7% of Americans Subscribe to Netflix, Now Larger than any Cable Company | Hacker News Reader

7% of Americans Subscribe to Netflix, Now Larger than any Cable Company

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299 pointsmmcconnell1618143 comments

The cable companies' competitive response to Netflix has been laughable although no worse than any other established industry's response to disruption. The service Netflix provided from the beginning is a wide selection of content with little applied time on the customer's part. Going to the video store, picking out titles, and remembering to return them was a huge timesink. Netflix fixed that albeit at the expense of elapsed time. Then, Netflix drastically cut the elapsed time with streaming content. That the cable companies did next to nothing to combat this disruption is astounding given that they already owned and controlled a pipe into the customer's house!

Imagine if, in 2002, the cable companies had come offered a little, Roku-esque box which could hold two almost DVD-quality movies. A consumer would have attached a Y-splitter in front of his existing cable box and then added this new box in parallel. The box then would have connected to the TV's analog inputs. One would have loaded up his box by going to the cable company's website and picking movies from a large catalog -- one movie for slot "A" and another for slot "B". Each slot would have taken 8 hours to download over the cable line and then could have been watched using a minimalist remote to pause, rewind, etc. -- just like a VCR. Consumers could have gone to their local cable company office and picked up this box along with unlimited movie service for, say, $20/month.

I've purposefully suggested the crappiest, most minimalist implementation I could imagine as a thought experiment. Would this have been sufficient to combat Netflix? Presuming identical catalogs, why would I fiddle with snail mail, scratched-up DVDs, etc.? Such an offering certainly would have created an uphill battle for Netflix.

It is not as if video-on-demand services had not been discussed since at least the early 90s. What I have proposed is worse than what was suggested even back then, right? So, why didn't the cable operators do anything? I'm bet it had to do with fear of cannibalizing existing revenue streams. Why pay for HBO (sans original content of course) if you could pick ANY movie? How many industries have hurt themselves by not cannibalizing their existing revenue streams with sufficient aggressiveness?

Then, Netflix drastically cut the elapsed time with streaming content. That the cable companies did next to nothing to combat this disruption is astounding given that they already owned and controlled a pipe into the customer's house!

huh? cable companies have had on-demand digital streaming for ages, and done through a cable box already installed in the customer's house. comcast has a lot of programming available for free that is included with monthly service, and their pay-per-view rates are pretty cheap.

Speaking for myself and my cable company - their on-demand streaming in 2011 offers a choice of tens of C-grade movies at only $5.95 apiece.

This isn't really a competitive offering against "all the movies and TV shows ever for $8/month". It's embarrassing to even attempt to compare them.

netflix has a pretty crappy selection of streaming movies, too, but my point was that saying the cable companies are doing nothing is not accurate. cable companies have the technology to offer the same service as netflix and have the advantage of being able to offer newer pay-per-view titles and live sporting events.

Oh, we agree that cable companies "have the technology" and could offer the same service. But they aren't. At all. Not even close. And have no intentions of doing so. Ever.

Did I mention that all streamed movies from my cable company expire 24 hours after they start streaming? So if you start a movie at 8PM, watch the first hour until 9PM, and then you come back to it the next day to finish it... well, you better start watching before 7PM the next day, because exactly at 8PM it turns into a pumpkin and disappears. Even if you're in the middle of watching it. Brilliant! Who would ever want to watch part of a movie the next day?

Yes, but with Netflix the price is right. Also, amidst all that crap there are a decent number of good movies.

I'm not sure if they do have the technology. Most Comcast boxes (Motorola, Scientific Atlanta) are only decoding MPEG2 digital streams, I believe.

It would be quite expensive to roll out to all existing customers a DOCSIS Roku box with a QAM tuner. All the RF stuff makes it more expensive to produce, design, and maintain.

Someone else with more knowledge of CATV infrastructure and equipment could please clarify.

Whereas I'd love to get rid of my UK VirginMedia cable box (it crashes often, is slow and I just resent it a lot of the time) but won't - the on-demand movies are cheaper than iTunes and have a comparable selection (not great but reasonably up to date).

But the killer it also has iPlayer and its equivalents from the other four major channels built in. The only competitor to that, functionality-wise, would be to plug a real computer into the TV.

So in this case, cable does offer some real value - enough for me not to cancel my subscription.

"Pretty cheap" is quite a bit more expensive than free. Believe the parent is referring to an all-you-can-eat vs. PPV for your actively selected viewing pleasure.

the last time i used comcast for tv service years ago, they had tv shows and a bunch of regularly rotated free movies. if you subscribed to premium channels, you got a lot of the content from those networks available on-demand as well.

if cable companies deem netflix a serious problem for them, i would imagine it would be pretty easy to step up their licensing agreements and provide more on-demand content.

The front loaded cost of that is pretty high vs. $8 for Netflix though - and we're talking a handful of premium/new releases vs. the Netflix's streaming catalog which has been rapidly growing in size/quality. That said, I can only speak to my experience as a Cox sub from about 4 years back as I've since cut the cord.

I agree that big cable should have the power and leverage to stop the bloodletting. I think it's similar to any industry that has coasted along far too long, thinking that it is too big and powerful to fall.

| I've purposefully suggested the crappiest, most minimalist implementation I could imagine as a thought experiment. Would this have been sufficient to combat Netflix? Presuming identical catalogs, why would I fiddle with snail mail, scratched-up DVDs, etc.? Such an offering certainly would have created an uphill battle for Netflix.

Exactly, it would have just been an additional fee on an ongoing bill, the technology would have also been an easier sell to most people because to operate their selection from their tv than a website, I think for most people especially if this had been offered in the 90s. Your comment perfectly illustrates how little the cable companies did at all to fend off competition. Your comment is one of the best comments I've read on HN in a while, just wanted to let you know and also thanks!

Thanks. I so often think I've written something semi-insightful, but it is entirely ignored. Attention seems almost random.

I am convinced that Netflix will one day be studied as one of the most astute business strategies of the "internet revolution". IIRC, Hastings wanted to do streaming from the beginning but recognized that (1) the bandwidth wasn't available widely enough yet and (2) licensing content for streaming distribution required being a big player. He wanted to be sure he was well-positioned to be the dominant player when #1 (bandwidth) resolved itself and wanted to be big enough to achieve #2 (licensing deals). Doing DVDs by mail, while perhaps not as good of a business, achieved these goals. IANAL, but I think major laws would have to change to prevent Netflix from buying DVD titles and renting them by mail, so he could operate without the permission of the big boys. This strategy also had the interesting property of being a viable business until bandwidth improved (presuming, of course, that the cable operators did not do what I suggested!).

What remains to be seen is whether the studios will still take kindly to this sort of disintermediation. That they did not take earlier action to control this distribution channel is perhaps as big as a mistake as that made by the cable operators.

I agree completely, the DVD-mail rentals are a stop gap measure and trojan horse in one---it's training the customer to use Netflix.com, which will ultimately become the front-stage for their business. Netflix is genius.

|IANAL, but I think major laws would have to change to prevent Netflix from buying DVD titles and renting them by mail.

IANAL either, but I think you're referring to the First Sale Doctrine: The "first sale" doctrine says that a person who buys a legally produced copyrighted work may "sell or otherwise dispose" of the work as he sees fit, subject to some important conditions and exceptions. Section 109(a). In other words, if you legally buy a book or CD, "first sale" gives you the right to loan that book or CD to your friend. Libraries heavily depend on the first sale doctrine to lend books and other items to patrons.

Although studios and record labels could side-step this by selling the dvds as 'licenses.' Not sure though, would love a lawyer to explain this more.

"What remains to be seen is whether the studios will still take kindly to this sort of disintermediation."

I always wonder what's keeping ESPN, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, HBO, AMC, FX etc from just setting up websites. I realize most of these companies rely heavily on advertising, but why not just charge like $5/month and buy your shows a la carte. I couldn't careless about 99% of what is on cable tv, but I'm railroaded into paying for it. It would seem obvious that someone, especially HBO since they do not need advertising money, could go straight to the customer with quality content and their customers have already shown a willingness to pony up cash.

all of those networks still have to get carried by cable operators in order to remain viable, and losing ground by stepping on their primary distrubuters' toes would risk too much, I think

"I always wonder what's keeping ESPN, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, HBO, AMC, FX etc from just setting up websites. I realize most of these companies rely heavily on advertising, but why not just charge like $5/month and buy your shows a la carte."

The distributors (cable and satellite cos) and media companies both have self interest in preserving the a la carte model (many people mistakenly assume it's just in the distributor's interest). Let's take a look at the examples you mentioned: ESPN (Disney), Comedy Central (Viacom), Cartoon Network (Turner/Time Warner), HBO (Time Warner), AMC (Cablevision), FX (Fox) are all owned either by distributors or by media conglomerates that own multiple channels and have an interest in pushing 'packaged content' so that when ESPN is placed in the standard package for DirecTV, DirecTV can also be forced to take ESPN2, ESPN3, Disney Kids, etc. into the same tier and pay an incremental per sub fee for each add'l channel. That's a big part of what's keeping media cos. from going a la carte; they've decided that jamming additional channels into lower tiered satellite packages makes them more money than offering individual over-the-top subscription access.

The most recent filing of Netflix's annual report goes over some of the inherent risks they see to their business. Potential changes to the applicability of the First Sale Doctrine and ways studios may try to limit its affects is one of the risks they mention.

http://ir.netflix.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-11-4021...

"it's training the customer to use Netflix.com, which will ultimately become the front-stage for their business."

Yes. It's telling that they didn't call it "MailFlix" or "DVDQueue"; they chose a name that focuses your attention on the internet aspect.

I highly recommend the books "The Innovator's Dilemma" and "The Innovator's Solution" by Clayton Christensen. They basically provide answers to all of your questions. Christensen is the one who coined the term "disruption" as it applies to technology and innovation. The premise of the books are that large entrenched companies focus on larger profits and ignore off the shelf technologies that they already have in house because the potential profits seem too small. Other smaller companies start using off the shelf technologies to focus on niche customers and eventually overtake the larger companies. By the time the larger company realizes what's going on, they're playing catchup.

Nintendo used "The Innovator's Dilemma" and "Blue Ocean Strategy" (another book I highly recommend) as the basis for the development of the Wii.

Thanks for referring to "Blue Ocean Strategy"-- I hadn't read that one. "The Innovator's Dilemma" is a great book (in a sea of bad business books).

Some of the IP video solutions coming out from the bigger cable companies are actually pretty good though facing some limited content at the moment. I don't think they can compete against Netflix for movies but as basically cable TV on your computer/phone/tablet it's a pretty good start. In the long term it will probably depend a lot on how people prefer to watch video. Traditional linear programming or on-demand -- though they do integrate with DVR functionality so you still get the on-demand angle to a large degree. Since they've already got people on the hook for cable Internet and most people will want to continue having some level of video service if not for sports/live events alone, I think they're in pretty good shape to compete against Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. The missing piece is still a good set top experience. The vintage late 90's Cisco/Motorola boxes are so antiquated it's amazing. A smartphone I would throw into a trashcan has more power and a better UI.

I would completely agree with you on the Set Top comment. Infact, do you even need a set-top box? I know TV manufacturers are now building units that are capable on connecting straight to the internet or have built in set-top box capabilities. Set-top boxes will not be needed in the future.

The problem is that cable companies can't compete with Netflix because they have to compete with themselves. If they offered deals as good as Netflix, they'd "cannibalize" the customers who they now have paying really shitty deals.

It's a classic problem of disruptive technologies covered in "The Innovator's Dilemma." The author's advice is for companies to create independent subsidiaries to take on the new technology, so that "competing with themselves" is internally consistent within the subsidiary, even if it's inconsistent across the company. Certainly a good move when the alternative is obsolescence.

This works better when the subsidiary does not rely on the parent's infrastructure.

In this case, if the subsidiary relies on the parent's pipe to each household, it's easy to imagine the boss of the traditional cable division constantly lobbying the CEO against the subsidiary disruptor; imagine the endless political claims:

- Our margins pay for the fixed costs of the pipe; if this subsidiary compromises our margin, the whole company will be unable to pay our fixed costs!

- This subsidiary should be charged the economic costs of supporting it: let's charge them a fixed rate per line to access the company's infrastructure. By the way, here's our cost accountants' report showing that this fee should be high. It's only fair.

- This subsidiary would only show earnings significant enough for Wall Street to care at a point in the future in which you will probably have moved on in your career, Mr. CEO. In the meantime, you'll be punished by the Street for development costs.

Etc., etc. Even with good intentions, when the air supply for a subsidiary disruptor is provided by the threatened parent, politics will probably win even if it costs the company in the long run.

It might actually make sense for cable companies to do nothing but milk existing customers for as long as possible. Sure, new technology is going to upend their rice bowl, but they don't have to speed up the process and they can make a lot of money in the interim.

The problem with your story is that you make it sound like the cable companies were calling the shots. I suspect that if the movie studies went to Comcast and said, "here's our library of movies that you can stream and give us a cut" they would have seriously considered it.

In 2002 they couldn't have gotten the movies to stream. In fact, I'd argue the only reason we've seen it happen today is because the movie industry saw how screwed the music industry got over streaming.

An interesting argument. That so much physical real-estate was once dedicated to video rentals suggests that a single physical media unit produced rental revenue which was a high multiple of its cost -- at least at Blockbuster's height. This also implies that the studios (to be more correct, the intellectual property owners) only received a small fraction of the value their IP provided to consumers. One would think that this state of affairs would have led the cable operators and the IP owners toward an agreement of some sort. Every dollar wasted on a strip mall lease could be a dollar in a combination of their pockets.

The cable companies saw netflix as Blockbuster's competitor, not their own...and were fairly correct in that belief until netflix changed their game to streaming, and streaming of tvshows and fairly new movies..and even so, the streaming of movie titles was never something the cable companies were hugely good at until recently: Movie studies saw their profits as sourced from dvd and vhs mass market sales, and box office ticket sales, not distribution to tv.

So while the cable companies haven't responded well to netflix, I think its important to remember that only recently has netflix emerged as a competitor to the cable companies...and these industries had been respecting one another's monopolies until netflix changed the game.

It seems reasonable to think that the cable companies at first saw Netflix at a threat only to Blockbuster, etc. Too bad for them that they did not take a broader view of their competition. When a person says, "I want to be entertained by narrative" (not that they would really say such a thing explicitly), cable, Netflix, movie theaters, live theater performances, novels, etc. all compete with each other for the person's attention and dollar. Cable had the advantage that it was always there and required little effort to consume on a per-unit basis (meaning, the effort of turning on the TV). However, it had the disadvantage of lacking variety -- much like the airport bookstore compared to a "real" bookstore (purposefully ignoring Amazon to keep the historical perspective intact). It was this unique position of availability which allowed Cable to survive alongside Blockbuster, and everything else I listed above. Netflix tipped this balance.

Correction: now larger than any cable company was last year.

The latest subscriber numbers from Comcast [1] are from September 2010, for Q3 2010, when they reported 22.937M cable video subscribers.

It's conceivable that Comcast has been growing as well and has as many subs as Netflix.

But the media loves a horse race!

[1] http://www.cmcsk.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=523403

Comcast's subscriber base has been relatively stagnant, they've had circa 23 million subscribers since for the last half-decade. Netflix has been growing at 10-15% per year for the last several years. Netflix is still vastly under appreciated as a major player in media distribution, and has only started to gain more attention lately. The fact that they will likely continue to grow larger than any single cable company is significant.

You're right.

Their Internet subs are seeing 10% Y/Y growth, but their video subs are flat.

Looking at the last 3 years, it's unlikely that Comcast will report any major uptick in video subscribers during their next earnings.

Even a strong reason for cable companies such as Comcast to enforce their 250 Gb monthly transfer limit.

If "traditional" cable TV is to survive they are going to have to offer a-la carte channel choice. I'd pay $5-10/month per channel for the handful of channels that carry interesting content. I refuse to pay $100/month for the 90% of channels that are pure crap.

Second that. I've already given up TV years ago for that reason. 90% is crap, and the other 10% I learned I can live without.

I'm not trying to defend the cable company (hate them anyway), but I just want to point out one potential problem with the thinking: it's very likely that the 10% of channels that you are interested is in the 90% of those that others think are pure crap. The original idea to charge a lump-sum subscription fee instead of a-la carte is precisely to combat this trap. Otherwise, many niche programs will not be available in the beginning.

That makes no sense. A television network's survival depends on the ability of non-competing tv networks to subsidize its existence?

Also, the major channels are probably available for free over the air in HD!

This was just an artifact of 'circuit-switched' CATV networks. With an IP-based network you can have 100,000 channels that cost nothing as long as they're not being watched. Literally anyone can start their own cable channel. (Starting to sound familiar yet?)

In such an environment, a la carte programming is the only thing that can possibly make sense. The tiered plans are gone for good, and cable companies will just have to deal with it and get over it.

Actually, it is already illegal for cable companies to not provide a-la carte channels, the problem is they have a workaround which is that to get them, you have to order basic service, and then they charge ridiculous amounts for the individual channels.

The problem is that basically everyone has a channel or two that they like that's only carried because of bundling.

Your thinking is natural but ultimately mistaken because of the counter-intuitive aspects of zero-marginal-cost economics. Here's a great thought experiment which illustrates the problem:

http://makeanysense.blogspot.com/2010/07/more-choice-is-less...

A-la-carte channel choice isn't totally impossible, but it's not straightforward to make work and it's not obviously better.

True. I think this might be a short term issue though. Software often pushes hardware to it's limits. Networks will catch up over the next 5 years.

Doesn't this become anti-competitive at a certain point?

You as the customer buy two (or more) services from Company A. They require you agree to stringent terms on one of those services in order to cut back your use of Company B's services.

Being anti-competitive is not illegal in most cases.

It's only illegal when you're a monopoly, I believe. In many areas (such as mine), there is only one cable provider (and we don't have FIOS either).

Honestly, if anyone is getting the short end here, it's comcast. Imagine if some loophole allowed FedEx to tie trailers onto UPS's delivery trucks. That's exactly what netflix is doing to comcast.

What? No it isn't at all. Comcast is just getting upset that people are using the service they are paying for. The same goes for AT&T and their removal of their "unlimited" data plan after the iPhone became popular and they realized that people actually enjoy using what they pay for. Your analogy would make more sense if you said imagine if FedEx paid UPS enormous amounts of money every month to ship a fixed number of packages and FedEx actually used the service they paid for to ship packages via UPS.

I think a closer analogy would involve USPS first charging you for building and paving the road to your house, and then wanting to charge you extra when you would like FedEx to drive on that road to deliver something to your house.

I'm okay with that analogy, if we understand that the USPS made an agreement "You may have 250 heavy-duty trucks arriving to your door per month", of course allowing for changes to be made in said contract. Once those 250 heavy-duty trucks actually got rolling, if it became deleterious to the USPS, I can see it being reasonable to change the terms of the contract according to the contract itself.

I'm purposefully arguing for the unpopular side here, btw. I'm definitely in the 99th percentile of bandwidth users and likely on verizon's own enemy's list. I can see it from the other perspective is all.

Once you get into the world networks with multiple OC192 connections all it takes is a little math to show Verizon still makes money from most heavy users. The marginal cost of your 5 to 25MB/s slice of bandwidth you use is just not that expensive especially if they are also selling you cable and or phone service.

PS: For a huge ISP peaking 10mb for 2.4 hours at the worse time of the day is much more costly than a constant 1mb connection 24/7. But, you are not going to see this inter the debate.

Comcast really doesn't mind if you go over the 250Gb/month limit. http://i.imgur.com/VkuiD.jpg

They gave me a wrist-slap call when I used 2.x TB in a month. That was before I realized there was a 250GB limit on my unlimited plan...

I was disconnected for going over a few months in a row. They put me on a one-year blacklist for that. But it turns out that only the "residential" access has caps, and the lowest "business" tier was about the same speed for not much more money. By my reckoning, I'm now pushing almost 40 TB/mo (mostly bittorrent, all legal) and no complaints from Comcast.

Is this for work/science? What could you possibly download 40 TB of monthly? I am just curious.

I imagine if you were one of the MAJOR seeders for a legal torrent (Open Source software, CC content, etc.) you could easily hit that. If 1000 people download a 5GB Linux distro from you, that's 5 TB.

Or if you're working with something like video or CAD and constantly sending slightly changed multi-GB files around each time.

"Or if you're working with something like video or CAD and constantly sending slightly changed multi-GB files around each time"

If you were using version control, couldn't you push just the diffs?

Does it work the same for binaries as text?

There are definitely systems that will just send the bytes that have changed (and their locations naturally). DropBox does this:

http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=17631

Yes, that's impressive. Our largest plan here has 30GB of transfers per month... (Canada)

Hm, on inspection I am off by about a factor of 10, but if I had a faster net connection, I could hit that without too much trouble. I've got the usual Ubuntu ISO's and some more experimental OS's like "Elementary OS". I use uTorrent, which has mini-apps available. Most of the apps are just channels for content, so I've got Make Magazine channel, which only has old videos by now; TED talks, which are always popular; Pioneer One, which is an indie made-for-the-web TV show I like; and Khan Academy videos which use a lot of bandwidth because they've packaged an entire unit per torrent. In addition I'm downloading the Geocities torrent [1], and I got a bunch of video presentations from the Chaos Communications Congress back in December which are still in demand [2]. Since I last rebooted, the most popular torrents I have are videos from The Next HOPE conference, and BackTrack 4.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840481 and http://www.archiveteam.org/archives/geocitiespatch/

[2] http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events.en.html and ftp://media.ccc.de/congress/2010/mp4-h264-HQ/

I wonder if cable companies have higher revenues because customers have upgraded internet connection speeds. I know basic internet plans (< 10 Mbps) are not good enough to stream HS content from Netflux and other devices.

Not sure this is true. I have 6Mbps down and that is good enough for h264-encoded 720p video. Dunno how Netflix encodes their video, but it's definitely possible to stream video with less than 10Mbps of bandwidth.

That had better apply to all services the same. If it applies to Netflix but not a competing service that the cable company has a part in, I call foul.

NetFlix only needs to buy one cable company to be able to eat away all the others.

They could buy one smaller one in secret now, or they can wait until they can swallow a big one in the future.

> 7% of Americans Subscribe to Netflix...

I subscribe to Netflix (streaming only, obviously), am not American and not located in America; they do check the IP but not as aggressively as Hulu, so if you use a proxy they don't seem to mind.

I wonder how many of us there are?

What do you mean by 'aggressively'? I've connected to hulu through a big-brand VPN provider and had no issues yet; are they actively trying to block this?

Which brand? Hulu blocks Witopia for example, and all of EC2.

I dream of a day when I can turn on my television or whatever, select a season, select an episode and boom I am watching the show. For me, OnDemand is miniature to what it could be. I have more shows on my HD than any cable company would offer onDemand. I will say Netflix has a lot of content, but in terms of actually enjoying a movie you find on netflix, imho the movie will be B grade at best.

I am sure the cable companies will be lobbying congress soon to get laws against netflix or allow them to throttle/charge them.

It's far too good to last. I really hope I am completely wrong.

Is there a Netflix competitor? Is there room for another Netflix?

what did you have in mind?

Digital delivery: Amazon Video-On-Demand, Hulu, iTunes, etc.

Physical rental: Redbox, Blockbuster, etc.

Netflix does their job very, VERY well, making it hard for any new players to enter the market.

But stuff like Hulu and Crackle shows how easy it is for the the content providers to start their own service and block Netflix from the content entirely.

Hulu also shows how hard it is for content creators to capture customers with a new business designed primarily to protect their existing business.

Amazon Prime offers free streaming videos. There selection anywhere as good as Netflix's yet but it seems to be improving.

In the UK, there is http://lovefilm.com

Also interesting: http://zediva.com

Actually, Amazon acquired Lovefilm in Jan. [1], and Zediva is being sued by the MPAA[2].

[1]http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/amazon-acquires-lovefilm... [2]http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/04/mpaa-sues-zediva/

Both true points, but not sure what you mean by "actually".

Presumably that disqualifies both as being competitors to Netflix.

I actually use Amazon on Demand because Netflix does not support Linux.

In New Zealand, Fatso competes with physical rental. http://www.fatso.co.nz

In Canada there is zip.ca (http://www.zip.ca).

Netflix.ca is pretty dismal, half the stuff is unavailable or doesn't even exist on the Canadian version I may try Zip.ca

The Netflix.ca free trial was OK but only two weeks in and I watched everything that was interesting, now what. And Netflix.ca doesn't update the content very often.

Maybe Zip.ca is better. If not back to torrents and try to resurrect the corpse that is ushare.

I use greencine.com

I believe that Disney and maybe a few of the other big studios could take their content and make competitors. It would basically be a VOD for them. People pay $8 to $12 for HBO alone. An on demand version playable from a bunch of devices woul work too. Netflix would basically end up being the small guy combined collection.

The biggest impediment to a Netflix competitor is getting the licensing from the media companies. After that, Netflix is a very bandwidth-intensive service and it would require a significant upfront investment to establish a competitor, which is probably why not many are trying. Even if you just want to do rental only, that still takes a significant investment to provide processing centers and make the required arrangements with the Postal Service. It's definitely not a low overhead venture.

There are some people that seem to be posturing to compete with Netflix. Amazon has some video on demand services and an unlimited solution on some titles for Prime subscribers. YouTube has made forays into the rental business and if they were interested in providing a service analogous to Netflix they'd be able to do so, and this may be beneficial to Google if they decide they want to ramp up on Google TV.

Furthermore, Microsoft refuses to license its DRM, which is used to encrypt Netflix streams, for use on desktop-grade Linux systems so Netflix can't do anything with the desktop Linux market for the time being. This is a major detraction for custom HTPC builders and some others. YouTube and Amazon both use Flash to deliver their content and both are playable on desktop-grade Linux machines.

How does the number of subscribers to Netflix compare to the number of subscribers to all cable companies? In most areas, cable companies have a local monopoly, and so they tend to not go national for antitrust reasons.

I'm actually surprised... I thought the number would be far larger than 7%

Lots of families and couples have netflix collectively. I'd bet there are on average at least 2 or 3 people using each paid account.

How does that work for streaming? Is it limited to one stream at a time?

You're limited to 5 devices total... I'm not sure if you can stream on two at once.

You can. I share an account with other family members, we all stream and we all live at different addresses.

My wife and I have been able to stream to a laptop and the Wii at the same time.

But, I don't know if there are no restrictions, or if there are "only 1 device type at a time."

From https://www.netflix.com/Help?faqtrkid=4&p_search_text=si...:

Q. Can I watch movies instantly on more than one PC or Netflix-ready device?

A. ... If you are on the Watch Instantly Unlimited plan or the 1-disc-out-at-a-time plan, you may watch only one device at a time. If you are on the 2-discs-out-at-a-time plan, you may watch on up to two devices at a time. Members on the 3-disc plan can watch on up to three devices. The maximum is four devices -- available for members on the 4-or-greater-discs-out-at-a-time plan.

Your account can have up to six unique authorized devices activated (and associated with it) at any given time, including personal computers and Netflix-ready devices. For example, if you're on the 1-disc plan, you can have up to six devices associated with your account, but you can only watch one of them at a time. If you're on the 2-disc plan, you can have up to six devices activated but can only watch two of them at the same time.

We have the 1-disc plan but routinely watch on the Wii and my desktop at the same time (but not for very long, because our bandwidth can't really keep up well; it's kind of a bone of contention here).

Wow, that's great. I couldn't find any info about it on their site for some reason, but another site[0] says it's $20/month for the 4 discs out at-a-time plan, meaning by sharing with friends and family you can defray the cost to $5/month.

0: http://www.timefordvd.com/netflix/NetflixPricePlans.shtml

Netflix used actually allow multiple users per account back in the day, each with their own queue. They removed that feature though, and now our household appears as one person.

It's still there for physical disks, although a bit harder to find - https://www.netflix.com/ViewProfiles?lnkctr=yas_profiles

They went back on that decision after the predictable outrage exceeded their threshold.

It's very sad, because the feature actually makes a TON more sense with the Instant Queue. Especially with a youngster in the house.

Quite true. Our "recommendations" are frequently a weird hodgepodge with things like Thomas the Tank Engine and Californication right next to each other.

OTOH, this was only vaguely better when we had cable. (You could have user-specific channel lists, but it was annoying to access them. And even still, there was no way to outright remove channels from the main list - is it really necessarily for me (or my kids) to see what's currently playing on the adult channels I don't subscribe to?)

115.9m households have TVs[1], so 23.6m accounts is just over 20% of households with TVs subscribing. That seems more reasonable. The 7% figure assumes 1 account per person.

[1] - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/numb...

The US Census Bureau projects that last year's census will count 114.8 households in America.[1] That tracks pretty closely to what Nielsen has measured. So you don't really need the "with TV's" qualifier. It appears nearly every American house has one.

What is interesting is that I know a lot of people who share Netflix accounts across households. I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of Americans who use Netflix is closer to 25%.

[1]: http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf

You're assuming that people without televisions don't have netflix. I use netflix on my laptop.

I haven't owned a tv for several years now. If it's not streaming, I just don't see it. I do fine.

Die Comcast, die!

Why? I know hating Comcast is popular, but I've actually found them to be quite good, although expensive.

With Comcsst I get a lot of HD channels. I get a dual tuner DVR w/ no upfront fees or commitment, just a rental fee. They have a pretty good sized on demand package, with the ability to continue watching content from any TV in the house. They've recently added the ability to control my DVR over the web.

Comcast at the half the price is a pretty good service, IMO. I certainly wouldn't want them to die, as I currently have no other service giving me 4 HD ESPNs, Big 10 sports, HD Nick, HD Nick Jr, HD Sprout, and HD on demand for many network shows I watch.

comcast internet is slow in my experience. Much slower than advertised. Comcast has also done a lot of bittorrent throttling, given there are legitimate uses for bittorrent.

Also in my local market there is comcast or att dsl. ATT dsl is slower than comcast, so I'm forced to pick the lesser of two evils.

If your Comcast internet is much slower than advertised, there's a problem, and it's likely fixable. It can be bad cables or splitters in the house, poor signal from being too many splitters from the source, a bad modem, wrong service settings for your account on Comcast's end, many things. If you call Comcast and are willing to do some serious troubleshooting with a technician at your house, you should be able to get the advertised speeds. I've done so at 7 different homes in the past 6 years, but only after doing some work at each one.

I just need you to be available between noon and 5pm.

This is fine for personal use (if you have the time to spare), but for a client's business this is impractical.

How many hours of serious troubleshooting would you bill a client for?

The last business I worked with had to have the tap at the pole replaced, plus new connectors and removal of many splitters.

I hear what you're saying here. But I get to pay $40 a month... to have to troubleshoot and fix my own connection?

I think comcast should stay on top of their shit, isn't that what we pay for?

It's much more the packaged content model that big cable props up. It's good it you watch tons of TV. But what if for instance you hardly watch TV, but only have a set of favorite shows? For instance, I really want to see BoardWalk Empire. But I can't without paying some $60+ month, because I have to buy the HBO package on top of a cable package. My only recourse is 1) see it at a friend's place, 2) wait at least 6 mos for it become available on Netflix/iTunes, or 3) illegally stream it.

AMC does not have this problem, and I gladly buy HD seasons of Mad Men and Breaking Bad on iTunes the moment they're available (I actually prefer to pay for them, as I want to support this great content). But not with most other premium content, esp. HBO and Showtime where contracts with big cable preclude this activity.

What is your monthly Comcast bill AND what is your upload/download bandwidth?

I have Comcast for both business (at 2 locations) and for personal home use.

To clarify, I only use Comcast for data, and I am reticent to call it an Internet Service Provider.

Their business class service becomes saturated at the same time each day. They cannot guarantee any upload capacity. Clients are very hesistant to pay your hourly rate onsite while you wait for the Comcast guy to show up, so you can tell him to check the signal at the tap and run a new drop and new ground block and check every coax connection and splice (which should have been done during the original install).

I do not watch ESPN or Nickelodeon, but you could probably spend less using medication to zombify yourself.

Also, I was at a friend's house this Easter and was watching some Comcast using their DVR channel guide, and guess what? The channel guide now has banner ads on each page of the channel listings.

You pay to rent a DVR that has banner ads? WTF?

Is this what Stockholm Syndrome looks like? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

[UPDATE] I forgot to mention, one of my clients had 'inadvertently' agreed to a 4-year Comcast business agreement with a $4,000 termination fee...and the guy next door has FioS (they won't write any contract for longer than 2 years), so yeah, fuck Comcast.

Not to mention the set-top-boxes also show all the premium channels, and not just channels you pay for. They're shooting for the up-sell (or their backend is just that antiquated), but it's clear there exists a conflict of interest that won't result in better boxes from your cable-tv provider.

I do not watch ESPN or Nickelodeon, but you could probably spend less using medication to zombify yourself.

Thanks, I come here to have snide remarks directed at me.

Sorry I keep replying (am I really?)...I was looking at dish network, and they offer pretty much everything you listed with a better DVR that can stream to Android or iPhone devices...

http://www.dishnetwork.com/tveverywhere/vip922/default.aspx

http://www.dishnetwork.com/tveverywhere/remoteaccess/

Here is a list of HD packages, and if you scroll to the bottom, you can add all those othr HD channels for another $10...

http://www.dishnetwork.com/hdtv/default.aspx

Dish requires an upfront payment of $199/$299 for the DVR. And you still pay for a monthly DVR service, per DVR. The monthly bill is comparable to Comcast except you have a big upfront payment that isn't refundable if you decide that you don't like Dish.

Also Dish regularly battles the major networks, presumably on affilicate pricing, so its not uncommon that you'll lose ABC or CBS for a few days to weeks. I've never seen this happen with Comcast.

And their On Demand content is puny, last I checked, compared to Comcast -- and it requires an internet connection.

> "Why?"

A few reasons I'm not their biggest fan:

* I have no choice in my area.

* Comcast costs more, for less, than it does in neighboring towns where they compete. The brashness and sheer monetary disconnect between what they charge when they compete and what they charge when they don't casts a certain light on the rest of their shenanigans. (approximately 50%)

* I can't get a residential cable internet package without paying more than if I got cable internet and television service.

* They moved essentially all the popular cable channels out of the 'basic' television package during the DTV switch, under the auspices of people needing their digital set-top box anyway. Except that's a lie and they know it. It was just a convenient excuse for them to push popular channels into a higher-priced package. Channels that, conspicuously, are still basic in neighboring towns where they compete.

* CableCARD nonsense. I never got a working card from them. The cards they're legally required to provide upon request. So a newer TIVO wasn't an option. And every conversation regarding the CableCARD involved a sales pitch to just get their (ad-bearing, convoluted monstrosity of a) DVR.

* Their backwards router policies from yesteryear: when they would lie to, threaten and refuse service to their customers, because they didn't feel like providing the service they were advertising (an internet connection), but rather the service they felt like providing (an internet connection to a single Windows PC.)

* The bandwidth caps and (more troubling) their inconsistent enforcement.

* Their traffic 'shaping'. AKA screwing up my ISO downloads because they're on an anal quest to outmaneuver people they refuse to simply cut off or charge more. They just up and decided that they could 'shape' my traffic to not only prevent it from harming their network, but that they could 'shape' my traffic to prevent someone else from harming their network. (If I'm not in their 'extreme downloaders' demographic, why is my traffic getting molested?)

* They decided to change their shaping policy without telling anyone. And to add insult to injury, they then denied doing what they were quite clearly doing for months.

* And what were they doing? Effectively impersonating my devices. If they want to delay or throttle a stream, that's fine. But inserting data into the stream as if that data came from my devices? That is not OK. That is a violation of the trust principles the damn network is built on.

* The DNS ads. I mean, really? Intercepting and perverting standard protocols to show ads? Incredible weak-sauce. It essentially removes "DNS lookup" as a service their subscription price pays for.

And that list is by no means exhaustive.

Those are good reasons, although I must admit that I've hit none of them. I'm probably not as demanding a user, but compared to people I know that have DSL, Comcast seems like a godsend.

On CableCard, I had a great experience with them. I got two CableCards from them and they gave them to me for free. They worked fine, although I no longer use them.

Netflix is terrible. You spend more time looking for stuff to watch than actually watching stuff. I know a movie is bad if it's available for streaming on netflix.

I disagree, they have some great stuff and it's getting better all the time as they sign new contracts.

In terms of discovering content, this is a great site for anyone who uses Netflix streaming regularly: http://instantwatcher.com/

The most interesting thing about your comment is you consider Netflix a streaming-only service. Kudos to Netflix for being ahead of the curve here, despite the fact that streaming is much harder to implement and probably less profitable than their core DVD rental business.

Actually their core DVD is less profitable. It costs them something like $1 to send you a DVD, and a nickel to stream you a movie.

Notice that the Netflix site actually hides their premium packages (3+ disks at a time). People who aggressively watch and return DVDs to Netflix probably cost the company money.

Are they getting special EC2 negotiated rates? A two hour movie streamed to me costs 5 cents in computing power and bandwidth AND Amazon is still making a profit?

[UPDATE] http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing

This says 8 cents per GB data transfer out.

Streaming is not hosted on Amazon, it's CDN based. http://qcontokyo.com/pdf/adriancockroft.pdf Slide 20ish

From your slide set, page 21 says Amazon receives a master tape from the studio then converts it to a high-quality format on s3, then stores in 50 different formats and pushes those to the CDN. The more times someone stream a specific movie, the more these "fixed" costs are recovered.

According to the chart you referenced, the CDN is still a part of the Amazon ecosystem.

Amazon Cloudfront is 3 cents a Gigabyte (once you're over 1000tb)

Reed Hastings has on several occassions said it is about a nickel per movie.

“It costs us about a dollar, round-trip, to send DVDs by mail. It costs us less than a nickel to deliver by streaming.” Netflix now spends $600 million a year on the postal service [note to Jim Cramer: short USPS now!] and lots of hourly labor checking DVD quality.

http://newsonomics.com/reed-hastings-six-lessons-for-the-new...

I only use Netflix for streaming and everyone I know has the same problem with Netflix that I do. The streaming content is absolutely LAME. Thanks for all the downvotes though, glad to know there is a Netflix fan club somewhere.

Did you read your post? The downvotes aren't due to some Netflix fan club. Talk about what you don't like about the selection on Netflix instead of just calling it and its movies terrible.

"I know a movie is bad if it's available for streaming on netflix."

Many of the best movies ever made are available for steaming.

"I only use Netflix for streaming and everyone I know has the same problem with Netflix that I do. The streaming content is absolutely LAME."

Yet you still use Netflix?

You shouldn't have to look for stuff to watch. What you want to do is to rate content first and make up a que of stuff you want to watch. Then go through and sort the movies based upon what they think you will like (or just click the recommendations tab) and add those to the que. Just by doing that I have more than a year of dvd's and a good dozen in my streaming always waiting to be watched.

There is vast room for improvement in their recommendation system. Vast room.

Having participated in the netflix recommendation contest I can say that the core engine is very good, but the presentation could be so much better.

Some instant ways to make things better:

- Let me know when a movie on my que is available for streaming - Let me know when a movie is about to be taken off the streaming list. - Let other profiles see if movies are available for streaming (even if they can't do it on their account) - Do some UI testing on the wii/ipad/etc apps and make them better. - Sort "new movies" and all of the other lists shown on my tv by what it thinks I will rate them so I see the better movies first - Let me connect with friends so I can see what they just watched. I will be socially more ok with watching a "ok" movie if I get to chat about it with someone else the next day.

Some bigger ideas to try: - When streaming a new TV show add one episode every Friday at 8 (or other time). I will be more interested in watching if there is just a little bit of content to keep up with. - Provide a "live" channel that continuously just plays through content such as TV shows, kids shows and movies etc. When I "watch" that channel it just ff'ds to where it would be at that point in the movie.

Netflix allows you to stream on up to 6 devices but only allows recommendations for one user. My moms crappy dramas and my action/adventure movies usually lead to Netflix giving the highest rating to Anime movies, a category no one in my family watches. After down voting some films it becomes obnoxious. I would rather sit on my couch and flip from CNN to FOX news at that point. Netflix is annoying at best.

  You spend more time looking for stuff to watch than
  actually watching stuff.

Ever been to a video rental store? That's how it used to be done. Browsing through the collection and reading the synopsis on the back of the cassettes was a big part of the whole VHS rental experience. One video store where I grew up even gave out small bags of popcorn to eat while in the store.

Never been to a video rental store that has taken more than 15 minutes to select a film. That would be absurd.

I've never spent more than 5 minutes to select a film on Netflix streaming. That would be absurd.

In all seriousness, the suggestion feature of Netflix is amazing. I've seen and enjoyed a much larger variety of films, documentaries, and TV shows than I ever would have had I been left to pick from the massive library myself.

I downvoted you for not explaining better what you mean by spend more time looking for stuff. Are you a subscriber?

If you type in a movie/show's name, it shows up if it's available. And usually they show a list of similar shows/movies. And to save time, they even show a mini-synopsis when you just hover over any title (no click; no new page).

I've found some real gems by clicking around and hovering.

Btw, it's possible to rate a movie without having watched it (at least on my Roku). So you could go ahead and rate some of your fave movies and see what else they recommend.

And here's my chance to plug the BEST wildlife documentary I've ever watched (recommended by Netflix): http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/National-Geographic-Eternal-...

Rickdale has a point. The search functionality and the recommendation engine combined with small amount of content makes Netflix streaming a sucky service. U should not down vote someone just because you disagree with them.

Also, the recommendation service doesn't work for a family that ranges in ages. Different people like different types of movies and shows and I find that the rating system is actually pointless because my older sister, my younger sister, and my mom all use the service extensively.

You are not alone in your dissatisfaction. May I recommend using http://www.Jinni.com, the taste and mood basaed personalized recommendation service? The recommendations are amazing, you can connect it to your netflix account for discovery over the netflix catalog and your reccs won't be influenced by other household users (*Disclaimer - I work for Jinni.com, but seriously it's awesome!) Let me know what you think!

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