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They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else

This is objectively not true. Netflix has put almost no tech into the basic tooling of modern day TV/film (i.e., the cameras or audio equipment) or the software used to produce the content, or even the tech used to create the sets, makeup, CGI, or any of the other actual work that goes into producing the content.

The only place where Netflix has put in more work is on the non-linear distribution side.

Netfix is way behind the big dogs in the live streaming space. Peacock...the smallest major streaming service... livestreamed dozens of Olympic sports simultaneously at HD and 4K resolutions to over a hundred million simultaneous viewers without issue. Netflix couldn't handle half of that traffic for a single boxing match without crashing or degrading the streams to CRT-era resolution. The biggest player in the live streaming space is Disney Streaming (fka BAMTech before its acquisition) which was created to create the technology to stream MLB games and now currently provides the technology for ESPN streaming, NHL, MLB, Blaze Media, and Hulu's live streams.

The difference is that Netflix's competitors don't brag about their technology.

I should’ve been more specific—I was referring to the modern-day workflow for producing a scripted series, which is what the article was about. In that context, Netflix has the most technically sophisticated workflow and tooling to optimize production of that kind of content, from the perspective of creatives working on those sorts of shows. Certainly they have major blind spots in a lot of user-facing stuff that they only recently started to care about, with live content being a huge one.

I've been a big fan of peaock! The Olympics coverage was massively impressive. Like much of what Peacock does, their success wasn't just about comprehensively covering it (which they did do) but also with how cleverly they packaged it, and all sorts of cool features it had that nobody else does/did, like the "Gold Zone" Red Zone-esque whip-around coverage, the constantly-updating highlights and key moments, etc. My impression of Peacock from the beginning was very good because their design and interface pretty much blows everyone else's away, and then I continued to be impressed after discovering a lot of these "cleverness" features, like when I noticed while watching soccer matches that the key moments/highlights were tagged and timestamped for easy access in real-time as they were occurring. I just wish they had a better catalog of shows to go along with. It is worth noting that while they are the smallest streamer, they do have one of the largest budgets and are probably the least burdened by existential risk because they've got Comcast behind them

Netflix's workflow for creatives isn't more sophisticated than their competitors; Netflix simply prefers to re-create the wheel in-house while their competitors are more likely to use off-the-shelf software solutions to the extent that they use software at all.

As others have pointed out on this thread: Netflix's solutions don't scale up or down for others. This means that the technical solution is sophisticated because their unnecessarily complicated internal business process requires it. Netflix could save billions a year if it streamlined their production side like the studios have. Case in point: almost every film Netflix has made in the past few years has gone way over budget, and it's not because of backend buy-outs. (The Electric State cost $320 million, meaning that the base budget before backend buyouts was around $225 million. It doesn't even look like an $50 million movie.)

Netflix can get away with inefficient business processes because it's making enough money right now to paper over those costs, but eventually they'll have to streamline their processes. (For an indirect example, look up the story of Carolco Pictures, the company behind T2, Rambo, and other major hits.)

I am such a luddite -- I hardly stream (a couple of things per year from Google Play). I know about the book "The Electric State", but I never knew it was made into a film by Netflix. If you Google search for reviews, they are absolutely savage. Just the headlines are enough:

Vulture: Netflix's The Electric State Is a $320 Million Piece of Junk

The Atlantic: How to Make an Instantly Forgettable, Very Expensive Movie

The Guardian: Why are the most expensive Netflix movies also the worst?

EDIT:

Regarding this:

    > Netflix can get away with inefficient business processes because it's making enough money right now to paper over those costs, but eventually they'll have to streamline their processes.

If this were really true, why are the professional stock analyst ratings overwhelming "buy" (instead of "hold" or "sell")? The stock is up 50+% in last 1 year, and 150+% in last 5 years. That is outstanding performance.

Because people don't read reviews and do like dumb action flicks. Netflix will put it on the home screen and people will click on it

Netflix get away with it because they own the result at the end of the process. If you were to suggest these workflows to other studios they'd balk at the idea of having the raw stuff being uploaded to the cloud etc. If they tried selling this as a solution do we think people outside Netflix would buy and use it?

One of the people I worked with that is now at Netflix on this stuff was so violently opposed to not owning his own in office render farm and drive array it verged on ridiculous.

> they'd balk at the idea of having the raw stuff being uploaded to the cloud

Why?

Perhaps over fears of their shows getting leaked early. Apple apparently has people using Remote Desktop for severance: https://tedium.co/2025/03/29/severance-apple-remote-editing-...

The major studios use cloud services all the time. For example, Paramount uses AWS. Disney has its own internal cloud system but also uses a combination of external clouds like AWS.

The resistance to cloud services is based on preventing leaks, not opposition to technology.

And in specific response to your comment: Netflix's "technology" is just a content management system. They're just reinventing a wheel that many of their competitors already use and bragging about something that Disney, Paramount, etc., did over a decade ago when they began embracing digital-first production.

“major studios do use some cloud services” is not the issue. The problem being addressed is that the “script to screen” process is typically an antiquated mishmash of offline-first vendors. Netflix reinvented that with a cloud-first process.

“Digital-first production” can mean lots of things, so when you say Disney, Paramount, etc did this a decade ago, you’ll have to be more specific. Do you mean an end to end digital process? That’s not what this is about. Have you worked on a Netflix production? It’s night and day different from the studios you mentioned.

What? Cloud media asset management systems are full of raw stuff.

I didn't say it wasn't interesting, but I'll take the bait: the article is light on details and misleading.

Light on details: the article is almost 3000 words, filled with vague and low-effort content: a lot more "We're so big and global!" and not nearly so much "Here's the problem we faced because we're so big and global, and here's how we solved it."

Misleading: they use the word "democratizes" twice: "we have crafted a scalable solution that ... democratizes access to advanced production tools across the globe" and "we’ve taken a bold step forward in enabling a suite of tools inside Netflix Content Hub that democratizes technology: the Media Production Suite" -- do you really get to say "democratizes" when you're describing an in-house system?

> They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else, and it's not even close

I feel Disney is up there too they just don't blog about it

I find it weird that people don't think of the BBC as a tech company, from their work on microphones way back in the day, to launching iPlayer (before youtube, and launching on christmas day iirc) to regular live streaming of huge events in 4k (something netflix has struggled with). But yet they are never recognised for their engineering.

I don't think they're not recognized for it, they just don't brand themselves as it.

For as long as broadcasting has been a thing, major broadcasters were involved in pushing the technology forward. For most of it's history the American network NBC was a subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of America. But NBC's brand is not tech, they want to consumer to associate the gliz of the picture.

They've done a lot of great stuff and I've always followed their engineering-related tools and content as well! In particular they made some major contributions to media archival and analysis tools, and, yes of course, to web players. Unfortunately they haven't put as much focus on a lot of it in recent years, at least not in the tools they've opened sourced and topics they used to write about a lot

All of the players in this echelon have contributed massively, and all of them have pretty wild workflows and impressive solutions to technical problems. If we were measuring technical achievement across the broader history of filmed entertainment, there’s a strong case to be made for Disney as the most influential. But when it comes to how content is produced and distributed today, Netflix has definitely invested the most into tackling modern challenges and continues to do so, and these efforts feed directly into the meticulous, end-to-end workflow that’s applied across every production.

There are plenty of people who have worked on Netflix and non-Netflix shows and would would argue that Netflix's workflow and high standards are difficult if you're not used to it yet, or more stringent than they'd like, but very few would deny the end results or technical superiority

Yeah I really just don't see how you are getting these "Netflix is the most" figures, considering the scale of Disney and how they constantly push technical boundaries in production, vfx, animation, etc

the disney studios (walt disney animation, walt disney pictures, pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, Blue Sky, 20th Century Fox) contributed a significant amount of research towards technologies used in film and television, much of it in academic conferences like SIGGRAPH

Netflix is case of "nothing succeeds like success". We have at work a lot of Netflix libraries, frameworks etc which are in deprecated / half-assed state waiting to be replaced for years. It all works for Netflix because they can spend ton of money , resources and people and make even dubious shit work.

I think it will remain fine for Netflix in any case keep or replace. But companies who keep using Netflix OSS, or architecture ideas only because Netflix is so cool are going to have worse outcomes. Case in point is Micro services revolution which is almost invented and promoted by Netflix.