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Netflix Gets What It Pays For: Comcast Streaming Speeds Skyrocket
jfruh (300774) writes "Back in February, after a lengthy dispute, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for network access after being dogged by complaints of slow speeds from Comcast subscribers. Two months later, it appears that Comcast has delivered on its promises, jumping up six places in Netflix's ISP speed rankings. The question of whether this is good news for anyone but Comcast is still open."
Fuck Comcast
1. I Pay Comcast for internet access at X speed.
2. I Pay Netflix to send me movies via that line that I pay for.
3. Comcast holds my content hostage, wanting an extortion payment from NetFlix.
I see.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I hope we at least have water neutrality where we don't get charged more for using water for showering as opposed to washing the car. thats where its all going folks.
They would have offered to play netflix streaming server mirrors in their regional Headends to give real speed boosts.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Really, netflix, congratulations. Very disruptive of you and all that. And the transition from a primarily USPS model to a substantially streaming service (barring that one really embarrassing fuckup that you could hardly have handled worse, oh how we chuckled over here...) Really sticking it to the stogy incumbents.
Now, it would be a pity if your customers were to... experience service disruptions... would it not?
it's barely been a month & comcast's already completed all those network upgrades? you know, all that capital investment that was required b/c of netflix that they didn't have the $ for until a month ago? that's impressively fast considering how long it takes them to fix the most basic problems for individual customers!
Obviously Netflix will just pass the cost on to its subscribers (where else would they get the money from?). It's very unlikely they'd implement this as a surcharge for their Comcast subscribers only (I wish they would, but I expect their contract with Comcast prohibits it), they'll just absorb it into the single subscription price. So in fact non-Comcast customers will effectively be indirectly paying Comcast to subsidise other users' access.
From an engineer's point of view it's all baffling (Netflix and their customers are both paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, so where's the need for anything more?), but when you view it through the lens of capitalist incentives it all makes perfect sense.
"...for anyone but Comcast is still open."
It was never a question, nor open. The answer is no. It is painfully obvious this benefits Comcast and hurts everyone else.
On a long enough time-line, this is bad news for everyone; and not just netflix or comcast users. It's a slap in the face to network neutrality. Dane-geld in a manner of speaking; Will all ISP's need to pay for preferential access to content for their customers? Sure netflix can afford to pay, for now.. but how does a new player ever enter the market if they can't afford to pay for access to customers? =/
What about the folks who prefer Hulu? What about the next great Internet service that now can never happen again like it did in the past? Netflix paying Comcast is not just about gaining access to customers. It's about locking out competition.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Sums it up nicely.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I can see why Comcast did this. They wanna make sure people still stick with Cable.
This is ground zero for the net neutrality fight. We need strong Net Neutrality to keep this BS from happening. Comcast is gaining a position where it will implicitly own a share of every company delivering service to its customers. The Comcast and TWC merger is going to make things infinitely worse.
it seems like it's really good news for the people who stream Netflix on Comcast.
Soon that will be about 50% of the entire United States. You go with Concast or you go without broadband.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I want some, cause it's clearly as good as BTL chips.
What Netflix is paying for, is a bribery fee so that Comcast quit throttling them. The proof?
As soon as the agreement was reached, I could finally stream Netflix in 3D. Oh, and we all know they didn't get their peering equipment in within 3 days....
The other evil empire (AT&T) is royally screwing us via U-Verse, jacking up every fee, every month.
We are thinking about dumping U-Verse and getting JUST internet from Comcast (no land line, no cable).
We can get about 50 digital channels over the air, plus streaming.
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!
Capitalism, american capitalism, basically encourages this twisted practice of squeezing as much cash by hook or by crook out of anyone even remotely related to your service. Looking to companies to solve the problem is like looking at a cigarette lighter to fix your burning house.
br. America has no recourse for evil companies, in fact it prides itself on this fact.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So, does TIVO work with OTA HD signals?
Now is a great chance for the competition to "listen to their customers" and increase Netflix performance on their networks without charging Netflix or their customers (directly).
You know, do what they are supposed to do but spin it to make Comcast look like worse than they already do.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
So Netflix ponies up the money & Comcrap is able to provide no-stutter streaming. It appears to be true. At my girlfriend's place (Comcrap) we couldn't watch Netflix but now it runs fine. At my house (Uverse... Uvile?) we could watch Netflix but now, as in the last two nights, it stutters & is unwatchable. Purely anecdotal but yea, they both suck. Maybe I change providers again... back to Wide Open West!!
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I'm in Tampa, and my service for Netflix has gone down slowly but surely for many months. At this point during peak access it shows me video that looks akin to 240p YouTube clips. Fingers crossed that these clowns overstep their bounds and force some net neutrality legislation.
One. Nobody "prefers Hulu". Except the people who implemented it but don't actually USE it.
Look at Hulu. It's a mediocre streaming site with ever larger chunks of intrusive video ads. And paying them doesn't make the damn things go away or space them out further or make them shorter ads. That's how the entertainment industry would LIKE people to consume their media. Paying them directly, then supporting them indirectly through ad revenue as well.
NO THANK YOU!
I mostly agree with your sentiments about it being bad that Comcast got paid for content their users REQUESTED and were already paying them to deliver.
Not entirely sure about lock-out though.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Is it in the realm of possibility, at the prices that customers are willing to currently pay, to deliver on demand content near blu-ray level quality to a whole neighborhood? If 25% of my neighborhood suddenly decided to stream the new Hobbit movie, I doubt Verizon could cope with a few dozen households suddenly demanding reliable streaming of upwards of 50GB of content unless that content was hosted on servers with preferred QoS rules or something.
The ads, or how bad Hulu is, is completely unrelated to the topic WaywardGeek was bringing up.
I assume they meant to ask, what happens with Netflix 2, when there is some new streaming service that's even BETTER than Netflix in every way. Will they also have to go through the same growing pains, eventually forking over cash to get access to the "full internet"?
If you have a company and pay for Internet connectivity, then you already paying what is necessary for that volume of data. The speed should be the same for everyone. Otherwise new businesses cannot form on the net on equal terms. This is important for freedom and even for the market economy. However, without net neutrality will end up in a time of monopoly (or oligopoly). Only this time the monopoly is not governed by the state and at least in theory controlled by the public.
For the US, dropping net neutrality makes sense from a corporate state viewpoint, as all big Internet services are US-based (beside those in China). If you hinder any other new service you can guarantee that those corporations stay in business, because the ramp up cost for new players would be too high. Also peer-to-peer technologies which could flourish with IPv6 can be crippled right before they become dangerous for the establishment.
It would be a shame if ... something ... happened to that nice video streaming business you got there.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Hulu is partly owned by Comcast. They weren't affected in the first place.
I'm beginning to wonder if Netflix did this on purpose, to gain sympathy and to highlight the actual problems around net-neutrality.
It makes sense, instead of making bold claims about what might happen, they went ahead and just let it happen..
It's sort of like a person going into a bad neighborhood, getting roughed up and then telling everyone about how much of a bad part of town that was, look he's even a victim!
This chart is easy to show to politicians and policymakers, and it exposes the simple fact that Comcast clearly **had** the capacity before these payments, they were just withholding.
Personally, I think it's a very smart move on Netflix's part, they are playing the long game.
We have laws against that... unless you have lots of money, then laws are irrelevant! :-/
Yesterday netflix was looking great, yet when I tried to check my e-mail, nothing. Speedtest didn't even load. I assumed someone else in the building was torrenting. The whole building shares a comcast line of some type, included in rent, and at best it's exactly as bad as you'd expect. Now the internet is going to be unusable for anything OTHER than netflix.
I really have to hand it to comcast to finding ways to consistently make things worse than expected.
You have basically everything backwards here.
Netflix is not the comcast customer. Netflix pays their own ISP for their bandwidth already.
It's not Netflix which is using all this bandwidth on comcasts network - it's comcast customers who are using it. And they already paid for it.
Comcast wants to bill twice. I am sure they would bill 20 times if they could get away with it.
And they are the 800lb gorilla with an effective monopoly position in many markets and no scruples whatsoever. Netflix folded to extortion, and the precedent is certainly not one that will benefit any users, unless it's the users that are also comcast stock owners.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
That's how the entertainment industry would LIKE people to consume their media. Paying them directly, then supporting them indirectly through ad revenue as well.
So, in other words, exactly like a cable subscription.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
it seems like it's really good news for the people who stream Netflix on Comcast.
Soon that will be about 50% of the entire United States. You go with Concast or you go without broadband.
Once they hit that threshold, somebody should slam them with an antitrust suit, if not before.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It would make sense, if it wasn't for the fact that Comcast operates as a government-sponsored monopoly.
They get away with this crap because their potential customers are prohibited from operating: there is no free market. In a free market, you'd probably have full gigabit fibre to the home as an option in most metropolitan areas at this point. As it is, ISPs rarely can even gain the rights to offer service in areas due to exclusive deals Comcast has brokered by greasing the palms of local officials.
Capitalist incentives, if they were in play, would lead to a mass exodus from Comcast. There's really nothing 'capitalist' about how Comcast operates, except that they use money.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yeah, and isn't it wonderful how the free market works?
If other cable companies would just compete with Comcast in its markets, then things would get better. It's not like these cable companies have a local monopoly that they lobbied for from thier bitches in the legislatures.
Once upon a time, cable TV did not have ads, either. One day we will look back fondly at a Netflix (subsidiary of Comcast) without ads.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Agreed, Hulu was just a for-instance. The big issue is whatever comes "next"
This is going to be a major roadblock for any new streaming idea / service coming through... if they want access they have to pay the toll.
No, what you're seeing is fewer ads, but longer overall.
Take an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode.
43 minutes of show.
Plus 6 (count 'em) 2-3 minute commercial breaks when you see four ads back to back.
Granted, that's only about 28% (when TV is 36%). Still, for someone paying the monthly fee, that's ridiculous.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Learning nothing from history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dane-geld/
That's how the entertainment industry would LIKE people to consume their media. Paying them directly, then supporting them indirectly through ad revenue as well.
So, in other words, exactly like a cable subscription.
Exactly this. Double dipping bastages. I feel like I pay $100 a month to watch a few hours of commercials every week, and maybe a few hours of actual show.
Every single time I surf the menu and see something that looks appealing, and change the channel, it's right to 5 minutes of commercials. Every. Single. Time.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
>> That's how the entertainment industry would LIKE people to consume their media. Paying them directly, then supporting them indirectly through ad revenue as well.
I've never really understood the reflexive reaction to this. The fact that cable companies/Hulu both charge money and show advertisements is not enough information to determine whether or not you are getting screwed.
It is quite possible that the advertising provides some revenue but not enough revenue to cover the entire cost. Suppose the cable programming, averaged across subscribers, costs the provider $30 (likely bears no resemblance to reality - just a figure for argument sake). The provider can mark this up and charge the subscriber $45. Or they can inject in advertisements and charge the subscriber $35 after markup.
The determination is up to the provider, really. Will they be more profitable with higher prices and fewer ads, or lower prices and more ads. The problem generally tends to be that it doesn't get factored in when the consumer is making a purchasing decision. It would be interesting to see if a TV provider could win customers by setting an advertising volume specification and comparing against competitors (i.e. our channels have 3 mins of ads per 20 mins and our competitors have 4 mins of ads per 20 mins). I'm really not sure it would make a difference or not. The challenge is obviously as well that programming is tailored to a certain time slot so there is an extent to which it is out of the cable provider's control, unless they add other filler material that is not advertising.
Well, I haven't been streaming Netflix on Comcast but lately both my (Comcast supplied) television reception and internet connection have been showing a lot more short drop-outs and picture defects. Wonder if there's a connection?
What pisses me off the most is sometimes I'll pause a radio stream that I'm listening to and I'll come back in a half hour or so and it got disconnected so I lost the show that was paused.
The one thing that would improve internet access the most in the US would be to declare the wires/fibers that deliver the content as common carriers totally separate from the providers of content.
> watch a few hours of commercials every week, and maybe a few hours of actual show.
If you're ratio of commercial:content on basic cable is anywhere close to 1:1, then you're doing it wrong. Even if you don't use a DVR, the actual ratio on the vast majority of networks is 1:2, or about 18-20 minutes of ads and 40-42 minutes of show every hour.
> Every single time I surf the menu and see something that looks appealing, and change the channel, it's right to 5 minutes of commercials.
That's because you surf away from channel A during the commercials, so of course there are going to be commercials on the other channel. The breaks are all coordinated. It's the same with terrestrial radio. Occasionally there is a network that offsets it's programming by 5 minutes (I think TBS did this for a long time), but those usually don't last long, and revert to the standard of starting on the hour with breaks on the 10s.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
They'll provide ISPs with cache engines for their content. That way, it doesn't use near as much bandwidth. Their content gets pushed to the cache engine, and that streams to the customer. It is win-win since both the ISP -and- Netflix get to use less bandwidth.
So it isn't like the ISPs can whine that Netflix is just too heavy a load. They can get cache engines and call it good. Netflix even picks up the cost of said cache engines near as I know.
Cox does this. They've had fast streaming and "super HD" for a long time because they have Netflix cache engines. Comcast is just being greedy.
Bullshit. This wasn't a business decision about improving service. This was extortion. Comcast got all the upside (gained revenue from Netflix, plus reduced peering traffic) and Netflix almost broke even (loses payments to Comcast, saves on hosting costs elsewhere).
Customers pay Comcast to be connected to the internet at a given speed. They deserve to get the speed they pay for, regardless of where the traffic comes from.
If you are going to do a proper slashdot car analogy it has to be direct! :)
This is like Shell (Shell being the only gas station you can get gas at), deciding that because you drive a Chevy Truck rather than a Toyota Pirus, that Chevy has to pay up additional fees because a Truck uses more gas than a Pirus, even though you already purchase more gas at the standard rate. Then Shell saying the rational for this is that Trucks put an undue hardship on the distribution of enough gas for everyone.
They shouldn't have paid. They should have called comcast's bluff.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Actually we would all be better off if we had a source of potable water for showers & drinking, and cheaper grey water we could use for things like watering the lawn. Then fewer resources would be used processing all water to the tolerance of drinkability...
But it would also require double the piping infrastructure, so sadly probably not worth it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But when it looks hopeless, just remember the dark days of Microsoft monopoly. By 1998-2000 time frame, Microsoft could kill projects and make venture capital vanish for its upstart competition just by issuing press release about vaporware. It really did look hopeless back then, how any one could fight that behemoth. Now Microsoft is still pulling in huge revenues, but it does not look like the unbeatable titan it was seen to be.
Right now, the last mile wiring cost is so high, Comcast has this monopolistic advantage. But wireless-in-the-loop (WITL fiber optics to neighborhood pillar boxes, and wireles from there) technology or micro cell or femto cell networks or something we don't know yet might come in and upset the apple cart for Comcast. WITL is quite effective for sparsely populated rural areas and is quietly building up strength and robustness there. If/when it transitions to compete with wired connections to homes, it could prove to be effective.
Only thing that will save us is competition.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The thing is, I don't give a crap how much it costs to support streaming.
If you want to give it away, ad-supported, for "free"? Cool!
But if I'm going to pay a subscription fee, I'll be damned if I'm going to put up with ads on top of that. And if the sub price doesn't cover what it'd cost to go ad-free, then they need to rethink their pricing and delivery scheme.
In short "I don't want to see ads. PERIOD!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You mean that service that Comcast is part owner of and uses to show their own demand content on the internet?
You have it backwards.. Netflix is paying so that it can keep itself from being lockout.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
...works.
Netflix wanted new links into the Comcast network, just for them, as opposed to having all of their traffic come in via Comcast's normal Internetwork peering points. This would improve service, as it would bypass any peering point bottlenecks and lower latency.
Comcast said we will absolutely give you links into our network, just like anyone else, and here's how much it will cost.
Netflix wanted them for free.
Comcast said no.
This was a peering dispute, pure and simple. Content Providers are not entitled to free network access, period, end of story. Every single content provider on the internet is paying SOMEONE for network access, unless they've managed to successfully negotiate otherwise with the access provider. If I go out and start writing some blog that gets millions of hits a day from Comcast customers, I don't get to go to Comcast and explain to them how they need to turn up a new circuit just for me because their customers are already paying them for my content.
Get it through your heads - you are NOT paying for specific content when you pay your subscription fee. You are paying for a certain amount of metered access. If a content provider wants to be closer to the customers in order to improve service, then they get to pay for access to.
Are you using a Sony Blu-Ray player or otehr sony device to access Netflix?
If so that may be another possible issue.. Sony.. for whatever dumb reason programs their Blu-Ray devices to only access Netflix through Sony servers.
For us it became a huge bottle neck and the Sony streaming went to crap when every tablet and PC in the house streams flawlessly.
I guess this isn't an issue with the PS-3 or PS-4 but exists on other Sony streaming devices.
Insert a Roku and I'm getting HD quality again.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Comcast swore up and down that they didn't do traffic shaping on their networks. But now that Netflix has paid Comcast not to do traffic shaping and they've stopped. Doing what they said. They weren't. Doing. I don' geddit.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And when you watch the show, they have annoying ad-banners pop up over the picture to promote other shows.
I'm pissed about this. I'm a netflix subscriber, but not a comcast user, but presumably my netflix subscription is going to suffer because of this. or are netflix going to charge comcast subscribers more?
Netflix is NOW a Comcast customer, as they are now directly connected to Comcast and Comcast is directly providing services to Netflix.. Previously they were connecting to Comcast through a separate ISP and paying that ISP. Now they are connecting directly to Comcast and paying for that portion of their traffic that has been moved to Comcast away from the other ISP.
netflix should charge the comcast customers extra for every byte of data sent via a comcast connection.
It's worse, to some degree.
With cable TV, the providers only have limited information about who is watching. With streaming video, they can gather much more demographic information, which they can either use themselves or resell to "business partners". It's yet another form of income for them. So Hulu (and similar services) are triple-dipping; they charge the viewer cash for the privilege of watching, then get paid for the adverts, then resell the collected demographics. The viewer pays in money, time, and privacy.
... subsidized by those that steam netflix on NOT(comcast).
We won't forget this.
Haha, that's what everyone said about the separating of DVD and streaming services, which was an effective price hike.
But in all seriousness, there was nothing special about the deal, it was a peering agreement, which is STANDARD procedure for EVERYONE. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with Net Neutrality. Anyone who says otherwise has no idea how the system works and has worked since the Internet originally went commercial. Not... One... Clue... This is how the Internet as most everyone knows it has always, always, worked.
For those who can't grasp this concept, here's an easy reference article: http://blog.streamingmedia.com...
I8-D
Barriers to entry. Comcast and Netflix have now raised the barriers to entry for any newcomers. Comcast gets paid, Netflix passes on the costs (eventually that will happen) and any newcomers will need to have a similar arrangement or their service will never get off the ground.
This is about preserving the status quo for all involved and locking out any new competition.
None of these guys are your friends.
43 minutes of show. Plus 6 (count 'em) 2-3 minute commercial breaks when you see four ads back to back.
Granted, that's only about 28% (when TV is 36%).
Your math is wrong. Both examples you give have 17 minutes of ads in an hour show, which is 28%.
So if Hulu isn't any better than regular network TV, no wonder nobody uses it.
Bullshit. This wasn't a business decision about improving service. This was extortion. Comcast got all the upside (gained revenue from Netflix, plus reduced peering traffic) and Netflix almost broke even (loses payments to Comcast, saves on hosting costs elsewhere). Customers pay Comcast to be connected to the internet at a given speed. They deserve to get the speed they pay for, regardless of where the traffic comes from.
Actually, Comcast customers pay for a maximum speed with no assurances of actually speed. Yea, it's crap that that is the way it is, and I wish Google would wire my area so I could dump Comcast; but the reality is nothing in my deal with Comcast guarantees me any minimum throughput. Unfortunately, any alternatives such as Dish or Clear are worse.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Except that whole $8/month instead of $30-100/Month
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
Did they lay new fiber, or stopped throttling because Netflix paid?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
You have basically everything backwards here. Netflix is not the comcast customer. Netflix pays their own ISP for their bandwidth already.
True, but Netflix is paying Comcast for a specific level of service. Absent that Comcast has no requirement to ensure Netflix can deliver a decent level of service.
It's not Netflix which is using all this bandwidth on comcasts network - it's comcast customers who are using it. And they already paid for it.
No, they paid for a maximum bandwidth, not a minimum one. That sucks, but that is what Comcast customers are buying.
Comcast wants to bill twice. I am sure they would bill 20 times if they could get away with it. And they are the 800lb gorilla with an effective monopoly position in many markets and no scruples whatsoever. Netflix folded to extortion, and the precedent is certainly not one that will benefit any users, unless it's the users that are also comcast stock owners.
Unfortunately, Comcast's only duty is to maximize its stockholders value.
That said, I've contended for a long time that the looming battle is over the last mile. As Apple and others build up content libraries they will become viable alternatives to cable. As content producers become more willing to make content such as TV shows available shortly after broadcast, at reasonable prices, they will draw in more cable cutters since people are already accustomed to time shifting. I could see a model where you can buy a free or watch ones with ads for free. As people shift the cable companies will look to profit more from the internet pipe - I see tiered services for data amounts as well as speeds becoming more prevalent. Right now, cable is too important for content producers to make stuff readily available on competing services; but as the $$$ potential form them grow they will embrace them. There is no loyalty that 1$ more profit can't overcome.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"Otherwise, Comcast has no contractual obligation to Netflix at all."
That's right. Their contractual obligation is to their customers. Who already paid Comcast for the passage of their packets back and forth to Netflix.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I can tolerate the ads Netflix runs now, where during the closing credits you'll see some image pimping some original Netflix content, with the credits pushed to one corner, and something to watch next in the other. That's just barely non-intrusive enough for me. But I bet they go farther and ruin it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you don't get the sarcasm of the post (especially the 'doubleplus good' reference), then try reading George Orwell's 1984 . Pay special attention to the section on NewSpeak.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is on network TV, so it's available for free for anyone willing to connect an antenna to their TV.
I record OTA using an HDHomeRun, so I can skip commercials pretty easily.
Network TV is $0 per month not $100 per month where I live (Seattle). Not sure why anyone would pay $100 a month for something that is being broadcast into their living room via the airwaves.
What Netflix is paying for is "a peering tie-in inside of Comcast's data centers".
You can call 'protection money' whatever you want. It's still Extortion.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Honestly, it isn't Comcast I'm scared of here, it's Netflix. By even attempting to broker this deal, they have effectively just given power over to the ISPs. They may have well have said "I, for one, welcome our toll-internet overlords."
Woah, when did Netflix start showing advertisement? When I was a subscriber (before they doubled their rates) they had none and it was somewhat worthwhile to access their catalog. Then their catalog shrunk, then their rates went up and now I hear they've added adverts? I sure hope they lowered their rates or increased the size of their catalog.
TIme for a mass refund. period.
(also time for some law firm to make megabucks litigating this issue)
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Well, they show suggestions for what you might watch next when you finish whatever you're streaming. But Netflix also has original content now, so it's hard to see suggesting those shows as anything but ads.
I'm sure their catalog continues to shrink (not that it's really Netflix's fault, they studios they license this stuff from seem to have an inflated idea of what 30 year old sitcoms are worth), but they're pretty good at new releases.
The worst part is, the DVD catalog is shrinking too. I loved Netflix for their deep back-catalog, but they're slowly becoming Redbox.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Their contract with comcast specifically precludes this.
No sir I dont like it.
I can handle a static or rotating banner (which is what the suggestions thing always has been).
As long as they're not stopping content in the middle to hawk crap at me.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
What Netflix should do is recoup the cost by charging it back to Comcast customers. Seems perfectly fair to me.
Good point, I forgot about that. Not that Comcast controls that, it's probably done by the station, but yeah, that's annoying.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
This is going to be the downfall of netflix. Now that comcast knows they can extract money from Netflix they're going to keep squeezing them harder and harder.
-
I got rid of cable tv years ago. I can't give comcast any less money - DSL (which would be too slow to fit my family's needs) isn't even an option without a re-wire of my house. Got any other ideas?
Better than it being subsidized by Comcast customers who don't use Netflix.
The whole tangled mess could have been avoided with data caps - that way, the only customers paying extra for the equipment Comcast had to install to support Netflix are those who actually use it. US consumers have been very reluctant (to say the least) to accept broadband data caps, and that's fair enough - but you need to accept the consequences, and this is one of them.