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Comment by zantana | Hacker News Reader

Now that net neutrality is history doesn't it seem like netflix (and by extension Amazon) extremely vulnerable to the lack of competition in the ISP space in the US?

Google at least had something of a workaround with their various efforts to provide access, but I don't see how they are going to circumvent the tollbooths which are popping up on the last mile.

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Netflix addressed this in their recent earnings call: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/netflix-is-so-big...

If anyone throttles netflix then they can put up a message telling their users that their ISP is responsible, similar to youtube.

On the flip side, is no one worried about the seeming lack of a viable competitor to Netflix?

Amazon Prime, Hulu, Google Video, HBO is online now, Vudu... I'm not sure what you're saying.

> HBO is online now

Sounds good! <goes to Google>

> "HBO GO. It's HBO. Anywhere."

Awesome!

> "To access HBO GO℠, you must reside within the fifty states of the United States of America."

Oh. That anywhere.

You can also get HBO online in Sweden and Norway for example, but branded as HBO Nordic. So it's not only in the US, but for some reason they're not using the HBO GO branding outside the US.

My problem with HBO GO is that it apparently requires you to have a cable subscription that includes HBO.

Fortunately they finally came to their senses and now offer HBO "Now", which is a separate, online-only, offering that doesn't require cable.

I wouldn't be surprised if Now is still geo-blocked though.

And CBS now has "All Access", $9.99/mo commercial free, includes broadcast shows, NFL football as well as exclusive content.

Lack of competitors? Now that Netflix has seemingly accepted having a terrible selection and is focusing on producing their own content, they're just one of many. Their distribution mechanism isn't even that unique (subscription over the Internet) with the likes of HBO, Hulu, et al.

Netflix's main advantage is that they have by far the best UX of any of the streaming services, but that's unlikely to be a particularly durable advantage, and probably not what many people make decisions based on.

The netflix UI is terrible, if that was there strength they wouldn't have lasted this long.

You should really try the competition, while Netflix might have "terrible" UI, that would make alternatives horrific.

Which competition? The only one I use is great courses plus which has a much better UI, but that isn't really competition.

My biggest pet peeve is that everything has to be graphical though. I'd much prefer a list of filterable shows like the steam games list.

I agree with both of you. Netflix has the best UX, but that UI is still terrible! I personally would love to see a competitor with a catalog similar to Netflix come out and actually create a good UI.

I recently tried out a couple Netflix competitors and the Netflix UI/UX is so far ahead of all of them it's almost hard to believe.

Poster mentioned UX, not UI, meaning it's very easy to fire up the app and be watching something in less than a minute.

Time to watching something is good but everything else about the experience I find aggravating. They got rid of the "click to continue" after a couple of episodes feature for instance. So now a series will play all the way through and drop off the continue watching list.

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