Comment by dasil003 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dasil003 | Hacker News Reader

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Having dedicated nearly a decade of my life to a startup competing in this space, the OA is right about Netflix's superior strategy when it comes to user experience and content production. Netflix surged ahead of the pack because they focused relentlessly on the quality of the streaming experience while all the legacy players were focused on deal-making. In other words, while Netflix was building a solid video delivery platform, the rest of the industry was fumbling around with biz dev deals like TV Everywhere that have a very low UX ceiling in the best-case scenario.

However that's the past now, and the OA is missing a few trends:

First, Netflix will not maintain its UX lead at the same level for long. Video streaming like all technology is commoditizing, the experience will get better and better from non-tech companies. Meanwhile Netflix is continuing to plow down this path of algorithm-driven engagement and ramming stuff down people's throats with auto-play, bad search, and other dark patterns. Given the current cultural zeitgeist (eg. Facebook backlash), this isn't going to end well if they don't change course.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that Netflix has a long way to go on the production side. There's a lot of volume of Netflix productions, but not a lot of quality. This is where the OA underestimates Disney—their content is way broader and better than Netflix, and people care a lot about that.

Netflix's experimental Interactive content and Reed Hasting's comments about Fortnite also give me pause. This is typical SV-style next-big-thing thinking, but it also represents taking the eye off the ball. Video games are video games, Netflix doesn't know shit about them, and if you ask me they are better off focusing on their core competency versus trying to build a moat with a gimmicky concept.

5 years ago I would have said Netflix has a better chance at becoming a great producer than Disney has at creating a great streaming experience, but now I'm not so sure.

>video games are video games, Netflix doesn't know shit about them, and if you ask me they are better off focusing on their core competency versus trying to build a moat with a gimmicky concept.

The point wasn't that they should compete with video games, or enter the space.

The point was that in the war for attention and engagement, netflix sees better competition from non-tv streaming services than it sees from other tv streaming services. It was a dig on HBO and Disney, not a suggestion for a new business venture.

Go re-read the whole paragraph instead of taking things out of context. Netflix Interactive content is the gimmick I was talking about, not literal game development.

The OA is also a good Netflix show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_OA

Uncompelling ending has by now become sort of a trademark of the (otherwise original and highly captivating) productions involving Brit Marling.

I can see why people hated it, but I like things I can't predict.

Have to wait for S2, being edited currently I think.

I also liked the end of Lost, HIMYM, Quantum Leap, Mad Men, and BSG, so I'm probably just weird.

I've never even watched The Lost - and neither Quantum Leap nor BSG, for that matter.

The ending of HIMYM was awfully contrived.

The ending of Mad Men, however, was thought-provoking.

Brit Marling had a good ending in "Another Earth", but both "The East" and "Sound of my voice" copped out with cliches - imho.

Arguably getting the ending right is among the most difficult parts of the job.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

Redbox seems to be very successful with games (the redbox in my neighborhood is typically sold out of games by 7pm, daily), and there’s a deep inventory of quality games that are cheap in comparison to video and can consume many hours of engagement.

Apple’s short-sighted, dependence on skinner-box free to play games demonstrates a hunger for zero marginal cost entertainment. The production cost for casual games is near zero; If Netflix could offer quality product to fill that hunger without the casino aspects of the AppStore, that’s a huge business.

But what attracts people to the Skinner box games is the fact that they are Skinner box games. coughClash of Clanscough

I agree Netflix is trending towards failure, but I couldn’t disagree more about why and the path leading them there. Netflix is and has been the least attractive of these services for a long time, specifically because other platforms have far expanded inventory and integrate the ability to instantly rent or buy additional content not directly included.

Ultimately what everyone wants is a super easy interface to pay for precise a la carte content, never bundled, never subscription-based. If a given person wants to buy everything from HBO, they still could, and maybe could get a discount for subscribing, but nobody wants to be forced to subscribe to watch just a handful of content items.

It doesn’t matter if it’s Disney streaming, Netflix, Premier League soccer, or anything else. It’s clear rent-seeking to create walled gardens of content only unlockable by bundled subscriptions, and the clear consumer drive existentially threatening the TV industry is that all anybody wants is a dumb pipe with an easy interface to individually purchase each content item on its own merit, flat out.

Many streaming services, particularly Amazon’s, offer this to a way higher degree than Netflix, especially in terms of sports access and new release films.

Netflix is betting that it can create locked-in content that will compel people to stay subscribing, but I think this is a long-term failing idea. Bird Box is a great example: really poor production, sloppy writing with contrived villains, lowest common denominator stuff. Stranger Things? I couldn’t see one reason to care about it. Not exceptionally bad, just overproduced blandness. The gimmick of making things into viral phenomena is not a stable business plan in this area.

As prices rise, Netflix just becomes another HBO. A walled garden of content, except HBO actually makes good television and knows how to do it. Netflix is trashing its own brand with mindless crap. It’s network quality for premium add-on prices. Especially if economic hard times hit, this is exactly something people are going to realize they can live without.

Ultimately what everyone wants is a super easy interface to pay for precise a la carte content, never bundled, never subscription-based.

I 100% do not want this. I want to pay for one subscription to get all the media I want (music, tv shows, movies, books, etc). And I don’t care at all about ownership. I’d pay $50-100/month for this subscription, and we’re getting close if you don’t mind cobbling together a half dozen subscriptions and using a bunch of different apps.

That's expensive if you don't watch much TV. I just watch sci-fi shows and wish I could put my money just towards those types of shows. My perfect subscription would be a mix, where I pay a small fee per month but can try out individual shows. If I like the show I'd pay for the rest of the season.

For example Amazon now has The Expanse, Starz has Counterpart, Netflix has Black Mirror and I also liked the new Lost in Space. Hulu has... Future Man? CBS All Access has... the ability to ruin Star Trek, so I might want to watch that train wreck.

Anyway if there was a cheap subscription like Amazon Prime which allowed me to try out a couple free episodes, then pay $3 per episode that would work. That way I feel like I'm supporting the specific shows I want to see.

You start by saying you don’t want a unified interface where you can get exactly the content you want, then your very next sentence is that you want a single unified interface to get exactly the content you want.

It sounds like you specifically do want a single interface for a la carte content (note: this has nothing to do with ownership vs restricted access), and you currently achieve something like this with a combination of subscription products that bundle a bunch of content you do want with a bunch of other content you don’t want but also don’t care about.

A situation where the price is broken down to individually activate just the content you want and not the content you don’t would offer exactly the same experience but with less irrelevant content and you’d only pay for what you choose to consume.

In other words, the concept of “I pay for one subscription and get exactly and only all the content I personally want” is equivalent to a unified portal for a la carte purchasing.. activating an on-going payment for ability to see Show A and never activating the same payment for Show B which you don’t care for. The “subscription price” is just the total price of your personal a la carte activations (be they ownership purchases, rentals, or recuring payments to license access to that singular content).

At any rate, your comment here is explicitly contradictory.

You’ve misread my comment. The unified interface part is not what I objected to.

I explicitly do NOT want to pay a la carte. I understand what you’re saying about only paying for what I consume and not paying for any irrelevant content.

And yet, I prefer a subscription, even if the total cost is higher. I don’t want the cognitive overhead of constantly trying to decide if it’s worth a little bit of money to purchase or rent a specific piece of content. I’d much rather pay a flat fee once per month for all-you-can-consume access. If we were talking about something very expensive, then my position might differ, but in the grand scheme of things, this is relatively trivial, so I’m happy to pay a few extra bucks to not think about it as much.

> “I don’t want the cognitive overhead of constantly trying to decide if it’s worth a little bit of money to purchase or rent a specific piece of content.”

But you already engage with this decision-making overhead when deciding what to watch and not watch. It’s built into any viewing system whether it’s all-you-can-watch after entry in a portal or not.

Also I hardly believe you never purchase on-demand content at all, especially since no combination of subscription services currently covers everything, and large chunks of content still can only be purchases in an on-demand fashion.

> Ultimately what everyone wants is a super easy interface to pay for precise a la carte content

The success of Netflix, Spotify, and even TV itself seems to show that a large number of people don't want to self curate, and would prefer to consume content curated by a third party; even if the quality suffers, the lower effort expended might make up for it.

You have some good points, but I'm not sure 100% a la carte at prevailing industry prices is really what people want across the board. It gets expensive very quickly, and a lot of times people do just want something free to veg out on. The perceived value of a subscription has to do with what is actually in the bundle, and this is where we can both agree Netflix is behind the curve.

This is somewhat true except Spotify and Apple Music are absolutely clobbering purchases of à la carte content, such that I think you would have to put the individual prices of media incredibly low for people to get over the psychological hurdle of shelling out for it, even if in the long run it would be cheaper to buy.

I’m not sure I agree, I think it’s more of a technology problem syncing owned music between devices, and that these major players, especially Apple, have an incentive to make it very hard.

For example, I buy all my music outright from Amazon & Bandcamp, downloaded to my laptop. From there I use the VLC app to propagate the music to my phone, ipad, etc.

Most normal consumers wouldn’t put up with this. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t rather own the music and pay only for what they personally consume. It just means Apple & Spotify have set up a big moat. You can’t start a startup to compete with them if your main sell is an easy way to have the raw, owned music files propagated to many devices and organized for easy browsing, because the big players (who don’t want consumers to have that) will just negotiate exclusive licenses and disallow you from having inventory.

> I think it’s more of a technology problem syncing owned music between devices, and that these major players, especially Apple, have an incentive to make it very hard.

Uh, iPods and iTunes? DRM-free music from the iTunes Store?

>For example, I buy all my music outright from Amazon & Bandcamp, downloaded to my laptop. From there I use the VLC app to propagate the music to my phone, ipad, etc.

You've just described iTunes though! And iTunes Match since 2011, for $25/year. It's even DRM-free. That was the way people did music before, and it turns out that when you can rent every album in the world for ten bucks a month nobody wants to be spending twenty bucks on every album they want anymore.

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