Netflix Goes Super HD
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Between Hulu Plus, Amazon, Crackle, iTunes, Verizon On-Demand, regular and paid cable channels, I can't even remember the last time I found something on Netflix worth watching. In fact, I took an inventory the other day to see whether or not it was even worth the $8 a month I'm paying for it, and of all the movies 'added' to Netflix since 2011, I was only able to recognize the titles of about five. Of those five, none of them were blockbusters I'd been waiting to see particularly.
It seems that either their streaming catalog has grown stagnant, or to enjoy it I have to learn to study the independent movie scene more closely to figure out what is worth seeing.
Did I miss a big chapter of their story? I know that many people had situated Netflix out of the '28-day window', but while I'm happy to wait another month to see most movies, I'd like to eventually see it at some point, and frankly, none of the 20 or so movies that I had gone to the theaters to see in that same time frame had ever appeared on Netflix as a streaming option.
I got a peek into how the studios feel about Netflix while at a previous job and they all see it as a snot-nosed punk that is acting to ruin the value of their precious content. They are firmly against the all-you-can-eat model that essentially defines Netflix.
When Netflix was the only game in town they could change the minds of the content people by pulling up in fleets of money trucks, but now that there are viable alternatives that push rentals and digital ownership (via UltraViolet, etc), the content people are mostly just cutting Netflix off and hoping they die.
Of course, Netflix is aware of this which is why they've started to get into the business of funding their own content.
I figured that as far as watching a movie goes, I'd rather rent 3 latest releases a month on iTunes for $3 each than pay $8 for a sub-par catalog on Netflix. Netflix does have a bunch of shows that I enjoy re-watching everyonce in a while, but buying the physical copy used for cheap on Amazon is again a better option.
I might resume my subscription for a month when they release the Arrested Development exclusive season, but that's the only interesting they'd offer that I can think of.
This is a bit of an unfair comparison. You listed sources that, together, have available tons of content, yet individually most of those services are missing things that the others have.
Netflix still has a lot of great content, but it's going to depend on your taste. If you are looking for new TV shows and lots of blockbuster type files, Netflix will come up empty handed. If you are looking for a content library with lots of different kinds of shows and films in many different genres and production levels, Netflix is still a very good value.
If I compare it to just one of those, Hulu, it's still an unfair competition of course, but Hulu has something new for me to watch almost every time I turn it on. I understand that there's a huge difference between how the two services operate, but there is not a huge difference in price. Hulu Plus is only $2 more expensive than Netflix, but by the value delivered to me comparatively, I should either pay much more for Hulu, or much less for Netflix.
I'll likely keep subscribing as I'm a long-time fan of their service, but I just didn't know what happened, and while I've been frustrated with it for some time, it only recently occurred to me to actually sample all their new content to see what I was getting. Ideally, they're on the cusp of something that will bolster their catalog (I know there's supposedly a thing with Disney, but as I hear it that's years off yet) or in some way alter the service such that makes it a more worthwhile spend... I'd even pay them more if it would help, but in the midst of all the other content providers, I just don't see why I should be giving them any money other than out of loyalty.
I guess Netflix is switching to being more of a catchup TV system right now.
Do you really expect to get a pile of movies and TV you'd willingly pay, idk, 30-40$ a month for if bought individually in an 8$ streaming package? Netflix doesn't have big films because the people who own big films know that on the bottom line, their product has enough draw to be worth more when sold alone. And I mean, sure, a subscription model has more reliable cashflow sometimes, and maybe they can trade product worth for popularity and bulk sales and make more money, but who knows what might happen? Combined with the fact some of these studios have enough content to make their own web distribution services and remain in control of their web presence, and the worry that putting too much content on the web might kill the money they make from TV, it's just an iffy decision to shake up everything and put stuff on the streaming web until somebody comes around and makes a netflix people are willing to pay 20$ a month for - maybe even the 40-50$ you'd pay for a nice cable package, and can offer them some real royalties.
I find this ironic, in that just a year or two ago their emphasis was on streaming, to the point of attempting to spin off the disc-based segment into a separately named/branded company.
If they hadn't kept the discs, my (uninformed, and somewhat pissed off) bet is that the "Netflix" brand would be close to if not contracting, at this point.
It sucks to be the middleman, when either end can find a way around you. (In this case, primarily the content owners, in various fashions.)
As an aside, my PS3 Slim's wireless card is really subpar, so I'd assume a wired connection would be required to take advantage of this on a console.
I get the impression that PS3 networking is really slow, even wired. Trying to DLNA any video over 8 Mbps seems to cause stuttering and HD content from PSN downloads slower than real time.
I thought we were over the horribleness of "HD Ready" and "Full HD".
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netflix&oldid=...
> Your Internet Provider is not configured for Super HD yet.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? What the fuck happened to net neutrality?
The WHOLE POINT of the internet is that you don't have to deal with this sort of shit.
And people wonder why piracy still exists. I can get a 1080p copy of a movie from torrents no matter what ISP I'm on.
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" - Gabe Newell
Netflix: Okay, everyone can have HD movies now, but they cost more. Also, only if your ISP supports it because hey these require 5Mbps from edge locations. So it's the same as before just more expensive.
w1ntermute: What the fuck? They want to charge extra money for movies that my ISP is capable of delivering for free? This is why piracy exists.
What's happening here is the opposite: Netflix can't afford the data at the price they're charging, so they cut a deal with Comcast where they (presumably) pay them for the right to cache static content locally. It no less onerous to the consumer, but it doesn't fit the policy goals that net neutrality is designed to enforce.
That said, your last point is dead on. Netflix has invented yet another way of making their service harder and more annoying to use for the poor consumer then The Pirate Bay.
No they haven't.
They're simply offering a 'better' service to a subset of their customers, they're not stopping you from watching a film if you don't use an ISP that peers with them.
Ironically, my 105mbps cable connection with Comcast. The SuperHD service tells me to "Ask my ISP to join the Open Connect Network", helpfully.
Within your ISP's network bandwidth is cheap, once it has to move over to other networks then those 5Mbps streams start adding up quite quickly. If 1600 people on an ISP were to steam in HD simultaneously (which really isn't a large number of people for a large ISP) then you're talking about 1GB (thats byte and not bit) of bandwidth every second. There's a reason why content distributions networks like Akamai and companies like Google tend to peer at ISPs as well.
What it certainly isn't is anything to do with net neutrality, and trying to claim that it is is either born of misunderstanding what net neutrality is, or trying to be deliberately obtuse. No one is prioritising one type of traffic over another, nor are they prioritising connections to one website over another. They're simply saying that there are real practical limitations involved in offering certain services, so they're partnering with any willing ISP to offer those services.
Yeah, uhh, okay. My ISP is the largest in the country. If you can't arrange your content sharing network with them, I'm fairly sure me calling a Tier 1 CSR reading off a scripted dialog is going to make all the difference in the world.
If Netflix is offering a service and can't even get the largest, most common ISP that their customers use to agree to their "free" peering arrangements to offer even better content, then that appears a little ... disappointing, and not particularly hope-inducing to me.
It's equivalent to you complaining about road neutrality should a company only deliver their products via Fedex trucks. The fact that the company chooses to only deliver their goods via Fedex doesn't affect your right to drive whatever street legal vehicle you want on the highway.
From https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect:
>ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free. ISPs can do this either by free peering with us at common Internet exchanges, or can save even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their network.
>Major ISPs around the world have already connected to Open Connect, including Frontier, British Telecom, TDC, Clearwire, GVT, Telus, Bell Canada, Virgin, Cablevision, Google Fiber, Telmex, and more.
That sounds like something that would be hard to get an American ISP to agree to, since some have their own offerings (Comcast's stake in Hulu and own Xfinity, for example.)
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Un_Limited [2]https://www.bethere.co.uk/