Netflix expected to spend over $6B on original and acquired programming in 2017
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For me, the stand-up specials like Dave Chapelle and Louis CK alone are huge and welcome additions, never mind the many, very good lesser known comedy specials on there.
Their agreement with Dreamworks has only helped, allowing me to enjoy surprisingly good films like Zootopia.
Even great cable channels like FX (The Americans, Legion) and AMC (Mad Men, Better Call Saul) are not available for any reasonable price as standalone cable packages, so I'm not sure what the comparison is in terms of quality. HBO at 15/month?
But even HBO shows are hit-or-miss. And while their movie selection is generally pretty great, I still find myself not watching it all that much.
It seems to me that Netflix provides a pretty high level of content at their price point.
So that plus the fact that most of the other shows on Netflix are useless in a sense made me cancel it.
So these days I enjoy shows like Goliath and Bosch and even Grand Tour, all which are Amazon Prime Shows.
My opinion is not that you are wrong that you prefer Netflix, but rather I am disagreeing with:
>Especially compared to any other streaming service, such as Amazon or Hulu, they continue to provide much higher-end content for my dollar, as well as a (far) superior UI experience.
Personally, over the years the UI of Netflix has gotten worse as well.
Finally, after almost five years of membership I cancelled my subscription with them since I found that I barley use them. I guess I will just sign up eventually for a month or two to catch up with the shows I mentioned, but that's about it.
F#@K you Amazon, I'm not buying your streaming stick. Let me use the service I pay for.
I haven't seen an HDR TV in person, but I've heard people say that it's a more significant upgrade than the resolution jump from 1080p to 4k.
This can look quite natural when done right. But some people like to crank the settings in the converter to make the images super saturated.
The reason there is so much standup comedy on Netflix is because it is incredibly cheap to produce. It probably costs between $50k-150k to shoot a special, comedian payout is also inexpensive in comparison and then they can stream it forever....
http://www.tvguide.com/news/dave-chappelle-netflix-specials-...
Content-wise I think Netflix is doing an amazing job, even if I cannot come close to keeping up. They're doing so well, it's harder and harder to track their originals you might be interested in.
On the other hand I actually like Hulu's interface better than Netflix.
Really I wish they would agree on a standard streaming API, to enable 3rd parties to create UIs. Right now I find myself opening up multiple apps searching Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Crackle to find something specific.
(Eventually, I got it to work in Safari... somehow. Chrome wouldn't do it, and there was no feedback as to why.)
Meanwhile, Netflix works consistently on all my systems with no issues.
Did you ever see smartflix.io's UI? It was incredible.
It's like when a waiter asks patrons "Is everything OK?" people say "Oh yes!" then when the waiter leaves they grumble that their food is burned and tasteless.
Seriously? It's just a bunch of overlapping lists to bloat the appearance of lots of content. There are many things I would change about the UI. They should get out of the UI business and let us choose one that meets our needs, or better still, roll our own.
- BBC iPlayer is outstanding
- ITV player is terrible, I have to disable my ad blocker and then watch the opening ads a few times before it loads. Also needs silverlight..
- Amazon iirc will only play HD in some browsers, I can't remember if it needs any plugin. Also they have ads.. In a prime only thing.
- Sky Player (they have HBO :/) is terrible to navigate, silverlight, even more ads than ITV, low quality, awful.
Netflix isn't perfect but honestly their competitors are mostly atrocious.
Maybe you're confusing Netflix with Amazon, who do offer Starz as an additional subscription? Or maybe you're just conflating the Starz catalog with Netflix's streaming service, which was originally part of the DVD service and then became its own thing?
We used to have a really long list, and still we'd find stuff that wasn't on the list that we decided to watch instead because it all sounded good. Over time, we only got to watch a a fraction of the stuff we'd added to the list, with the rest simply disappearing.
This isn't just a "feeling," it's both an actual phenomenon and to some degree a deliberate choice on the part of Netflix, which wants to focus on its own stable of Netflix Original content that it won't have to renegotiate for every few years. See, for example: http://screencrush.com/yes-netflixs-film-catalog-has-gotten-... (and note that the "before" number in that article is from after Netflix lost the whole Starz catalog!)
I understand that not everything Netflix does is tailored to me, particularly due to Netflix' growing, increasingly mainstream audience, diverse and varying preferences, more ground to cover, etc.
However lately Netflix' content simply seems to lack substance to me. It feels as if it's just the superficial result of throwing a promising combination of those very specific tags/categories the services is famous for onto the assembly line and ending up with a show or film that, while ticking all the boxes and not being bad at all, is still pretty far off the masterpieces of the medium. I'm not sure if classics like The Wire, The Sopranos or Mad Men could have been created with such a formulaic approach and I'm missing shows of that caliber on Netflix. Maybe the service should offer brillant content creators the freedom and opportunity to do the shows they want to do, instead of dictating the theme and framework.
And that's not even mentioning the 'classics': Justified, Terriers (underrated, must-watch!), The Shield, as well as the earlier season(s) of Sons of Anarchy and The Americans.
You're also naming one of a kind series most of whom are HBO produced. Sounds like you just like HBO, but even HBO doesn't put out shows like that every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...
That said, they have real numbers so there will be more of a bent for casual less involved shows that probably reach a wider audience. That said, I don't seem to have a problem finding high caliber shows, but I'm also a sucker for the Marvel shows, etc they've been producing and happy to watch those A&E shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
Black Mirror was never made by the BBC, and all episodes of Sherlock were made by the BBC not by Netflix, so neither of your examples make any sense and don't allow you to compare what you are saying they would.
Abstract is triple-A. A Chef's Table is triple-A. Stranger Things is triple-A.
We all have a sort of cynical habit of presuming that things once were good, and now they aren't. But Netflix has always been a mix of good and bad original content, especially when viewed from the subjective eye that what some of us think is great others think is terrible. They're trying to serve all markets.
I've started watching The OA and it's the first series that I've noticed each episode is a different length. Some episodes are around 30 minutes, others are more than 60.
The only thing I can think of that's really different is opening/closing credits, but given that I pretty much never binge-watch anything (and apparently most of my friends on Facebook don't either), those serve a useful purpose for me, in that they help set the mood and make it so I don't have to wait a few weeks to figure out who played that street vendor that showed up one time in chapter^Wepisode 3.
That and the gentle recaps they often have built in. In the UK when we air US TV shows they often seem really weird because when there would be an advert break in the US parts of the story and sometimes even lines are repeated by the actors to help you get back into it. Sometimes you get a cliffhanger line, a sort of a second's pause, and then the cliffhanger line repeated in a different tone! Where we don't have advert breaks this comes across as bizarre until you think the US would put an advert there, and you get the same kind of thing but across episodes on Netflix.
(Mind you I have a low tolerance for TV drama; the last two things I really enjoyed were Foyle's War and Endeavour)
That is very much the feeling I got from Stranger Things. It is solid in almost every way, but it also felt like it was written to maximize variables and checkboxes from a user survey. Add characters, references and stylistic choices to get the most 80's nostalgic feeling in the viewer as possible.
However, a data driven mindset should be applicable on deeper levels also, but that probably takes longer to become possible to analyse, and crucially, I belive that it is likely to need a baseline of stylistically optimized content before the value of more abstract concepts can be discerned from the data.
An unfortunate effect of data driven is also that unless you also chase some crazy (possible) trends in the data, you will regress to content with maximal earnings in the short to medium term.
Data doesn't carry visions, at least not by themselves!
They started with Game of Cards and Orange is the New Black which are the strongest examples in history of creating content based on what data tells you people want, because those were their first few series and they couldn't afford to have them flop.
Nowadays, they make such a wide range of shows, they can afford to sometimes just take a risk on giving talented people money and hoping they make a great show that finds an audience.
One series I've enjoyed recently is The OA which is definitely not a box-ticking exercise of a series - the complete opposite. I'm happy it's been renewed for a second season, but I can't imagine it's driving any revenue directly.
It's like a homeless man being in a cardboard box and duct tape suit screaming about his mech suit. You just feel bad for him.
It felt like a cheap attempt at being mysterious or deep. If you look at the people behind the show, it's seems like this is part for the course with their work.
This is a great example of how Netflix's model works well for "long tail" content. They can produce and keep shows around that have a different or smaller audience than traditional networks can.
This is one of the reasons why I appreciate Netflix. Instead of a bunch of shows that everyone considers average, it's taken some risks and created shows that some people consider great and others dislike. I'll take that over a bunch of lukewarm shows anytime.
https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/03/20/data-inspires-crea...
I can't argue against that kind of logic but also agree that it leaves Netflix offerings quite flat. The Crown is also a very good show, but you can almost feel the cross-section of Downton Abbey and The Kings Speech as you watch. I don't think you'd see the algorithm come up with a show like Transparent, for example.
IMO it's gotten worse with all this Marvel stuff. Maybe that's because I see it promoted more than other shows, but having tried a few they're pretty uninspired (and, for crossover purposes, all appear to share the same setting and overall feel). I know it isn't the case, but it feels like the algorithm has reached some sort of recursion loop: our viewers like gritty crime dramas starring superheroes, set in New York. So they'll love this new gritty crime drama starring a superhero, set in New York.
I can remember one line in "Luke Cage" from Barnett saying "I'm going back to Hell's Kitchen", sounds very cheesy in that context and kinda broke the suspension of disbelief when watching, even though I think that "Luke Cage" is one of the best Marvel series on Netflix right now.
My only hope is that we get more Fisk.
(many of the Netflix actors have contract clauses for appearances in movies)
Heh this! When I started watching Agents of Shield, whether intended or not, I found the first season somewhat hard to penetrate. I ended up having to hit up Wikipedia, get my head around the Marvel Universe timeline and then watch relevant movies so I could slot in where AoS picks up its part of the Marvel Universe story.
I'm pretty sure all this is a dream come true for Marvel fans, but you can get too much of a good thing, and I now have Marvel-fatigue.
By definition "masterpieces" are very rare things. They're decidedly not assembly line material. I think Netflix and Amazon have done well against far more established media outlets.
That said, if you really want "wall-to-wall" masterpieces, there's a streaming service for that: filmstruck (https://www.filmstruck.com/). It has the entire magnificent criterion collection. The thing is, however, you have to think of it more as a library rather than an outlet for the newest stuff.
I want to echo this as well. One thing about American TV content is that the story plot is very repetitive in nature. Netflix and other similar providers' original contents are very much either a superhero or a crime chaser plot. Furthermore I also dislike breaking content into seasons. It keeps audience around so more money but I am just very inpatient when it comes to TV content. In China / Hong Kong, most drama do not release in parts. So say there are 40 episodes it will have 40 episodes completed when the drama is aired. When you drag your drama plot beyond season 3 the story gets boring. Walking Dead, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Blacklist, dragging on.
I want some more refreshing content. This is why I love cartoon contents like Bob's Burger or watching documentary. I get some breathing room.
Case in point, I never read the books and I put off watching Game of Thrones for a very long time until my brother finally convinced me to give it a shot a few months ago. When he came to me asking about how shocked I was about what happened at the end of the first season I literally laughed in his face because it was telegraphed from episode 1.
I quite like that Netflix isn't focusing on mega hit prestige shows like those you mention, but rather seem to focus quirky niche shows like Dirk Gently, A Very Secret Service and The Expanse that aren't to most peoples taste.
I just don't want keep not finding shows I expect or have seen before. I like older TV series and cannot see the costs in getting even stuff from further back. Is there no market or is there a service I need to look at?
The third season of Black Mirror is pretty much the only content that I'll rewatch over and and over like I would, say, The Wire.
But if I want to veg out and watch something "pretty good" stuff like Master of None and Love are decent.
And a matter of taste too. I consider SG1 and Buffy my top 10 while a lot of people would just find them "meh".
We need also to consider that netflix content has one quality: it's refreshing. The OA, Luke Cage, 3% all had personal taste.
That's roughly 3/4 of what the three cinema chains in my city show. That leaves some 25 percent to the remotely realistic movies - the ones with characters and stories that could be true, at least in a distant future. There are nights where the only movies the cinemas show, are fantastic ones. Where the only cinema experience would involve wearing 3D glasses and watching childish characters save the world.
Personally, I am fine with the establishment taking some beating. But I sure hope there will be more than just a handful of providers of content. Hollywood, HBO, Netflix, Amazon. That's not nearly enough.
As a result, what we've called "television" is now a place where long-form dramatic stories can unfold. Since it's more affordable to produce, content which can appeal to smaller audiences can be created and marketed to those smaller audiences.
Cinema is where the short-story of the video world now exists. While content distribution is easier, cinema is constrained by a finite number of theaters. Financing a motion picture is extremely conservative: if you don't have an established audience, you will have trouble getting funded. So now we see mostly adaptations, sequels, nostalgia-fests. I wouldn't say that a story has to have "stories that could be true" in order to be compelling and moving art. But the most compelling stories certainly tend to be set in the present with non-supernatural characters.
> handful of providers of content. Hollywood, HBO, Netflix, Amazon. That's not nearly enough.
It seems like we're seeing a significant direct investment from content distributors directly into content production. I agree that it could be a bit of an oligopoly, but the fact that it's "easy" to make a content distribution enterprise (relative to how it was in 1910-2000) means that we have more entertainment choices now than ever before.
Except I don't want to pay for another service. I already pay for Netflix and Amazon and one of the reasons streaming was appealing is that it was different from cable. If we multiply streaming services, pretty soon I'm paying $5/month here and $10/month there and much of that for one thing I'd like to see on that service. I'd like to see production and distribution separated, though I recognize that's probably a pipe dream.
2. You can just buy the show in most cases if a sub does not suit you.
3. The nickle and diming is real. I still do not spend as much, but its getting close. I feel the quality (compared preimum cable) is higher however.
Netflix and Amazon aren't magic. Sure there is some industry of scale by selling their wares internationally and some savings by letting ISPs distribute their content, but fundamentally TV hasn't become cheaper to make. If anything, Netflix and Amazon are spending more than average amounts of money on their new content. That results in beautiful shows, but it's not cheap. And those services don't use commercials, which means they'll be more expensive than cable content that does.
You can get production and distribution separated, by paying per episode on itunes or amazon. But that is more expensive for heavy users because they can't bake in an unlimited plan. You can use these services to get the handful of shows you really want to watch but aren't on netflix or amazon.
Of course, I can buy show by show, but since a single season of a show costs as much as several months of a subscription, that shows there's much to be gained in "bundling" for providers and I suppose we'll need to accept that (like I said, it's a pipe dream).
I think in a few years time this will all start to become more complicated. For a younger generation, the content is in independent products distributed on YouTube rather than professional productions on subscriptions networks. If the YouTube model becomes popular, TV will become cheaper to make and then costs shift to distribution.
Meanwhile, I've enjoyed a number of "low-budget" shows they've had (like ice pilots) and a number of the kung-fu movies they have available. But to be fair, a LOT of the low-budget stuff they have is trash too.
It's clear (to me) that there is some effort to pad their content, to seem like they have a fuller collection, even if it's only a collection a raccoon would love. This, taken with the idea they tote of "having only the best performing people" displays a mismatch in cultural ideas and actual output.
For me, I want netflix to succeed because another content producer is a welcome addition to the scene, and i hope they stay independent and don't get bought up by disney. I know in a few years they'll have a collection of original content to rival the older players.
> It's clear (to me) that there is some effort to pad their content
OR, they're just targeting demographics that don't include you. "I don't enjoy [thing] therefore it's padding" seems like kind of an ego-centric worldview to me.
Haven't they even talked about how not having a fixed number of viewing hours means they can more easily target niche audiences?
They know exactly what they're doing and every comment on this article in HN right now shows you that.
One person says they hate something and it's crap and the next person tells them that they're wrong. Entertainment is subjective netflix has numbers to back up their spends.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/more-tv-news/the-20-highest...
Its at the point where if you meet someone and you're a fan of a non-top tier TV show, unless you met in an echo chamber, the odds of someone being your astrological symbol or in some cases having the same birthday are higher than them being a fan of your pet show.
TV is no longer culturally relevant, not like it was decades ago. Nobody watches that stuff.
The fact that they're pretty much the only ones (with the exception of Amazon Prime lately which is shooting themselves in the food for not providing apps for Android TV and other platforms) that are open to world-wide audiences, they're in for a huge success.
Meanwhile, HBO and others still rather show "Not available in your country" than collect 10EUR/month from several TENS of millions of subscribers outside US.
Also we have Amazon Prime but rarely use it for the videos. It's a pain to watch except on our one tv with a computer hooked up to it. It's also the only video app we have that we can't stream to Chromecast. Is that $20 device really worth losing viewers over?
Netflix (and amazon) are in a powerful position to analyze and understand what people really want in a way that cable and networks (remember those) simply can't match.
Providing "hits" to relatively small demographics over and over again, I think, might make more business sense than going up against the more experienced competition for mass-appeal.
"Stranger Things" is a good example, it was a pitch-perfect, nuanced thriller series. I dare say it was an 80's period piece. That's niche. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but damn it was cool.
By appealing to the long tail, Netflix can make smaller demographics VERY HAPPY with their product, one demographic at a time. This is perhaps better than trying to please everyone at once with a blockbuster hit.
If there's not as much big margin, but conversely lacking a major bleed out of funds by failure, it's a much more even, perhaps sustainable model as tastes change in entertainment (or by expanding into other regions).
Very interesting point, nicely noted your way.
Granted maybe you get farther than season 1 (Game of Thrones up to season 3 for me, for example) but TV very much fits with "die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain."
Erm.... House of Cards (on Netflix) is an American remake of the British show of the same name that was shown on the BBC in 1990? Not exactly "original content"
That being said I do feel the US version has very much overstayed its welcome.
Rounding up to $10 a person subscription, Netflix can comfortably spend a million dollars on a show even if it thinks only 100,000 people, and no one else ever, are going to enjoy it. When they have almost a 100 million subscribers, they can basically make 1000 shows, each of which will be thought of as "great" by 0.1 million people and "trash" by 99.9 million people.
I used to think reality TV was padding too. Maybe these kinds of shows just are not meant for us?
That's true, and the bad is stuff is unusually bad, but at the same time my monthly fee stays the same. Meanwhile, at a movie theater a bad movie costs me and my wife about $100 with babysitting, parking, and modest concessions like a soda and a box of raisenettes. Netflix-style services simply are more forgiving because of the small monthly flat-fee. Bad content is easy to skip and you're not being punished financially as long as good stuff is still being created to offset the bad.
I won't fault a 25% fail rate. Hollywood as a whole, or even if we look at individual well-funded studios, must be shooting at an 75% fail rate here.
Additionally, Netflix's international growth was hampered by their inability to efficiently negotiate international distribution rights.
Seems the Drafthouse offers this deal.
I think Netflix made some mistakes on their journey (that whole "we're splitting our streaming/dvd business in two to help the consumer" messaging was particularly stupid) but their transition into original programming seems necessary to me, and it's paying off.
As a subscriber, I wish Netflix was as good as it was 5 years ago before Hollywood wised up, but given Hollywood did wise up not sure I can recommend a better strategy for Netflix than what they've been doing even with the benefit of hindsight (my only real criticism is they seem to focus on big prestige shows instead of cheap comfort TV like reality shows.)
Some of their "unscripted" content is already out: Terrace House, Ultimate Beastmaster, etc.
HBO is a premium product, you pay for it in addition to cable. Netflix is an all in one product, you pay for it to replace cable. Don't try to be HBO, be every cable tv station.
All this Netflix talk makes me wish I never ever tried to "play" the stock market with Netflix. I learned a very valuable lesson thanks to them & Amazon. It's called buy & hold on companies you use & love. Needless to say, overall I agree that they've ran their business extremely well. That whole dvd/stream announcement is hardly a distant memory. Also they deserve credit for listening to their customers & trying to fix that pretty immediately.
a) online
b) internationally
Most people in the US have no idea how annoying it is to deal with content restrictions. It sucks to be an internet company in an industry stuck in a pre-internet licencing worldview.
Netflix made "rerun" content valuable. The suppliers were right to charge more.
If Netflix actually destroys cable, it would have had no suppliers at all. Creating their own content or buying it straight from production companies was always going to be the next step.
It seems in the end, we're really returning to the cable era.
Be ready for packages giving you access to Netflix, Amazon, and channels...
So the situation isn't quite the same.
As an observer, what still seems odd to me is the low number of shows or movies they are producing with that massive budget - last year "The Get Down" apparently cost $16 million per episode while the entire, huge hit, first season of "Stranger Things" cost $13 million.
I would have thought that would inspire them to look for more of these low budget, low risk, big payoff shows, especially when you run a subscription service - surely a series that people binge over 2 weeks, with the potential for more seasons to keep people subscribing is better for you than a one time film? Nope, $100 Million on a single film this year.
That on top of the fact they can use data to minimise the risk must mean it's a realistic option.
You think that's crazy? They paid Dave Chappelle $60 million for _3 standup specials_.
Maybe they are planning to release the film in movie theaters later? License it to other subscription services a month or two after they release it on their platform?
I believe the next step is having "blockbusters" feature movies, with top notch CGI, a-level actors, maybe some Oscar contenders.
My impression is that low risk, big payoff shows would be optimizing for a local maxima. Big bets like the Will Smith movie might take them to a new maxima. And Netflix is basically a success history about reaching a new maxima one after another since its beginning.
That is probably too expensive unless they release to theaters first.
What they could do is create the missing midrange movie that Hollywood just doesn't make anymore. Hollywood makes huge expensive movies and indie studios make cheap movies. Netflix could make the 40 million dollar style of movie that nobody makes anymore.
In fact, they sort of are, they just do it in a longer form.
(1) https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/business/netflix-profi...
I guess both Amazon and Netflix try to capture precisely that role, in that case they could charge almost whatever they want while they are not forced by competition to have high quality (and therefore expensive) content. Plus I am afraid that the market tends to produce a monopoly, because a individual subscriber will look for the service that has more content.
[1] Hetzner currently charges EUR 1.40 / TB of additional traffic, so marginal distribution costs are in the range of EUR 10^-3 / Movie.
you can't just use the traffic cost. also if they would on hetzner, their network would be so bad that nobody could've watch netflix. (not that the hetzner network is bad, but it wouldn't withstand the amount of traffic from netflix (especially inter-region traffic is not as cheap as it could be, and also they need to talk with amazon/google about their traffic ("public pricing" is 0,01 USD per GB)))
also there are other things that needs to be paid, servers, developers and other staff and stuff.
it's not just that you write 20 lines of code and put it on hetzner and can scale globally.
Also, in Netflix's case, they have a box containing terabytes of their most popular content sitting in almost every datacenter and peering with all major ISPs and backbone providers sharing the cross connect: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/
https://www.google.com/amp/wap.business-standard.com/article...
and non-AMP versions
http://wap.business-standard.com/article/international/netfl...
One major result of Netflix's rise is that the TV format for entertainment is starting to be seen as on par with or better than the feature film format.
There's something obvious about this from a viewer's standpoint. People are naturally drawn to abundance and regularity. Rather than having 100 discussions about which movie to watch together with my wife over the course of a year, then find that only 20 or so of them are on Netflix, and maybe 5 of them turn out to be stinkers, we can simply pick a show we both know is about a B+, and watch 100 episodes, not ever being disappointed. Also, if I watch the pilot of a great show, then I know I have a whole season to go through, with days of entertainment. If I watch a great movie, then welp, I've just watched a great movie and maybe in a few years there will be a sequel.
From an artistic standpoint, there are freedoms that open up due to having established characters, routine plot conventions, etc. There was an article on HN a while back where Conan O'Brien mentioned that this is why he did exactly the same walk to the stage every single night, or something of that nature.
Well, except for the last season. I have yet to see a series where the last season was the same quality as the rest.
After receiving three nominations for seasons two, three, and four, both halves of season five won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2013 and 2014. The second half of the season also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2014. The season's Metacritic score of 99/100 led the show to be listed in Guinness World Records as the most acclaimed television series in history.[5]
Let me curate my own lists and my own history per profile, including removing stuff from dynamic lists. I don't want to have to go into my account settings (something only the account owner can do) to remove recently watched items from my account history and then have to wait 24 hours for it to actually happen.
Let me build new lists and manually dump a tv show or movie into them.
Let me search all offerings, sortable and filterable alphabetically and/or by release date.
Let me view my profile's total viewing history if I'm interested. Even for titles that are no longer viewable on Netflix. A neat feature would be to group these by title. So you can show just "The Office" or "Game of Thrones" or "The West Wing", which can be expanded to a list of seasons, each of which can be expanded to a list of episodes, showing which ones I've watched and which ones I haven't.
--- --- ---
As enjoyable and useful as Netflix is, the fact that it still remains essentially a completely non-customizable list of "what's popular" is just incredibly lazy on their part.
I would estimate I watch about 200 hours a year, Netflix is releasing 1,000 hours of content this year[0]. This trend will only accelerate, especially considering all of the other providers pouring money into content.
I wish that video content licensing could be regulated similar to radio music, where the license holder receives a flat rate per play (this could be adjusted to be per-minute with modifiers for SD/HD/etc). That would open up a whole new market of streaming websites that could focus on cataloging and recommending content, instead of me having to pay for many websites full of content that I cannot physically spend the time to find the best of. Some streaming devices have cross-service search functionality built in, but it could be much better.
[0] http://bgr.com/2016/10/19/netflix-originals-1000-hours-progr...
Best for users would be to have all content available everywhere, not having to subscribe to multiple streaming providers.
That said, if that is the game they have to play, I am happy if at least it results in some worthwhile series.
Do you have to be in LA to do this for a living still?
LA will probably always be the capital of US film though. It took a lot of effort to move all the way out there to avoid paying patent royalties. The business is super entrenched there - Netflix and Amazon barely put a dent in the grand scheme of productions made annually though (then again, Bollywood cranks out more than Hollywood nowadays).
I am under no illusions about how netflix might behave if they ever achieve a monolithic dominance but so far it's great.
I'm not interested in "Netflix originals". Focus on the core competency of archiving & delivery; let others make the content.
I've worked at IBM, Smith Corona, Kodak, CNN, AT&T, others - a major takeaway is: businesses which don't stick to their core competency/purpose die.
Netflix getting into the moviemaking business is like the Post Office getting into the magazine business.
As far as I understand, they died mostly because their core competency (film) became obsolete in a huge fragment of the market.
I'm not saying that they could have successfully pivoted to digital, of course. But inability to pick up a new competency doesn't mean that the business won't die anyways... in which case, might as well try.
IBM under-went a similar "try or die" evolution away from various computing technologies (punch card machines, then some number of generations of main frames) over the last century, with more success than Kodak.
AT&T seems to be doing pretty well.
In my country most of the "library" is not available.
They are in the business of reducing the cost of "the long tail" of content and ensuring that it is fixed and controlled by them. If it weren't for "Netflix originals" the content producers can just increase the cost at which they sell content to Netflix to destroy their profit margin.
You can't scale a company into profitability if your costs are not fixed and are instead raised to maximally consume your profits.
And since you can only watch it in the browser, you can't use things like madVR or frame interpolation tools to get smoother panning scenes.
1 - Even a blu ray rip of around 3GB looks better. Think a 2 to 2.5 hour movie.
I live in Atlanta, and the cost of production here is much cheaper than California. I've been mulling over the merits of someone here launching a streaming platform for some of the locally-produced content.
That's such a delicious juxtaposition of wistful observation, and observer's job title (or 'contribution to society' if you prefer).
Bosch over on Amazon was pretty good.
He didn't give specifics (as usual), but it makes me happy.
This DVD business is the only place I am aware of for renting a great many movies. RedBox has very limited offerings. If it ever does fold, consider that for movies that don't appear in anyone's streaming catalog or a catalog you subscribe to, the only other (legal) option you'll have is to buy the DVD somewhere.
I don't know what things will look like in 10 years technologically, but if the Netflix DVD business ever goes away, there will be movies that are permanently inaccessible for rental.
I don't understand why the Expanse series two is being held back from Europe. Is it already available on Netflix in the US?
No, their focus on original content is entirely because once you have a situation where other content producers are cognizant of the proven value of streaming and their is robust competition in streaming, it's no longer practically possible to have a profitable one-step shop for high-value content from other owners' catalogs, since the high-deductible content is either being used to secure exclusive deals for the highest bidder or held back to anchor the content owner's own streaming service.
The same thing happened with HBO once it proved the value of cable as a premium content delivery venue.
I guess I'm a dinosaur from the olden days of TV where once per week you watched a show. Then a break for summer and the new season started in the fall.
These days it's binge watch an entire show and wait 18 months for the next season. I can't stand that who can sit still for that long?
I bet Netflix would prefer a slower production and release schedule rather than a blast of a dozen episodes. Even the actors must hate that they must also have to wait until production starts again.
Production quality is suffering too which may indicate shows are being made too fast. On Iron Fist I noticed in each episode a red laser dot and grid shining on the actors. And in one episode you could see water dripping off the camera lens housing.
Also, shows that run on a long or continuous schedule don't allow for the kind of care and polish - if you're churning out an episode a week, you can only do sitcom type stuff. No visual effects, no story arcs (too many actors come and go), no locations (can't spend all year outdoors). Doing seasons allows the team to get together, shoot for a few months and wrap, like a 10 hour movie.
I think actors prefer few months of intense work per project a year, so they can do other stuff as well. If it's 3 to 5 days a week all year you're locked in too much.
You could... space things out yourself, you know? :)
> Production quality is suffering too which may indicate shows are being made too fast.
Debatable. There's always been bad TV series. And production quality actually seems to be going up. Game of Thrones, Westworld, House of Cards are some of the most expensive and high quality TV shows ever produced, being not that off from Holywood blockbusters in terms of actors, special effects, sets, etc.
The other thing that differentiates it from traditional cable is the experience. Because of a package deal, I also have cable for the next year, and it is bombed out and depleted. Not just in terms of content, but in terms of when that content is on and the very UX of the interface. The amount of lag changing channels on a modern digital receiver from a major cable company would get you fired as a web developer if your website lagged the same. It is truly remarkable.
Netflix still has a huge advantage though, in that they are available internationally while HBO Now is only available in a handful of countries.
[1] distribution
[2] original content
https://gizmodo.com/5980103/netflix-the-goal-is-to-become-hb...
I have untouched-DVD rips from Star Trek Voyager. Single episodes run around 2 GB of data, while the same Netflix episodes are ~200MB.
Not only does Netflix not carry the bonus stuff, but the quality is seriously braindead - weird moire effects in the intro, for example, and it just looks pixelated.
In fact, the "scene rips" tend to look better than what Netflix offers! And it's certainly not due to low network quality, I've got a 100/20 connection and stuff like Shadowhunters is clear HD.
So I think you still have to go the more traditional route of knowing someone within the Netflix development department that you can pitch your project to. Or your agent/manager/producer will need to have that connection to get you in the door. I've been stuck in indie film limbo trying to finish this film because it has a lot of complicated visual effects (which are close to being finished) so I currently don't have a manager or agent who can help to get me in the door at Netflix.
Remember that if all salesmen had the ethics of developers.... well the world would actually be a much better place but if some do and some don't then those that don't are not seen. Something like that... its just the old cold calling salesman within me looking for ins :).
Generally I would not recommend such behaviour but in regards to cliques and arbitrary walls where meritocracy is unwelcome I would recommend skulduggery.
I noticed that you were getting downvoted and I am curious why.
Is it because people don't like what they think is the dishonesty of the idea?
Or because they don't think it will work?
Or?
I think it's a fine idea.
I have done similar things (not in pitching netflix) and it has worked. It's amazing how quick people are to criticize something that is foreign to how they operate or think idealistically the world should operate.
From what I've come across, Netflix solicits what it wants, it doesn't really "take pitches" as the business has run via Agents/Studios in the past. Rather, if some of the comments here are hitting accurately, Netflix has an idea for their show and then assembles the team to execute. That's quite a bit of a different relationship than Work-For-Hire type studio productions I think. Thus, it's another way they kind of alienate themselves from the industry, in that they are a "Don't call us, we'll call you" company.
Yes, I loved the first season of Daredevil, too, especially with its more Hong Kong style fight scenes, whereas Iron Fist's were more of the up-close quick-edit American style, but it was a really good show nonetheless.
...yet all I watched was Columbo, Poirot, Midsomer Murders and Murder She Wrote.
If only some of this "original content" was original in being upbeat or uplifting.
How DARE people want to work for Netflix intead of us, just because it pays better, is sexier and cooler, is technologically cutting edge, and allows much greater freedom from executive meddling?
NOT COOL GUYS.
"You just can’t compete with someone coming in with fresh money, low overhead and a lot less baggage than you"
Might as well just give up then right?