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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

If those company think it’s about content libraries they’re going to lose.

All those companies think: we own a lot of media, we can just build a streaming media platform. And I think they’re way underestimating how hard it is to build the technology stack and processes that Netflix has.

Netflix has an engineering team and a development and deployment process that has some production studios attached to it.

Disney can probably copy what Netflix has today, but by the time they’ve done that, Netflix will have updated their platform hundreds of time, and I don’t think they’re going to be able to build an engineering team that can keep up.

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>> Disney can probably copy what Netflix has today, but by the time they’ve done that, Netflix will have updated their platform hundreds of time

Last year Disney acquired BAMTech (a spun of MLB Media) - though less known, their technical chops when it comes to video streaming are already in Netflix territory.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/8/4/9090897/mlb-bam-live-strea...

Yeah the MLB media team really knows what they are doing. The MLB has long had the best tech out of the big 5 sports leagues in the US

They also have a contract to provide streaming for the NHL. Probably other leagues as well.

Just the NHL (for now) -- and MLB also handles production for the NHL TV network at this point as well.

Getting the engineering to scale fast would be difficult, but IMO isn't a fundamental issue. Streaming video is basically a solved problem and is not where the money is.

People subscribe for the content, not the technology. HBO isn't a tech first company but is probably doing a disproportionate amount of subscriptions thanks to Game of Thrones.

And does HBO still lease that technology from MLB Advanced Media? Strange to think a leader in this technology is spun off from a sport that took off back when "streaming" meant "watching the guy update the box score outside the telegraph office."

People do subscribe for the content, but the tech still has to work well for people to continue subscribing. If the stream stutter or otherwise fail constantly, the user experience is gonna drive customers away. Tech is a functional requirement, not a feature.

>If those company think it’s about content libraries they’re going to lose.

As long as your platform meets some bare minimum standard of reliability (and every service I use seems to be able to) then content is the only thing that matters.

>And I think they’re way underestimating how hard it is to build the technology stack and processes that Netflix has.

I think you are way overestimating the complexity. Sure, it's not something two guys are going to produce in their bedroom, but video delivery is a solved problem.

Nobody in here seems to appreciate the networking complexity that Netflix deals with - they are 37% of North America's internet traffic! At that point the network isn't an abstraction that "just works" like most web apps; you have to be aware of physical and business realities that dictate traffic (e.g. negotiate peering agreements, deploy caching/CDN boxes to network POPs, etc.).

Or you can buy the CDN service from a myriad of companies in the world. It only takes money to get servers and bandwidth in many places.

True. But depending on what's you guess on how much it costs for netflix to get a content hour watched by a user(maybe ~$0.1-0.2), streaming costs may become meaningful, and higher streaming costs becomes a strategic disadvantage.

Exactly. Excepting Cloudflare which is free, CDNs are expensive (or at least more expensive than I think people realize).

Netflix says it uses about 3GB of bandwidth per hour for streaming HD-quality video. CloudFront for one will charge you $0.26 for that 3GB-hour. It's pretty easy to see how binge watchers will rack up pretty high CDN/bandwidth bills.

While Netflix does have great technology and a lot of expertise in this area, Disney now effectively owns BAMtech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMTech), once known as MLB Advanced Media. That's the organization that built the streaming platform for Major League Baseball and supports many other sports leagues' and content providers' streaming efforts. They're actually pretty good at streaming.

>If those company think it’s about content libraries they’re going to lose. >All those companies think: we own a lot of media, we can just build a streaming media platform.

I agree with your conclusion but it's not the technology that will kill Disney and the likes. It's the myriad compromises they'll make about the content.

Disney does realtime streaming already. What does Netflix have that they would have problems to “copy”?

Edit: the question was obviously in the context of the parent comment talking about “the technology stack and processes“. Regarding the market share advantage, it’s debatable if each user is worth over $1000.

Marketshare?

People are happy to pay a single Netflix subscription, and many people already have one.

People would be less happy to shell out for yet another subscription, especially for a single kind of content (unless you watch Disney all day, it doesn't make sense to subscribe).

I'll add that they have very good and especially very diverse shows. "La Casa de papel" is killing it (at least here in Europe), and that's because Netflix doesn't care if their shows are spoken in English, Spanish or Swahili, they know that bringing diversity into the cinematic game it's what is badly needed right now.

I'd compare this to Hollywood in the late '60s - early '70s, when it needed the breeze of fresh air brought by La Nouvelle Vague or by Kurasawa's and Jean-Pierre Melville's movies. Right now Hollywood (and the media companies behind it) is stuck in making movies for late-teenager geeks (the comic-book-based endless series, the Star Wars soap opera etc), movies which have almost no interest for the general public.

I agree with you on the importance of diversity and the quality of Netflix programming, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the general public has no interest in comic book movies or Star Wars. The Force Awakens is the third best-selling movie of all time, and Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe occupies about half of the top ten best selling movies.

> People would be less happy to shell out for yet another subscription, especially for a single kind of content (unless you watch Disney all day, it doesn't make sense to subscribe).

There are multiple market reports (not a public one that I can find) that show the vast majority of Netflix subscribers already do shell out for another subscription (and that's true internationally, including in non-Prime Amazon territories, so it's not about Amazon delivery).

Most people will very much happily shell out for multiple subscriptions.

It's highly likely (see what happened with Disney removing content from Netflix) that, as consolidation continues, other major studios will also remove their content from Netflix. Once that happens, Netflix may find it harder to keep people happy to pay their monthly subscription (which is why Ted Sarandos recently stated that 85% of Netflix content spending is going to be on originals https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflix-original-spend...)

Good riddance. I don't like most of the trash that's out there.

Disney and Netflix are going to go head to head because, anecdotally speaking, my kids and all their friends watch these two sources primarily (some overlap ie, Moana on Netflix will likely vanish once Disney's streaming solution goes mainstream).

The key here is that Netflix is essentially free due to it's low overall cost, and parents like the non-kid content so the kid content being free (and no upsell) is a big deal - and unlike YT kids, is relatively trustworthy.

Disney will have to compete to either make a generally good Netflix replacement, or somehow dovetail into that model as a "high cost/high value" seperate subscription and edge out all other such services.

Yes. But Devil's Advocate here...

Aside from stack, whatelse does Netflix have going for it? Pre-internet Blockbuster had an overpowering / dominate "stack" and that was their downfall.

If VR is the next progression in home entertainment, who is best poised for that? Who has the tech + creativity DNA?

> Pre-internet Blockbuster had an overpowering / dominate "stack" and that was their downfall.

That is because the internet replaced them. Streaming is a direct replacement for video rentals. It's the exact same movie but you don't have to drive to the video store to get it. The industry itself doesn't go away. There isn't any apparent new distribution method that will do to the internet what the internet did to brick and mortar stores.

VR is a completely different industry, more related to video games than film, and from a distribution standpoint is nothing new. VR isn't going to cause people to download games from some hypothetical new non-internet distribution network.

> drive to the video store to get it

… only to find that all the copies are rented for the weekend.

The closest might be game/software subscription. You pay Steam a monthly fee, and have access to their entire backlog of games.

> "VR is a completely different industry, more related to video games than..."

I see it differently. Entertainment is entertainment. In addition there is a finite amount of disposable income and disposable time.

For example, the myth is that the internet was what killed the music industry. Sure, maybe it was the death blow, but what brought music to its knees was video games. It changed the habits of plenty of kids. The only reason it didn't show was due to CD sales. Not only where ppl paying $15 for a single (since CD singles were almost nonexistent), but they were also rebuying music they already own in other formats. The music industry was a zombie propped up on inflated revenue.

As entertainment goes, Netflix is not in the next market.

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