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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.'"
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."
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?"
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.
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.
Everyone knows AOL killed the floppy disk when they gave everyone a CD ROM with the whole Internet on it.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
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.
I don't get it...I'm surprised I see as many people as I do opting for streaming over the disks from Netflix with this price rise. Is this mainly people that do not have a nice HD tv to watch on.....?
I mean, I've been with netflix since 2000. I've always been on the 3 out at a time...and upgraded to bluray.
The streaming, was a nice add on...for free.
However, I pretty much only used streaming (when I could find something good in the very limited selection) for older shows or movies that weren't very high quality source material.
But for newer movies or shows...I'm always opting for bluray rental. I mean, I didn't shell out over $2K for a 59" plasma HD tv (and I have a sound system to back up the great image) to just watch substandard source material on. I mean, streaming can't match the quality video/audio that I get on a bluray disk.
*sigh*....are there really that few people today that care about quality audio and video? I guess. Then again, I"m one of those that has refused to buy music online until it comes in a lossless format with no DRM. I buy CD's....and rip them myself to lossy formats for portable players in lesser listening environments (gym, car)...but I'd rather have the best source I can get for my living room where I have spent years since my childhood building a quality audio/video system. I'm not talking about the crazy audiophile stuff you hear about (frozen cables for $1K/ft, etc)...but solid equipment.
Ok...enough said...I ramble...but if you do ignore the audio aspect of it...most of the good HD tv's coming out today DO present an awesome picture, so, just wondering...why so many people settle for streaming when they spent so much $$ on a quality HDTV?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I didn't shell out over $2K for a 59" plasma HD tv (and I have a sound system to back up the great image) to just watch substandard source material on.
Well there you go. I -didn't' shell out $2K for a 59" plasma HD tv. My TV is 32" LCD, only 780p. No sound system, just the TV speakers.
The big win for streaming for me and my kids is that I get to decide what I want to watch -right now-, not two days from now when I can get turnaround of my latest DVD from Netflix. Yes, it's mostly back catalog, but so what: it's not like I've already seen every movie ever made. There are dozens of flicks from the past 5 years I still haven't seen. And my daughter is gobbling up the tween-age series available like she's never had TV before.
I'll be dropping the DVD subscription when the price goes up. For the occasional desire to see a recent release, I'll go Redbox.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
even more abysmal technology... zip drive, which off course flopped badly for its disks being so easy corruptable.
Wtf? Zip was revolutionary at the time. A typical 486 had a 200 to 400 Meg hard drive. A lot of the computers couldn't even address more space than that without a software hack to simulate LBA. A single $20 zip disk represented 1/4 to 1/1 of a typical PC hard drive. The Zip drive was the first reasonable device on which a user could easily back up their entire computer. Yeah, they had reliablity problems, but the cost per megabyte and ease with which they could be moved from PC to PC (parallel port version) was totally unmatched at the time. They sold millons of them for a reason.
I for one simply stopped using floppies in 486 era as soon as i bought my first cd recorder. never bought one floppy drive after that
Your timeline is off, or you were fabulously weathy. The 486 golden era was around 93' to 95. (the pentium 60 came out around '94). At that time, many computers shipped without CD drives of any sort. A really hot-shot machine had a 4x reader and no writer. Even around '97 a CDR (not RW) cost many hundreds of dollars, ran at 1x or 2x speeds, required a 3rd party program because there was no OS integration (and they were all horrible), and produced as many coasters as finalized disks, at nearly $1 per disk.
I have a 1080p TV. I use Netflix streaming all the time, and I've had the same Netflix DVD out for about 6 months now. I switched my plan to the streaming only plan just recently, and as soon as I find where I put that DVD, I'll mail it back in.
It's really a matter of convenience and immediacy. With streaming, I can choose from a pretty good selection of movies and TV shows as soon as I decide I want to watch one. I don't have to try to predict what I'll be in the mood to watch 3 days from now, and I don't have to sift through the smoldering ruins of a video store or deal with the tiny selection of a Redbox.
Yes, the streaming quality is worse than, say, blu ray, but it's still perfectly adequate for most movies. Hell, I grew up on VHS, and the streaming is much better than that.
So why do I have the HDTV at all? Because certain movies really benefit from it, and those movies I'll usually rent on DVD or blu ray from a Redbox (or the locally-owned kiosk that has better movies, probably because they buy the "not for rental" copies of movies and rent them out anyway), or buy them on blu ray. Also, televised sports are better on HD (although they're not full 1080p of course).