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Netflix Pursues Cable-TV Deals
An anonymous reader writes "Netflix is making a push to make its online video service available as an app on set-top boxes. 'A deal would mark the online video service's first such tie-up with a U.S. cable provider and would come after a similar agreement it recently announced with U.K. cable operator Virgin Media Inc. The talks are in early stages and no deal is imminent, the people cautioned. Netflix and U.S. pay-TV companies are rivals in some key respects. Netflix's subscription video offering is an attractive alternative for some consumers who are frustrated with costly cable bills. And both sides want to be the go-to destination for consumers to find on-demand TV programming.'"
Most people get cable TV from their internet provider (comcast, centrylink, FIOS, etc). If the the provider starts to loose money on the TV end they will just raise the price for internet.
At least not on Comcast. The crappy Motorola boxes they use are barely capable of running the 1980's style GUI they have now. Adding in anything more complex than a calculator (and I'm not so sure about that) will cause the damn things to fry themselves. How they manage to decode HD streams has to be some form of witchcraft, because splurging on good MPEG decoders would mean eating into the corporate yacht funds.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
conflicts with the distribution rights agreements that netflix has for ___ONLINE___ distribution and spits in the face of networks and studios who negotiate separate online / cable distribution deals.
Exactly. Besides, their move to cable misses the point of why people were cutting cable for Netflix in the first place.
(Cutting both, of course, would be better.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
All this means is if I already have cable I can watch Netflix on my TV without having to own a computer, Apple TV, Roku, TiVo, Smart TV, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, or Android device.
If I already have cable, I can pick up an Apple TV for about one month's cable bill.
So who cares?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If Netflix produced one or two more series/seasons of orignal TV a year, I would drop cable without argument. House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and Arrested Development are great. Keep it coming, and keep adding to the instant collection and I would be happy to pay two or three times as much as I am for that subscription.
Really? I haven't had cable for years...and can't say I've missed it (or the $70 bill).
I will happily trade the open web for access to television shows, movies and cheeseburgers.
- An American Patriot
Don't care about sports. Don't care about seeing "this week's" new episode of some series. Get news off of the 'net.
At that point cable very quickly becomes pointless. Netflix delivers more than enough great content to fill our idle hours, and costs us roughly $75 a month less. I can't count how many TV series we've plowed through (Currently working on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and how we don't care if they were originally broadcast a few years ago.
In all seriousness, the business model for cable is looking more and more like the business model for the music industry.
Three Squirrels
Piracy is still the best, or in some cases the only option until companies wake up.
Lets see
- If I want a particular show, not the entire channel or package that requires that channel
- If I don't want to wait months (or years if in a different country) after it has aired to watch it
- If I want to have it in a standard format that doesn't require proprietary crap (e.g. mkv, avi, mp4)
- If I want to watch it ad free
- If I want to watch something that isn't otherwise released to Netflix or whatever...
Oh, and for the anti-piracy whingers:
- It's not stealing, it's copying. You may think the activity morally wrong, but that doesn't make it stealing
- Every download is not a lost sale. A bunch of stuff I wouldn't pay for in the first place.
- It has nothing to do with entitlement. It's about opportunity and choice.
I would Gladly pay $5/episode for something like Breaking Bad, a show I enjoyed greatly.
I had to download it, as I'm not going to pay for an entire package of channels just to watch one show, and there is no way to watch it the night it airs in a way I can play on mplayer with Linux or stream to my TV using DLNA.
Your loss media companies....
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
The same way DRM destroyed the open computer? I dunno about you but I can still do whatever the hell I want on my computer, and can circumvent DRM if needed.
I'm no fan of DRM, but it's a compromise I'd be willing to make to bring the movie and tv studios inline with the music industry, and if history is any guide, after a few years the tv and movie people will agree to drm-free releases as did the music industry. Play the long game, not the reactionary steadfast to ideology game.
People are mobile now, walking around, getting more exercise. yet still having weight issues, even more than before. I think it's time to drop the old way of thinking, the senseless ideas of sitting on the Couch or Desktop Computer makes you overweight. It's clearly wrong.
Geez...NetFlix wants to add an app to my cable box! No thanks.
They try to get their f-in app into everything that has any type of video capability. Doesn't that make them as bad as drug dealers?
On the other hand...what if this NetFlix app thingie actually is successful? Can you imagine the uproar from the cable providers that NetFlix usage is saturating their already overloaded links to Tier 1 Internet backbone providers? Where have we seen that before? Verizon & Cogent over peering bandwidth, and the implication was/is NetFlix traffic is to blame. There are a number of articles about this on gigaom.com
Right now cable companies have to maintain a server system for providing and tracking payout of Movie and Pay on Demand services. In essence Netflix becomes a cloud service which removes a ton of their headaches. The cable company only has to provide current tv show episodes and special events on demands like sports (Olympics, WWE.)
The downside is that a Hulu could come in replace their TV Shows and Demand. Again sounds good but that means they slowing become just an internet provider and are loosing their unique brand an identity. What if Hulu, Netflix, and Yahoo/Google TV comes in takes the special event on demand? In the next decade their nothing more then a network connection to the world.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
s/An American Patriot/Basically Everyone
Streams found through Google are rarely worth the trouble of watching. Most don't even have the decency to be any higher than 360p. It's gross.
...ADS
Netflix wants to DRM the web
You misspelt 'MPAA and RIAA'.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Any deal to put NF on cable boxes will come with some type of agreement that keeps NF from streaming live content, which is something that scares the cable guy big time. Other agreements that keep NF infringing on their territory might be included as well. This is why NF on cable boxes might not happen any time soon.
I'm amazed at how much work people go through to get content.
If spending two minutes setting up an automatically recurring payment is too much work, then installing Firebug and searching for streams will feel like 24-hour slavery.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
You mean to tell me that I can't just pick up the solution to my problems by doing whatever the super hot model on TV tells me? My problems might be unique to me and require my own, tailored solution?
How dare you contradict the super hot model! She told me that for 5 easy payments of $9.99, I could look just like her and if it fails then it obviously isn't that her solution isn't right but that I am doing it wrong and must be lazy...
I'm more concerned about the fact that their content of late seems to be shrinking. I've noticed that a lot of TV series that I had in my queue, that had every season available, are suddenly being cut back to 1 or 2 seasons or just a fraction of the episodes being available. And a lot of movies have been disappearing too.
Looks like their push towards exclusive series and big headlines is starting to take a toll on their mainstay broad content. If they're not careful, they're going to hype their way right out of their traditional core audience. I don't pay $8 a month just for their latest Emmy-nominated series of the moment. And I don't expect to see my queue shrink every day just so they can budget more for Kevin Spacey's hookers and coke fund.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Will they be giving all their employees shirts with nipple flaps, then?
Worst. Signature. Ever.
Who in the hell needs another recurring payment in their lives? Because you have something I might want to watch now you expect me to pay you next month, the month after, and the month after that!? Geez, and here you talk are bringing up slavery.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Just how young are you?
> And both sides want to be the go-to destination for consumers to find on-demand TV programming.' Cable providers don't want anything to do with being an on-demand provider for customers. In fact they want the exact opposite. If they had any interest in allowing people to pay for only the content that they wanted then they would have done it years ago and you or I would have never heard of Netflix. What cable companies want is to package 50 garbage channels in with 5 that people actually want into every tier so that they can force consumers to buy more expensive packages. "Oh you want that in HD? You'll need to upgrade to our premium package which comes with 200 channels!" Never mind that 40 of those channels are the Home Shopping Network or that the channel you want in HD comes in for free like that over the air. Cable companies across the US slit their own wrist years ago and now are just starting to regret it.
27? What part of my comment got your panties in a twist, there?
If you only want to watch one thing, why are you looking at Netflix?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
> People are mobile now, walking around,
No, not really.
"Mobile" in this instance means little more than sitting some place besides the living room in front of the living room TV.
It might not even mean that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Netflix, join the dark side, we have snookies.
slumming the wrong direction in time.
If they're bright, they'll negotiate a deal for a prominent position in the onscreen overlay, including a prized position near channel 200, or wherever the HD default portal entry is. Perhaps also a Netflix orange button on the remote even.
Otherwise they'll turn into just another channel, on demand maybe, but their favored economic ground other channels are trying to overtake with their own custom series will begin to evaporate.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's more an issue of perspective than anything. It doesn't "make" you overweight, what you eat makes you overweight. You are simply not doing yourself any favors if you chose to sit on your larded butt all day. Your body requires exercise to function properly. Part of which includes promoting a satisfactory metabolic rate. If your ass sitting is fostering a low metabolic rate, then the food you eat--which people tend to do more of when they ass sit by the way--is going to inflate said ass even faster than it would otherwise. In other words, when viewed from afar there isn't much point in the distinction. Whether it's making you fat or making it easier to be fat, there isn't much difference.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Since it sounds like you've been living in a cave for the last decade, let me introduce you to smartphones and tablets. And yeah, those things are computers, chock full of DRM. "walled gardens", like the crap store. And jailbreaking declared illegal and whatnot...
Have you maybe heard of the "secure boot" initiative by Micro$oft? Sure, for now the rules say you must be allowed to disable it... on x86.
If you choose to ignore threats like these you're soon out of the game...
How about have a la carte channels on netflix so I only have to pay cable companies for internet access?
Really, I unlocked the bootloader and ran cyanogenmod on my HTC phone. Netflix worked. Take off your tinfoil hat.
Then you've missed the point of freedom. You should not compromise on digital restrictions management.
There are three types of freedom:
Free as in beer.
Free as in speech.
Free as in the mooncup.
Most of you boys probably only care about the first two. Either way, drm only minimally impacts most of them.
Actually, a lot of people I know DON'T care about those things, they've just settled into a pattern where paying for monthly cable/satellite is routine. If anything, most I know keep cable (or at least the extended package) around to have cartoons that keep the kids occupied. Netflix has lots of those, and no commercials to brainwash kids into buying the latest useless thingamajig.