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Netflix Hasn't Forgotten About Its 4.3 Million DVD Subscribers (qz.com)
Netflix hasn't forgotten about its DVD service, which millions of people still use. From a report on Quartz: The company is touting a new app that DVD customers can use to manage their Netflix queues, search for DVD and Blu-ray titles, and get movie recommendations. Those features for DVD subscribers vanished from the main Netflix app back in 2011, leaving subscribers to manage their accounts on DVD.com. The new app, called DVD Netflix, is currently only available on Apple's iOS in the US, which is the only country the DVD service is offered in. About 4.2 million people in the US still rent DVDs from Netflix.
It made perfect sense for Netflix to spend a lot of capital replacing the DVD rental model and all its shuffling of fragile plastic between shelf space and mail, with streamed downloads. Given a suitable backup strategy, server-based files can last forever.
The problem was not technical, but legal. Netflix streaming servers have been stuck with an artificially limited selection of TV shows and movies that "expire" and have to be deleted. Until we see a basic change in IP law, the best film library will be DVD forever.
If this is a NEW app, then it proves exactly the opposite of the article headline. Indeed, Netflix HAS FORGOTTEN its dvd subscribers and has only just now suddenly remembered them after a long period of neglect. (psssst . . . hear that Apple?)
But such is corporate and government speak. Whatever they say is a euphemism for something that means the opposite. An attempt to disguise something. It doesn't fool anyone.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
... it's 4.3 Million DVD subscribers... just the 4.1 million of them using Android since Apple users were probably the most likely to jump ship to streaming only.
I dropped the disc service a while ago, but there's a lot of stuff they don't offer streaming that you can get on disc. Maybe that was their plan all along - make the streaming options so crappy that people will go back to the DVD subscriptions.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
i mean really? it's 2017.
.
I have also seen DVDs shipped from the other side of the country, taking three or four days to arrive. In those instances Netflix used to ship the next in your queue from a local warehouse, to tide you over the wait. It appears they don't do that anymore --- you wait for the cross-country shipment.
For me, the most important indicator of the deteriorating quality of Netflix's DVD service is that I no longer get emails asking me about the length of the delivery times. To me that shows Netflix no longer seems to care about delivery times.
But they have a shiny new app for Apple phones...
A service to buy crap that you can download for free and it's only available to Apple users.
Technically, it's a service to rent crap that you can download for free. In addition to the difference in quality, there are more than a couple of reasons that people choose not to download - Many of us still pay for content.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I've noticed similar behavior with 2 other vendors that I use a lot lately -- they'll kill a feature or way of doing something, then build it back in slowly over time. Meanwhile, the end user is stuck with reduced features. I think I'm not Agile enough to understand how this helps.
Example 1 -- VMWare -- after announcing that they were effectively killing the VSphere Client Windows application, they announced a replacement -- the Flash-based web client. Oops, all the browser manufacturers started dumping Flash, _and_ VMWare admins hated it anyway. So now, they're slowly re-introducing a new HTML5 based client that only has basic features, but gets new ones with every release. You have to run the Flash client anyway to do anything beyond basic admin stuff in this latest build.
Example 2 -- Citrix -- During their heart attack-inducing takeover by a hedge fund, they merged XenApp and XenDesktop into a single technology stack to save development money. XenApp (arguably the #1 killer app for healthcare application delivery) actually lost features for several versions in the early 7.x environment while the development teams were building them back into the XenDesktop model. It wasn't uncommon to hear "Oh yeah, this doesn't work in 7.3, it's scheuled for 7.7" or similar.
I'm all for continuous integration, agile development and all that, but does it make sense for enterprise applications to follow the same model of a consumer service like Netflix or Facebook?
The DVD selection is far better than streaming if you like to watch non-blockbuster movies like me.
I am not impatient enough that I need to steal and paint a target on my back while doing it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
At thepiratebay.org of course! As long as you have a decent connection (no need for something amazing), your download of the BRRip will finish long before the thing officially goes on sale.
Most major releases are ripped and released by "the scene" a few days to a few weeks ahead of the street date. Shortly after the scene releases it, someone uploads it on thepiratebay.org . You can also find other releases, such as encodes to various file sizes and formats, 720p encodes if you're a sadist, x265 encodes if you're a storage miser, rips with only the main movie and main audio track, etc.
Smaller films are often on TPB months or a year before being released in theaters or releasing on TPB. These films usually debut at a film festival or some such, and the "master" is a BR with just the film on it. The BR leaks shortly thereafter. If some studio decides to buy the film and handle theatrical/home video/streaming/etc. releases, it can take months or more than a year. If the independents who made it try to do this on their own it takes years, typically with a handful of theaters in major cities playing it then it going on sale on BR via their website, with some extra features and a menu added in. Very rarely will these films be re-edited or have audio remastered in the interim.
For the handful of movies I want to watch, I usually wait until they're available on BluRay and hit the Redbox. I typically have a few free rental codes laying around (I just pay the 40 cent or whatever upcharge to go from DVD to BR). I watch the main title and return the thing. If I could pay a few dollars and have it earlier (or even on the BR street date, as Redbox is often delayed artificially from the street date by 2 weeks due to agreements), I'd go for that. If for whatever reason a movie never hits Redbox, I wait for Netflix / Amazon to have it.
I only go to a theater about 2 or 3 times a year. And most of those times it's at a drive-in because it's about a third of the cost, has more comfortable seating, I can bring my own snacks, don't have to deal with other people, etc. The last thing I cared about going to a real theater for was Gravity (which is still the only film I've ever seen where 3D made sense).
I'm willing to pay for movies (beyond the cost included in my Netflix / Amazon / HBO / etc. subscriptions), but I'm also willing to wait if the price is too high or the convenience is too low. These are the problems they need to solve, not piracy. Piracy is a 6/10 on convenience and an 11/10 on cost (bonus 1 for sticking it to "the man"). Studios could easily release on Netflix and others, or on their own platforms, and score a 9/10 or 10/10 on convenience. They'd just need to be willing to do it at a cost that makes them beat out both piracy and waiting.
I'm afraid they're learning how to beat out waiting. People don't rush out to see the latest blockbusters like they used to. Revenues have been huge in recent years, but actual ticket sales have been steadily falling for a long time. We also have a few outliers to thank for recent big revenues (Star Wars, Jurassic World, etc.). Simply put, people can wait for the BR or for Netflix to have the film. But studios are cranking out sequels and reboots faster and faster, and they're intermingling shit (Star Wars has the side stories, Marvel has the interconnected universe shit, DC is trying that and failing, etc.). If Star Wars Side Story B is coming out soon, you better have seen Star Wars 8. Even if you plan on waiting to see Star Wars Side Story B, Star Wars will be in the media and people will be talking about it, so you'll feel left out, you might have it spoiled, etc.
This rapid-fire schedule is patterned after what studios have seen with cable dramas. People would watch the latest episode of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or whatever else within a week in order to keep up with the series and with people talking about the series. This behavior is further bolstered by the ability to "binge" on a series via a streaming se
- The most you can rent is two at a time
I have five checked out at this moment.. is this something just for new customers?
Usually I buy DVDs for the kids, rip them to my linux machine which are served up with serviio to my WDTV/Roku boxes.
There have been times that I haven't been able to rip the DVD because of protection on the disc. So I have downloaded a copy to put on my media server.
I have only done this on a few occasions, but when I did it was actually faster to download it than to rip it.
So I will assume that your "pirating movies" comment was meant for those people who actually pirate movies.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Well ... since we're talking about a U.S.-only services, they're technically only forgetting about roughly 108 million Android users.
Breakfast served all day!
Netflix seems surprised people are not dropping the DVD service, but a lot of content is NOT AVAILABLE on streaming. I total number of titles it may seem OK, but recent blockbusters generally appear on streaming long after they are on netflix DVD.
I'd love to drop DVDs, but netflix doesn't provide the right content on streaming.
The question is, is an app necessary or is it just a WebView into ther DVD management site? And if the DVD site is usable on mobile, why not improve that so it works for iOS AND Android>
Is an app really necessary?
No, apparently OP doesn't know how to read.
Everyone without eyesight disabilities should be able to see the horrible compression artefacts in "streamed video", no matter how fast one's Internet connection is, simply because streaming services are cost-optimized by utilizing very low bandwidths. I for one can happily wait for a physical disc delivery in return for a decent, non-crippled picture, coming at a bandwidth about 4 times of the highest "streaming video bandwidths" offered (at the same resolution) by any streaming video service.