent deinterlacer.
like Vanilla Ice was able to kill our brain like a poisonous mushroom?
Can we get any other good examples?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
No, I don't think so - not for a while. The Redbox model is highly productive. People still want the premium editions, still want the Blu-Rays. Not everyone has the bandwith needed for high quality streaming. People still prize the reliability and dependency of physical media, ESPECIALLY with how sometimes things just disappear from Netflix. If Netflix is killing DVDs (Which I'll admit is possible), I don't see DVDs dying for about a decade, at least, as the content models have to shift first - and those guys are notorious for suing the pants off of everyone, getting stupid laws passed to protect their industry, and have tons of money to fight with.
Until they get high speed internet out to rural locations, something better than 1.5Mbs cellular with 5GB caps on. DVDs will continue to be the best solution.
I can't get a cable company or phone company to run a decent line out the 1/2 mile from the major roadway for 10 houses so I can't see that happening any time soon.
I'll believe netflix can kill DVDs off when they have their entire catalog available for streaming. As the services are going to split, I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that the DVD through the mail option is looking like the better way to go.
Besides which if I decide to BUY a title (some of us do that too), then what are my options for the thousands of titles not available on Bluray? Are the media conglomerates suddenly handing out hi-def mkv files on flash drives that I'm not aware of?
Not everyone has access to unlimited high speed internet. I live just east of Phoenix but still well within the metropolitan area and the best I can do is 1.5 internet and right now I'm living on a Verizon mifi with a 5 gig cap. I can manage to download one movie a month if I watch no other videos and I'm conservative with my surfing. Yes I can up the cap. It roughly works out to $10 for each movie download just in bandwidth. Sorry but I'd rather have the physical DVD and I don't get to keep the Netflix ones so I get stuck with $10 movie rentals because of bandwidth. For a lot of the country dropping DVDs would be a disaster and it would adversely affect film revenues reducing the number of films made. It may happen no matter how adversely it affects everyone due to profits. I'd say the choice would be move to a city if you want to watch movies but I do live in a major city and I still can't get decent internet. This is seriously putting the cart before the horse. It's like forcing people to give up their horses for cars but most of the country doesn't have gas stations. To me it reeks of less service for more money so everyone should see this is a bad thing overall.
Anyone who uses Netflix streaming knows that the number of new/popular movies available instantly is vanishingly small
No one seems to be mentioning the loss of picture quality with this move towards streaming.
Floppies didn't die off because of anything Apple did, they died off because cheap USB mass storage supplanted the floppy.
Yeesh!
In looking at how I consume media from Netflix I have basically been mostly a streaming customer since they have started expanding their selection. In the past year I have gotten 1 new DVD that I have gotten around to watching. I don't have cable and live in a low area so over the air digital TV is mostly out (I only get 2 channels now) so most of my "TV" is done streaming over the internet. My wife or I can watch most recent episodes of shows we like from Hulu, or directly from the networks, and for older shows and movies we can watch them off of Netflix. The $9 a month I pay is great for the all I can eat video buffet I currently enjoy, I don't even mind the commercials on the free Hulu or network sites since that is what you get when watching cable or over the air TV anyway. I would have had the internet connection I have anyway since I do push a lot of data in and out of my computer each month any way.
Time to offend someone
For the record, the iMac that debuted without a floppy drive came in only one color: Bondi Blue. The Blueberry iMac was part of a later generation.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I totally agree. Currently, my DVD player is used solely by the DVDs I check out from Netflix. Once I cancel my DVD subscription next month, it will sit idle, collecting dust. I'm hoping Netflix will pick up more streaming options, but I've already started seeing the value in Amazon Video-on-demand to be my physical DVD replacement.
I can ask Netflix to send me some old B&W film nobody watches any more and they will. There's no way for me to ask them to put it on a server for me. As already posted , streaming quality is poor compared to DVD and with ISP data caps looming, it won't be a good service for long.
If he's right, and in 6 months to year the streaming library covers more than the DVDs, that would be awesome, and nobody would complain.
I'm highly doubtful, as I've already watched many of my favorite things that were available for streaming get knocked off the service.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
But I don't think they can be blamed for DVD's demise. PC Games almost went from CD distribution direct to digital, very few years on DVD.
Let me just say it and just get it out of the way:
The DVD is dead. RIP.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I would say that the wide-adoption of corporate/small-business e-mail systems in the mid-late 90s killed the floppy disk. Up until then, legal assistants, secretaries, financial analysts, and other workers on the lower-rungs would truck a floppy disk from desk to desk to collaborate with colleagues, present work to the boss, or deliver documents to clients. With e-mail, the small files that could go on floppy disks could more easily be sent more easily with even the slower LAN and shared-internet connections.
When dell stopped manufacturing PCs without the ability to have a built-in floppy via a FDD port on the main board, it essentially put the final nail in the floppy coffin.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
I'm surprised this is a top story. The two aren't similar at all as has already been established.
The whole Netflix pricing thing was driven, at least in large part, by the industry increasing prices. I don't think it is completely unlikely that the industry (or the MPAA mafia if you prefer) P>
Of course I'm talking about the same people who at first fought technology like the video tape, but now see a very significant share of their revenue come from DVD and Blu-Ray sales. While many wouldn't give them the credit to be smart enough to deliberately take action that might help phase out the DVD, I'm sure that they like the idea of people paying for a movie each time they want to see it rather than owning an inexpensive copy of their own. And, of course, if they can convert the industry and the public perception to a pay per view or subscription model then it becomes all that easier to phase out the media and just rake in the income on rental of very low quality DRM encumbered digital copies. And, of course, at that point prices can start climbing again, as the alternatives no longer exist.
The best thing that could come out of the NetFlix change in pricing would be if a significant number of sheep told NetFlix "Fine, drop my subscription in price by two bucks and only send mr DVDs by mail, I'll pass on the low bitrate, limited selection, no extras downloads".. However, with the immidate gratification mindset that America has, I don't see that likely to happen. So the MPAA will likely drive us to a download crappy quality one-time rental model, even while AT&T and their like move to a pay by the megabyte pricing model.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
...it was just the first to notice that they were dead.
I was working at a big-name electronics store. I had a 100MB removable cartridge drive and that is about the same time that Superdrives -- 100MB drives that were backwards-compatible with 3.5" floppies -- became widely available.
Just as so many others here have said: Apple didn't kill the floppy drive. They may have been one of the earliest companies to recognize that the floppy was already dead, but that's not the same thing.
This is something that could be fixed, but several problems with streaming as it currently stands are:
(1) the lack of options for watching films in other languages,
(2) frequent lack of sub-titling options,
(3) lack of behind-the-scenes/deleted scenes/bloopers and other kinds of extras that all come with DVDs.
(4) As others have mentioned, the loss of picture fidelity and audio quality/surround is a big deal. Maybe not if you're watching it on your iPhone, but very true for any respectible television/monitor.
(5) I'll include dis-honorable mention of broadband ISPs with stingy bandwidth caps in this list too. It's not like you could watch handful of movies and shows every week under a lot of these plans with caps.
I don't think Netflix is going to kill the DVD.
If it's in the "cloud", in time, it will go away. Most "streaming" services seem to have a life of about five years. Size doesn't matter; WalMart Music and Microsoft PlaysForSure both went away. Zune may be going away, too.
And if it's in the "cloud", cable companies can slowly cut off your air supply with bandwidth caps, forcing you to watch their "premium" services.
They're assuming that everyone has cheap, reliable, easily available broadband. Whether it be for movies, operating system downloads, or just everyday use, this is a patently false assumption. When the floppy was killed, DVD/CD media was an immediately available replacement for many, if not all users simply by visiting their local store. In this case, users are at the behest of other companies who do not have a financial incentive to provide service to many areas - let alone ensure reliability or access. This is before we even mention the picture & sound quality or the constant "rebuffering" waits. Yes, all you lovely people who loudly proclaim the death of physical media for downloading - many of us envy your ability to make that change. And before someone says "Well move to somewhere that it's available", I live in a major metropolitan area, top 25 DMA. The internet service sucks due to poor infrastructure, regardless of who you subscribe to. And let's not forget bandwidth caps. Downloading/streaming only is not yet a viable permanent solution.
It really feels like the Slashdot editors are shilling for Netflix lately - first a summary about how they "had" to raise prices, linking to an article without any data supporting that conclusion. Now an article about how it's "not so bad" - it's "progressive" and normal people just don't understand yet.
I think Netflix provides a good service, but less than a year ago they had a dollar or two price hike for the sole purpose of forcing people from 1DVD to streaming-only plans, when they were released. An honest company would have grandfathered in the pricing for old subscribers, and used the price difference to sell streaming-only to new customers. I see this recent price change as the exact same thing, a dishonest sales pitch to get people to switch accounts - not precipitated by rising costs or anything else. They want to make more profit and that's fine, but don't treat your customers like they're stupid.
They have a certain budget for streaming content and they rotate in and out content depending on what they feel will be popular - they can't stream everything at once because of cost, not because they can't get licenses for it. That alone makes it feel a bit devious forcing customers off plans like 1DVD+streaming where they can get any content in one way or another, to plans like streaming-only where they can only get preselected content that often doesn't include the big name titles since they're more expensive to license. (If you feel like watching a specific title and can find it on streaming you're lucky - if you just want a specific genre you can probably find something worth watching)
That the cost of streaming a movie 1/20th of the cost of DVD mailing.
At $8 per month, Netflix may not even be making a profit off of someone with a single DVD plan who always has a one-day turnaround.
Apple may have been among the first to stop supporting floppies, but only a fanboy would claim that removing them from Apple machines that made up a minute percentage of the desktop market somehow killed them. Floppies simply became obsolete, though I still had to find a floppy disk to install a BIOS upgrade on a new system as late as 2008.
... the outcry is significant and it is problematic, but it's also important to note how quickly these things are forgotten.
WRONG. Just because the media stops reporting on something after a week doesn't mean it's forgotten. The people who are pissed off remain pissed off a lot longer than that.
The only reason I put floppy drives in my PC builds back in the day was that most BIOS didn't seem to be able to reliably boot by other means. I had one floppy with master boot loader hanging out of my dell for years when linux didn't want to behave with my sketchy BIOS.
Now that everything can boot by CDROM or DVD easily, or even USB, there ceased to be a need for them. USB memory killed it a long time ago, and before that CD's got cheap enough not to care.
So one could point to any number of contributing reasons, none of which rhymed with napple.
The Mac Zealot RDF version of history says "Apple stopped including floppies and they died off!" However if you look at what actually happened it was more like they stopped shipping floppies and users had to run out and buy USB floppy drives because there was no replacement. I remember at the newspaper I worked at when we got a bunch of iMacs for our newsroom, and they all needed to have floppy drives so that journalists could transfer stories to and from them.
The floppy started dying when CD-RWs got cheap, and also to an extent with zip disks (anyone else remember those). However CD-RWs were kinda inconvenient as a replacement and zips not all that universal. When it really started dying off was when USB drives got cheap. They were a complete and easy replacement for floppies. There was no reason to use a floppy instead of one.
That Apple stopped shipping floppies and they then died off years later is of no real relevance. While it helped the process along, it did not cause it by any stretch of the imagination. They stopped using floppies long before there was a useful replacement, hence people had to add them back.
Now Netflix is different. What they are doing, along with others like Steam, is offering a service that provides an alternative to DVDs. Thus they really are helping to kill it off. They aren't saying "We are taking away the hardware, you figure out what to do," they are saying "Here's something that makes the hardware unnecessary, if you want."
I don't think Netflix is the only one with a vested interest in killing DVDs. I'd bet that the studios are anxious to move away from DVDs, with their effective lack of copy protection, and move towards streaming. With streaming solutions, the DRM can be modified with a software update, and non-compliant devices can be cut-off in the field without warning.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
...if netflix's streaming service had a much wider catalog to offer. And wasn't under constant threat from the content holders.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
apple already killed the dvd (assuming you believe apple has the power to kill anything):
http://www.apple.com/macmini/design.html
"...designed without an optical disc drive. Because these days, you don’t need one. It’s easier than ever to download music and movies..."
DVDs don't need to be murdered, their lifecycle is coming to a close, anyway.
They're natural environment, the DVD player, has been shrinking for years.
Hey, how's it going?
So Hollywood would like us all to buy BluRay discs including those with 3D or at least rent them. With Netflix nuking discs I wonder what the HW execs think about their only channel drying up. Blockbuster is toast, Redbox is limited. As far as I've been able to tell BR content doesn't yet stream and even if it did might quickly bump in to BW caps now showing up at ISPs. gb
I don't remember any panic when the floppy went away, it was a happy time. Maybe the panic described in the article was only experienced by mac users? I mean how can removing floppy drives from about 5% of all personal computers kill floppies and how did that kill them for non mac users? That is a very strange statement to make. Not only is it false, and even If it were not, it is still apples and oranges when you compare with Netflix and what is happening there.
I get home last night... I start up the TV and go to my Roku box to watch an episode of Star Trek. "Netflix services cannot be contacted at this time". Assuming it was Roku, I start up the Wii... "Netflix services cannot be contacted at this time"... I wander over to the laptop... "Netflix services cannot be contacted at this time"...
DVD's don't do that to me.
As Netflix is AFAIK an american thing the rest of the world is still using DVD's.
Apple killed the floppy? They killed a technology by omitting it from a product whose market share couldn't even be measured in single-digit percentages? I know Steve Jobs is amazing and all, but that's just super human.
Apple merely recognized the obsolescence of the floppy disk, and omitted it because it was overhead that provided little value. Netflix is recognizing that streaming is the future of their business, and is acting to make that future as lucrative as possible.
The article assumes these companies are causing trends, when they are merely reacting to them.
I think it's time for us Americans to stop thinking that our cities are large. The 10 largest US cities don't even match the top 20 Chinese cities. NY and LA barely squeeze in there if you expand to the Chinese list to 25.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
There's a better theory of Netflix's move that doesn't rely on us believing that they want to kill DVDs. It's that their contracts with the movie studios had a tiered pricing structure, where they paid less for streaming rights to content as long as their number of streaming users was below a certain total. By offering streaming essentially free to all DVD customers, they found themselves approaching that number faster than they had expected to; there were lots of users who in practice only ever used DVDs but nonetheless had to be counted as "streaming users". Segregating out streaming and charging separately for it solves this problem in two ways: those DVD customers who hadn't used streaming but previously still counted as "streaming users" will now remove themselves from the streaming subscribers total, postponing the day when Netflix's costs for streaming access go up, and it brings in additional revenue from those users who choose to retain streaming service.
Read my blog.
When Netflix unbundled their streaming and DVD service, I wonder how many people went with DVDs. I did, simply because broadband sucks in my neighborhood. I'm not rural, I can practically spit on Bill Gates' house from my place. And yet, depending on a streaming service is iffy.
Apple didn't kill floppies. Their capacity did and Apple simply saw the handwriting on the wall. That and the availability of USB external floppy drives supported the remaining demand. Maybe BluRay will kill the DVD, but people are still going to want to build up their own collection of content.
Have gnu, will travel.
Floppy died a painfully slow death, but did thanks to Zip disks (100MB capacity, and could survive back-pack abuse much better than the 3.5" 1.44MB cousin) Which worked for a while (having to carry around the Zip drive... but really USB flash killed it all. Highly durable, will survive laundry. Small, fast, and accepted everywhere.
DVDs in comparison are fragile. Scratched media. Over-powered lasers (lie on some Sony players) kill RW disks.
And for those of us on the "edge" wireless and dropbox is replacing any media at all.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Just like the cries for action against human genes giving animals human features. Until there are batboys running around everywhere and noone really cares. Just make the future look like today, booooooring...
Till their streaming service approaches the coverage that their DVD service does the analogy is just wrong.
Eliminating the floppy didn't keep people from buying the most popular software, it was already on optical. Backward compatibility with their old software was harmed, which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Netflix subscribers are faced with, where only the old and crappy titles will still be accessible with their neutered service.
Did Apple kill Floppy?
Can Netflix kill DVD?
Can Netflix eat an Apple?
Can Apple eat a Netflix?
Can Floppies eat Netflix?
Alice almost fell asleep at this point.
Streaming content is a tiny fraction of what's on DVD. If they "kill" DVDs, they will kill all the content that matters.
I like Rockford Files and the occasional 10 year old action movie I've seen 10 times, but not enough to pay for it as my only content choices.
Plus, what am I going to watch on the airplane?
What I don't understand about all of this, is that streaming a movie from Netflix is a step down from a DVD and an even bigger step down from BlueRay in terms of audio. Do all you Netflix users out there just not care abut 5:1 or better sound?
BluRay has ~40GB of audio/video pleasure. Streaming a movie get you something like 2 or 3GB total audio/video pleasure. I will happily accept 3 day latency for the extra content. Anyone who says you can't tell the difference between Blu and DVD are either blind or under-equipped (1080p or viewing angle too small). And the video quality difference between streaming and Blu, or DVD for that matter, is incomparable. And why aren't people ranting/raving about the horrible 2ch audio? Am I the only person with an awesome 5.1ch system that refuses to not use it? Streaming is great for my kid or anything where I'm 99% interested in intellectual content (documentaries, etc). Or maybe old TV shows with quality lower than the stream.
I bet Apple and Netflix have a lot more data on how people us their systems/services then you do. It seems likely that your situation are a small minority...
Streaming would be great IF we all could get high speed internet access. AT&T and Verizon both throw these USB internet access items at us, tie them down with small download limits, and wash their hands of it.
Maybe it will just push broadband accessibility faster, so everyone can still watch their anime softcore for cheap.
I havent seen streaming that support DTS - until then DVD or Blueray still has the best sound and picture.
They're assuming that everyone has cheap, reliable, easily available broadband.
That flawed assumption being that a any businesses target market is "everyone".
All Netflix needs to have determined is that they can achieve their goals within the subset of the market that has cheap, reliable, easily available broadband.
I agree that affordable broadband is far from ubiquitous. Netflix's apparently desired business model will certainly count me out. But that may or may not mean anything with resect to the wisdom of their assumptions.
Same goes for Netflix. Who according to Wikipedia "announced they will expand into the European market... by 2012".
Just as most of the world didn't use Macs enough for them to have an actual effect on the "death of the floppy", most of the world can't even use Netflix for it to have an actual effect on the "death of the DVD".
You want an actual DVD killer?
For video content that will be flat-rate broadband internet + "free TV and movies" sites + your average consumer catching on to them.
For blank media it will be the moment when your average consumer catches on the fact that the retail price of a spindle of DVDs costs more or the same as an external hard drive of the same capacity.
For software... When Windows becomes "automagically" installable over the internet, or when it starts being distributed on a USB stick. Or a Blu-ray Disc.
In all those cases, reports of DVDs death have been greatly exaggerated.
A decade from now it will probably still be in use - perhaps not as much as CDs are still used for music (there IS a backward compatible alternative physical medium for video/software out there already), but technology has a habit of sticking around.
As for recordable DVDs, an average portable 500 GB drive costs around $60+shipping on Amazon, while a 100 disc spindle of Verbatim DVDs costs around $24+shipping.
Wait for those prices to start to match.
And even then, it will still be years.
I don't use/burn CDs as much as I did 10 years ago, but I still have to keep some blank CDs at home.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Cheap CD-R drives and the ability in basically every BIOS to boot directly from a CD completely killed any advantage the floppy had. Apple's decision to stop putting floppy drives in their computers was a response to the already-obvious obsolescence of the technology.
Not quite. The iMac came out in mid-1998, at which point the majority of new PCs still included CD-ROM drives- presumably because CD burners were still too expensive to be a no-brainer inclusion. (*)
The fact that Apple included a CD-ROM rather than a writer on that original iMac itself really proves the point!
It also negates your claimed rationale, unless Apple were seriously expecting everyone to buy an *external* CD writer. Actually, from what I remember, the one peripheral everyone seemed to have for the iMac was.... an external floppy drive!. Enough said.
Granted, CD writers *did* fall in price not long after that (around the turn of the millennium), and the writing may have been on the wall at the time of the iMac's release. But Apple still jumped the gun if that was their reason, because the original iMac had *no* built in read-write drive, floppy *or* CD.
(*) I remember this because I bought my first Wintel PC about 4 months before and had spent hours poring over specs. One or two systems with DVD (-ROM) drives were hovering on the edge of my budget, but I definitely don't recall CD writers being an option.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
They're not killing the DVD at all, they're letting you get DVD's with no streaming for less than before, so if anything they're giving people with crappy internet connections a break.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
In the case of record to cassette, cassette to compact disc (or floppy disk for that matter ;) ), VHS to DVD, floppy to USB/flash (which I think is more true), floppy to CD-ROM, backup tape to CDR/DVDR, there was a change in technology that added affordability and conveniences. Note that, for this reason, I didn't mention DVD to Blueray. More specifically, it was a change from one physical format to another.
It's hard to say that the move from DVD to streaming online is in the same sense a change in physical format. The idea of streaming is conceptually different than any mobile storage solution. I say mobile because that's what those mediums are. They move from the factory to the publisher to the distributor to the customer to their computer/media device. This movement still happens but it cuts out alot of middlemen; where the concern is that the middleman includes the customer or end user.
Streaming is mobile because we ourselves move with our mobile devices while the central storage point stays relatively stationary. No longer are we able to pocket or hold the actual source of information/data/media. This actually restricts the kind of mobility that makes those original mediums good: the ability to lend and make backups (essentially insurance for your investments).
I'd say these drastic changes are something to be concerned about. I won't go into my personal opinion on the subject.
"So don't get programmed by anybody but yourself" --Bill S. Preston, Esquire
Thanks for pointing that out. And +1 for the Rockford Files, although you're right, one can only watch so many episodes before you need a break.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
CD-Rs did not kill floppies, that's laughable. It takes too long to copy a CD-R to make any efficient use of them for simple file transfer, and no one uses them now for things like that. CD-Rs are on their way out as well. The physical media that ultimately replaced Floppies were little drives that use that thing called USB... you know, the interface plus that Apple first introduced on it's first iMac.
Apple did not by itself kill floppies, but they got creative and opened an opportunity for people to rethink data transfer, and that by opening that door, everyone followed and left the floppy behind. No one in the PC business except Apple is doing any kind of serious innovation. Everyone else pretty much just copies... no pun intended.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I have long been frustrated by Netflix and their Streaming-in-English-only model. I prefer to watch foreign films and anime in their original languages with subtitles, since dubbed dialogue is typically sub-par (due to limitations of the format). With the DVD, I can choose whichever audio track I want, and enable or disable subtitles as needed. With streaming, that's not an option. I wouldn't think it's too high a technical hurdle to clear (a few radio buttons selected, you receive a different audio stream, and subtitles take very little bandwidth at all), but it hasn't been offered yet, meaning I'm stuck with DVDs for most of the content I want from Netflix.
The new pricing is causing me to seriously consider whether it's worthwhile, especially given how infrequently I have time to watch.
Yes, I think you're in a minority. Look at the dominance of MP3s/AACs over anything else. Netflix streaming is the equivalent in the video world. In both cases you get 90% of the quality (arguable, I know) but it's many many times more convenient and often cheaper.
By the way, Netflix streaming looks fine to me on my 52" LCD, and I only have 3mbps DSL. I haven't watched a ton of stuff in it, but honestly when I watched "Exit Through The Gift Shop" for example I don't recall ever noticing any issues with picture quality. I can't comment on the sound quality however because I'm just using the TV's built-in speakers.
Not quite. The majority of people cannot tell the difference in sound between an mp3 and the original CD. Especially when listened to through ear buds or small speakers. However, the majority of people can notice the difference between HD and non-HD video. Whether they care about it is a different matter, but it is noticeable.
... for some users. Part of how Netflix's DVD model works is that it has local warehouses all over the place to ship out new discs quickly. The problem they face is that as people migrate to streaming, a lot of that infrastructure becomes dead weight and the return per DVD subscriber goes down. This is only exacerbated by having to support both DVD and Blu-Ray formats. By making their change, they drove a number of customers off of the DVD program and have segmented their market - now you don't have a gradual trickle of people dropping DVD for streaming but a large surge and then a much smaller trickle in the future. This will allow Netflix to consolidate their shipping facilities and lock in a stable DVD capacity level rather than continually responding to drops in DVD customers. I may be in error in my assumption that DVD usage is declining among their customer base, but I think they are trying to avoid the Blockbuster model of seeing a decline in your primary business and ignoring it.
I'm actually dropping the streaming portion of my subscription and keeping the discs.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
In the Netflix press release they noted they were splitting the plans because there was MORE demand for the DVD than they anticipated. At first they thought they would have the give the DVD part away, but now think otherwise.
That would be like if Mac decided to remove the floppy drive so they could sell external floppy drives because everyone loved them so much.
you didn't buy a CD-Burner for less than $100 in 1996. Maybe you meant $1,000.
No, they aren't. They are concluding (not assuming) that bundling disk-based subscriptions with streaming subscriptions has adverse affects on their net profits, so they are unbundling the services and selling them separately. (This increases prices for people who want to keep both services, and decreases prices for people who either use only disks or only stream; therefore, it actually benefits people who don't have cheap, reliable, and easily available broadband, since those people will no longer be charged for a streaming service that they aren't using. It also benefts people who do have cheap, reliable, and easily available broadband but don't want to mess with physical disks. It increases costs for people like me who like to stream some things but prefer to get blu-ray for other things, but, hey, I can't really expect the only-streaming and only-disk people to subsidize my viewing habits forever.)
Netflix is making it cheaper to get discs than it has been previously.
How does this constitute "nuking disks"?
Netflix is not a the only channel through which people buy Blu-Ray discs. In fact, its a channel through which people rent blu-ray discs, which reduces the incentive to buy them.
Yeah, I bet companies that focus on streamming content sell (rent, or watever) way more streams than physical media.
Rethinking email
Apple didn't kill floppies. USB Flash Drives killed floppies. CD's and DVD's lived side by side for Floppies for a longtime and it wasn't till Flash Drives got sub $10 that it put the killing blow to floppies.
"They" don't have to assume anything. Netflix has only justify their business model in terms of its success. They either remain competitive, or they don't. And since the pricing structure does nothing more than price the CD option at the same rate as the streaming option, all that is asked of the customer is that "they" make a decision, option 1, option 2 or both.
Since the biggest selling point for Netflix is convenience, if you have broadband and are willing to limit yourself to the ever growing selection of content available, great! If you don't you are limited to the mail options anyway, no big deal. If you can afford the redundancy and live for consuming film and video, who cares!!
The premise that Netflix is killing anything is a little ridiculous... it's a big world, and they don't control the market forces that will push the CD beyond the little sign that reads, "... there be dragons." That's for the purveyors of the next big thing that will fuel the next storage war. I'm sure that content providers would much rather do away with anything that allows a piratenet to exist, and if it happens, it won't be a rental company that makes it happen. It will be your "friendly neighborhood" ISP using throttling, deep packet inspection, and the power to control your "unlimited" use of their network.
I stopped my NetFlix subscription many months ago because why bother with DVDs when there are so many movies already available on OnDemand? Plus DVDs are a pain and easily damaged. They are completely impractical for kids. I doubt DVDs will go completely, but I am more likely to sign up for NetFlix streaming than the DVD service again. I feel like there are way more media choices than I have time to watch and Comcast\OnDemand and the Internet provide that just fine for me. Actually a lot of movies including indie films are released to OnDemand before they are released on DVD or sometimes even the movie theater.
I don't know where you live, but where I live downloading\streaming is quite a viable solution. I imagine DVDs will remain available, but it is hard to see their advantage. Broadband is excellent in many areas and will expand over time. I am not sure if I agree with your comment that NetFlix does not have a fiancial incentive to provide service to many areas and the expansion of streaming hardly requires eliminating DVDs - unless there are a lot of customers like me who don't want them anymore.
Cheap flash memory attached to USB keys did
So what's the point.. The Amish still use Buggy Whips.. So you've got a poorly designed extremely limited instrument and it still uses obsolete technology. So what?
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
I hadn't realized how long it's been since I bought a DVD/CD until I struggled opening a new PC game on DVD. O...M...G... I place the blame for the pending demise of the CD/DVD/BluRay formats squarely on the shoulders of the product packaging sociopaths who make it dang near impossible to get at the "content" of physical data!
So no, the comparison isn't meaningful.
None of them are. Compared to Facebook's public outcry? Didn't we just note yesterday that Facebook has a customer satisfaction right down there with banks and cable companies? That's fine if you have a monopoly but when it comes to Netflix people have alternatives.
You can't simply say that any company can piss off a large majority of customers and they will all forget. Some companies will push through that with people shouting praise (Apple), others will have customers actively protesting and wanting to leave but with no alternative (Facebook), and some will go out of business (we'll see if Netflix gets added here).
They're assuming that everyone has cheap, reliable, easily available broadband.
No, they are assume that anyone worth doing business with already has available broadband.
The dot-com boom is already more than 10 years ago, if your area still don't have affordable broadband, you are simply not in their target customer segment. Sane business simply do not cater for everyone.
Oliver.
This. I pay 47$/month for 12Mbits down with a 60GB/mth cap. Rogers in Canada. 1 hr of HD quality Netflix uses 2GB.
I'll stick to DVDs or cable or bluray for now.
They're assuming that everyone has cheap, reliable, easily available broadband.
No, they're just assuming *enough* people have broadband.
They aren't assuming that everyone has cheap, reliable, easily available broadband.
They're assuming that everyone either has cheap reliable, easily available broadband, or they don't.
If you do, then use the streaming option. If you don't, stick with DVDs.
If you want instant access, stick with streaming. If you want better picture quality, stick with physical media.
If you want both services, then pay for both services.
Its painfully obious, think of this, you write a floppy in your perfectly fine 386 to take to a buddies, you get in your summer hot 1989 escort and drive 20 min with the ac on. you pop it in their perfectly fine computer and the fucker is dead
the floppy killed the floppy, and anyone that had to actually rely on one fucking knows that
I thought Netflix was just trying to get me to quit? If so, mission accomplished.
Their streaming quality is unimpressive compared to DVD. They claim high-def programs, but the content is so highly compressed that all but still images are lacking definition. And of course, none of it plays back with 5.1 surround on any of my home theater devices that support netflix (not the bluray player, not the tv, and not the WD TV Plus). Then there is the total lack of new programming- I don't go to the movies, but always watch the movies when they hit DVD. Since these aren't on streaming, its of little value to me except for those rare occasions when I get nostalgic for movies I've already watched on broadcast TV a few dozen times. On the very rare occasion that a new movie appears on Netflix streaming, its through Starz, and it disappears as quickly as it appears. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm busy and by the time I get around to wanting to watch a new movie I dropped in my instant queue, it is usually no longer available. And generally, its not a great new release anyway, which is why I don't bother to watch it right away.
Then Netflix wants to charge $2 extra a month to get access to Bluray discs.
When their prices changed, it was the end of Netflix for me. Blockbuster sends DVD's and Bluray for the same price and its the same price as Netflix. They're offer a 30 day trial for free right now, and I don't think I'm going to miss the total lack of selection on the Netflix streaming service- nor the lack of quality. Why spend thousands of dollars on your home theater equipment only to playback sub-par copies of old and second-rate releases?
I urge everyone who subscribes to Netflix to leave for a few months...just a few months- enough to give them a heart attack when they see the results for the quarter. Trust me- you're not going to feel it, and there is no cost involved in switching or switching back later if you so choose, however Netflix should feel the impact of their choices.
Oh, and they're not even close to killing the DVD. Its like saying my black & white nokia phone from 1985 is an iPhone killer. Its just not true. Streaming quality on Netflix is nowhere near high definition either in video or audio, nor is it even DVD quality.
In this semester's course on journalism we'll learn a new technique. Instead of saying "is xxx dead?", like you did in Blogging 101, you'll learn how to reword it. We'll learn how to claim both that xxx is dead and we'll learn how to pick someone to blame it on! Controversy is always good, even when meaningless.
- I've got bad karma because I won't parrot everyone else's opinion
Netflix Streaming != Netflix DVD. Netflix Streaming is missing MOST of my favorite movies. Here they are:
"Crocodile" Dundee, 2001: A Space Odyssey , 300, 48 Hrs, A Clockwork Orange , A Nightmare on Elm Street, Airport, Aladdin, Alien vs. Predator, Aliens, All the President's Men, American Graffiti , An American Werewolf in London, An Officer and a Gentleman, Antwone Fisher, Apocalypse Now , Apollo 13, Arthur, Avatar, Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, Back to the Future Part III, Batman, Batman Begins, Beauty and the Beast, Beverly Hills Cop, Big, Black Hawk Down, Blazing Saddles, Bonnie and Clyde , Born Free, Braveheart, Bullitt, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , Cast Away, Cat Ballou, Catch Me If You Can, City Slickers, Cleopatra, Close Encounters of the Third Kind , Contact, Dances with Wolves, Das Boot, Deliverance , Die Another Day, Die Hard, Dirty Dancing, Dirty Harry , Doctor Zhivago, Dog Day Afternoon, Dr. No, Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb , E. T. - The Extra-Terrestrial , Easy Rider , Enter the Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Escape From New York, Excalibur, Fail Safe, Falling Down, Fargo, Fatal Attraction, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, First Blood, Flashdance, Frailty, From Russia With Love, Full Metal Jacket, Ghost, Ghostbusters , Gladiator, GoldenEye, Goldfinger, Gorillas in the Mist, Gran Torino, Grease, Gremlins, Groundhog Day, Halloween, Hamlet, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Home Alone, How the West Was Won, Ice Age, In the Heat of the Night , Independence Day, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Inglourious Basterds, Iron Man, Jarhead, Jaws, Jerry Maguire, Jurassic Park, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, King Kong, Kramer vs. Kramer, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Lawrence of Arabia , Lethal Weapon, Life is Beautiful, Live Free or Die Hard, M*A*S*H, Man on Fire, Marathon Man , Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Mean Girls, Men in Black, Midnight Cowboy , Minority Report, Misery, Mission: Impossible, Monster, Mrs. Doubtfire, My Cousin Vinny, Mystic River, National Lampoon's Animal House, National Lampoon's Vacation, Network , No Country For Old Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , One Hundred and One Dalmatian, Patton, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Planet of the Apes, Platoon, Play Misty For Me , Point Break, Poltergeist, Predator, Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction, Raiders of the Lost Ark , Red Eye, Return of the Jedi, Robocop, Rocky, Rocky Balboa, Romancing the Stone, Rosemary's Baby , Saturday Night Fever, Saving Private Ryan, Saw, Schindler's List , School of Rock, Scream 2, Se7en, Serpico, Sister Act, Solaris, Spartacus, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, Star Trek, Star Trek - The Motion Picture, Star Trek: Nemesis, Star Wars , Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Starship Troopers, Sudden Impact , Superman The Movie, Taxi Driver , Terminator 2: Judgment Day , Terminator Salvation, The Abyss, The Aviator, The Birds , The Blind Side, The Blues Brothers, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Dark Knight, The Dirty Dozen, The Empire Strikes Back , The Exorcist , The French Connection , The Fugitive, The Godfather , The Godfather (Part II), The Godfather, Part III, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Graduate , The Great Escape, The Green Mile, The Guns of Navarone, The Hangover, The Hunt for Red October, The Hurt Locker, The Illusionist, The Incredibles, The Last Samurai, The Longest Day, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The
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Are you sure it wasn't higher-capacity storage methods, like CD and DVD blanks and burners, that killed floppies?
Apple killing the floppy won't choke the Internet.
That's great and all, but why is any movie that's worth a darn say "DVD only" or "not available" on my 360 Netflix app.
How is only allowing streaming with about 4% of the world population, killing anything at all?