Netflix Is Killing BitTorrent in The US
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
I'd pay an extra 5 bucks a month if it could increase the rate at which netflix lets me "play now" movies. Yes, some movies I specifically want to get on bluray, but there are plenty of others that video quality matters very little to me.
Now I have a giant box of DVD's I spent $1000s on and aren't worth a fraction of what I paid.
There are way too many people behind desks in large companies that develop marketing strategies that don't really take their customers into account, and if their customers behave in a way that breaks their model, the general reaction is to get angry at their customers for not playing to the tune of their flute.
Only issue being networks syndicating the content probably won't want to pay as much for the rights, really though they are getting the same thing, the people buying on ITunes same day weren't going to wait weeks for the local network to get around to playing it anyway.
So the first thing I do is type "purchase mp4 <movie name>" into google. So far I have not been able to acquire a movie in that fashion, so the second attempt is usually obtaining an .mp4 through other means (which do not involve paying for it).
I want an .mp4 because that works on more-or-less on all of my devices. xbox360 from usb-stick, sync it to the ipod, etc..
The only problem is that there are still a few shows we really want to see (like Game Of Thrones) that we can't find a way to legally acquire. Without cable there is no HBO.
I bet more and more people are going to be turning to piracy to get the content they want when they cut that cable cord.
Compare to claims that piracy decreases sales.
That, and if I could find the movies I want to watch, of course.
The reality for me, at least, is that I cannot watch two hours of streaming video from Netflix without the picture freezing or skipping at some point, even if it's just a little bit.
I love film, and that's unacceptable. I need to either go to the store and get the DVD, rent a download (not streaming) from iTunes, or hit the high seas. I need to watch movies when I want, and I need them to play perfectly.
That rules out Netflix, at least for me, at least for now.
In my case, I can Watch Instantly for an entire movie, in HD, without any trouble at all, and it does start almost instantly.
If you're getting the bone, though, that points to the limitations any bandwidth-intensive business has to contend with as they scale. A decent number of potential customers are stuck with sloppy internet. I wonder at what point Netflix's growth becomes inhibited by the shitty state of US ISPs.
More interestingly, I wonder what moves they'll make to get around those limitations. They are a crafty company.
No matter what the cause, however, the fact is that streaming media is vulnerable to network issues, and downloaded media is not. It may take longer to get, but once you have it, you know you have it.
I think your point about sloppy internet is so true. American ISPs are in a sorry state overall.
I would tolerate a fair amount of DRM for that functionality. I have to compare it to Steam, where streaming a game isn't an option. Steam's convenience simply leaves no reason for complaint.
I hope you're wrong.
The real answer should be world-class broadband, instead of the nonsense we're dealing with now. Full downloads are a bandaid but there's no technical reason why streaming can't work perfectly for the people who want it. Telcos are just lazy and have built-in monopolies.
In the meantime, what you're describing isn't a bad bandaid, but waiting for a whole movie to download just isn't as fun as picking then watching instantly.
I don't think that will happen for years at best, and then only for urban areas. For the bulk of the population, downloads are the only long term solution.
Let's be honest though, there's no real justification in ignoring the option to download. Again I compare to Steam and their model.
But, it sounds like you have higher standards for your movies than I do. I'm surprised a rented DVD provides a better experience, though...the forced previews, the likelihood of scratches leading to skips and freezes and such, make DVDs less valuable to me, even without the pain of having to go get them and return them.
The MPAA and RIAA and a bounty of plaintiff lawyers are trying to increase the cost of the risk, and people like Netflix are getting the price paid by the consumer below X.
When the inequality ceases to hold, people switch into being paying customers.
Sure, it is getting better titles all the time - but given the fact that hollywood thinks that paying $30 to see a movie at home after it has been in the theatres for 60 (or was it 90) days is a viable price - You will always see piracy of the latest content.
Further - given the quality of many of the movies that get released it is even more reasonable to expect this to continue.
What will be interesting is when we see the first ever movie exclusively made for netflix streaming.
That will denote a new era.
Do you have a citation for this? All of the places where people put numbers to piracy that I've seen (like the lawsuits against various anonymous folks) seem to span a whole range of content from older stuff to newer stuff.
I have a tough time finding new, contemporary content in the streaming lib of netflix.
I try to be strictly legit in my digital content. The areas where I skate the line would be when I use the photocopier at the library to make a copy of a paper from a journal which I'm unwilling to pay $50 for a reprint for but I want a copy in my files. That being said, there is money being left on the table. If the reprints were $1 I would definitely buy them, if they were $5 I would still buy the ones I felt were seminal. Just another example of price elasticity in the digital economy.
In my research on this topic most studies posit a more uniform distribution. Some specifically call out first sale doctrine issues like reselling last years version of AutoCAD on ebay. Perhaps our different understandings may be that I'm not thinking specifically of movies.
This seeding effect was once the property of radio stations but more and more often I don't listen to the radio.
If a similar effect occurs in video then I would guess there is a market opportunity for a video 'exposure' service ala Pandora for video customers. I wonder if any of the new streaming players are looking at that angle.
The fresh content will dominate top-N lists, sure. It will also dominate headlines, because it will more often be the subject of newsworthy early-leaks and enforcement actions.
But there is so much more old content, and the collection/completist/sampling motivations so important for unauthorized sharing, that I could easily see the old content swamping the new in terms of total copies or total bandwidth.
Content creates a spike of activity when it is "born" on the internet.
Content maintains activity over the life of its availability.
Activity may be a function of the contents [age, quality, rating, medium, popularity, relation to other content, etc]
\It is a sequel, part of a set, etc.
It would be interesting to be able to utilize the rating from netflix/imdb to predict how much total activity a piece of content might create.
If you torrent a movie, you have to find it from a decent place (otherwise it could be a completely different movie, shitty release etc) then you may need to find captions for it, if you need them. This kind of thing isn't actually easy for non-technical people.
However I think it comes down to the fact: most people want to pay but shit is just so expensive otherwise.
I used to have my mother set up with torrents. All her tv shows were downloaded automatically. Often times she would watch it live and then delete the file, but if she missed watching it live then she had that file waiting for her. Also if she wanted a movie or older tv show, then all she had to do was click on a link on her desktop and search the website for what she wanted. Click on the torrent and it would download to the proper folder.
These days it's the same except she clicks on something she wants and it is a nzb file. As well newly aired tv shows download for her automatically. I've noticed she doesn't watch as much live anymore. Though she is using Netflix more often now as well.
(I'm hard of hearing and their streaming is useless to me except for foreign movies, which do get English subtitles.)
As much as I love Netflix, I still DL for any content it doesn't have (HBO and such), currently airing seasons, and new releases. I just can't justify $5 a movie rental or $1 an episode rental.
On a side note one thing I really need is a way to stream the playoffs. I would pay $$ to stream the playoffs in HD, not just season games.
In any case, I personally find Usenet superior to private trackers but I can see it from the other side. They both have pros and cons.
My main gripe with private trackers is that it's not as fast and I have to constantly worry about my ratio and seed. Granted, I pay for Usenet so it's a trade-off.
A decent seedbox costs around the same as Usenet access (cheaper if you split a dedicated seedbox with other people). Seedbox speeds will be comparable to Usenet, pre-times will almost always beat Usenet, and you can easily make requests through the tracker (this might also be possible with Usenet communities too).
Also, good trackers have strict uploading and file naming rules, so you don't have to sort through crappy filenames or worry about corrupted files. Granted, there are probably Usenet communities that also address these problems.
Really obscure things. Torrents with such things will have very few seeders/leechers and take a long time to download anyway and never max out bandwidth. With usenet older things were deleted and had to be uploaded again. (Anything older than a few weeks) These days the retention is getting close to three years.
Release times were in favor of torrents. Now the time difference is but a few minutes, some first via a torrent and other via usenet. The fastest of course would be via IRC/FTP.
I spend around $100 a year for usenet access and am unsure the costs of a seedbox. I never have to worry about upload ratio and am not sharing files with anyone else. The primary means of people getting caught for copyright infringement. I also download at the full speed of my connection at all times. Also that connection is encrypted so the ISP can't even see what I am getting. I often get about 500GB a month. I pay about a penny and a half per gigabyte.
One feature that wasn't available to me when I switched was what utorrent had which others may have had as well. RSS downloading of torrents. Was very handy with setting up tv shows and acted very much like a internet tivo. Now I use sabnzbd and sickbeard for such things.
The only thing I still like about torrents is the way it handles errors. It will check the data as it downloads and discard and redownload a section of data needed. With usenet, my client will download all of it and then verify the parts and if there are any errors, it'll auto download the needed par files to repair the damage and then extract the file. Such things aren't needed with a torrent.
One good thing about usenet is that if you have the proper client you can basically stream from it. As the .rar files are downloaded and extracted one by one in order. With torrents parts of the file are downloaded randomly and does not lead it self to be streamed.
When I watch stuff on my computer I have to sit in my uncomfortable desk chair and view my small-ish monitor. Getting my whole computer hooked up to my TV seems like a hassle at the moment. On the other hand, Netflix is always ready to go and that usually wins.
Netflix follows the same approach and is even more successful at it.
Being able to instantly watch is a huge incentive for me. I also like to think that my views help the show stay on the air. Realistically, Hulu and Netflix viewcounts probably don't count much, but better than nothing right?
I would much rather be honest; and I hope there is accurate, honest, unbiased evidence that can reasonably support the claim.
The truth is that the content companies are willing to play ball with Netflix because they make money, but they are also scared of Netflix's market power and the fact that they make much less per unit than they do from cable or DVD sales. The fact is Netflix is already capable of slashing someone's cable bill by 90%, and the effect on DVD/Bluray sales is potentially even more dramatic for certain consumers.
That is still more than they get if we just forage the movie.
For all we know, bittorrent rates could be falling for another reason and American consumers could be responding to this by opting for netflix.
Come on... everybody should know this...