
Netflix boss says DVD has two years left - mjfern
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/152659
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MikeCapone
Anyone has numbers on how much bandwidth (a range..) it takes to stream a
movie in close-to-DVD quality?

I don't have personal experience with streaming from Netflix (I'm in Canada),
so I'm not sure how they do it. But back of the envelope, I would assume that
with a modern codec (f.ex. h.264) you could compress the average 2-hour movie
to about 1.5 gig without losing too much quality. That's about 750 megs/hour,
or about 210k/s. Certainly doable.

But if you want HD that's another story...

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DarkShikari
The latest x264 can get away with about 800-1000kbps average bitrate for
nearly-perfect rips of a DVD (and down to as low as 300-500kbps if you're
willing to lose the film grain). Most web services are worse--since they don't
use x264 (a large number still use ancient formats like FLV...). There are
some exceptions: Vudu, for example, uses x264 and is able to get tolerable
quality 1080p in 2.8mbps. But I personally wouldn't bother with that--at
2.8mbps your 1080p certainly won't have any more detail than 720p. Of course,
most people don't notice this because most Blu-rays don't have more detail
than 720p either.

Note that DVDs themselves are already highly lossy; most DVDs have been
lowpassed before encoding, so they have significantly less detail than their
resolution would suggest. This is rather unfortunate, as the tradition has
stuck with Blu-ray, despite it being completely counterproductive when using a
good H.264 encoder.

Broadcast is an even worse situation; most broadcast television is atrocious
quality-wise. This is usually because of outdated technology (MPEG-2), highly-
lossy transcoding to save bandwidth (Comcast is a huge offender here), or just
plain absurd bandwidth restrictions (a major television station in Japan uses
4mbps H.264 for 1080i). Of course, this is all aggravated by the requirement
of constant bitrate and short keyframe intervals for broadcast streams.

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MikeCapone
> Note that DVDs themselves are already highly lossy; most DVDs have been
> lowpassed before encoding, so they have significantly less detail than their
> resolution would suggest. This is rather unfortunate, as the tradition has
> stuck with Blu-ray, despite it being completely counterproductive when using
> a good H.264 encoder.

Could you explain what you mean by "lowpassed"?

Any idea what keeps the adoption of modern x264 codecs? Are they expensive to
license? Is it just inertia?

You just made me wonder how good things would look if they did it right... Do
you think it would make a big difference to the untrained eye (you sound like
someone in the video business)?

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DarkShikari
Lowpassing means performing a frequency transform and removing the highest-
frequency coefficients. It has a similar effect to taking an image,
downscaling it, and then upscaling it again (except without the aliasing that
the latter produces). Wikipedia probably has more information.

You can tell the difference yourself easily: get a DVD and Blu-ray version of
the same movie and downscale the Blu-ray to DVD resolution. You'll notice the
Blu-ray is still a lot sharper and has more detail.

Also, note that x264 is not H.264. H.264 is an international video standard
published by the United Nations; x264 is a particular open-source
implementation developed by Loren Merritt, me, and a few others. Not all H.264
encoders are very good, in fact, a lot are quite bad. See
<http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=102> for a comparison I did a bit back and
<http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=164> for some technical information on _why_.

The reason that adoption of newer video formats has been slow, at least on the
internet, is primarily that there is a huge (server-side) install base of old
technology that would take effort and expertise to convert to use new
technology. It wouldn't be expensive--in fact, it would save billions of
dollars a year in bandwidth--but inertia is a powerful force, as is simple
lack of knowledge and awareness. Of course, many sites have already converted
over; Youtube and Facebook now both use x264 for most of their videos.

~~~
MikeCapone
One more question; do you know if the movies we see on TV have been encoded
from a "master" provided by the studios or something like that, or if it's a
re-compression of something like a Bluray or a DVD..?

~~~
DarkShikari
Usually it's from a master. But the quality loss due to broadcast compression
is great enough that the difference between a master and Blu-ray source would
hardly be visible.

HDTV is usually better than a DVD though if it's a premium channel from a good
provider.

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chrischen
As great as streaming is, there will always be the need for a sense of
ownership, or paying for digital content will be dead too. Streaming works
because it seems like you are paying for the stream. But I don't think this is
the replacement for DVDs, since physical media adds value and sense of
ownership to digital content so that people may feel justified towards paying
for a digital copy. Streaming is a great way to watch most movies but what
about the movie you are a die hard fan? Blu rays are basically DVDs, but they
still don't solve the issue of price, instant gratification, and versatility
(since it's still hard to find bluray players everywhere).

I think digital downloads may be a possible solution. While it may not be
physical, a download might provide sense of ownership, especially if it is not
DRMd, and it certainly can provde instant gratification. So it could be the
counterpart to streaming for those die hard fans that want their own copy.
Maybe supplement it with a bluray disc that comes in the mail and you're set.

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diN0bot
i often wish i could stream books. if the kindle allowed me to check out from
a digital library and return books, even with a _very low_ monthly fee or
_very low_ price per book, that would be sweeeeeet.

~~~
schoudha
This break the economic model for books. It works with libraries because of
limited quantity.

This could work if we had a fixed number of digital library books per a zip
code.

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frossie
Can you elaborate? Why do you need to fix the number of digital copies in a
geographic area?

When we all went from using Blockbusters (=akin to library) to using Netflix
(=akin to what is being proposed upthread), did it break the economic model
for DVDs?

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sachinag
If anyone knows a way to take the over on this, please let me know. Even if
the claim is that DVD rental revenue will be streaming revenue just for
Netflix, and it's not a general industry claim, I'm still taking the over. I
can buy claims that actual streams may be higher, because the high utilization
early adopters will stream more. But revenue? Overall userbase? General
market? I laugh.

No, seriously, I'd like to do a two-year LEAP/long bet on this.

~~~
btn
Why? It only took ~4 years for DVD to obliterate VHS, and even less time for
DVD sales to exceed those for VHS [1]. Hastings doesn't say if the replacement
for DVD will be BluRay or streaming, but I think rapid consumer uptake of new
delivery technologies is a reasonable prediction to make.

[1] <http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/gtp/wvprodretail.html>

~~~
sachinag
If the studios are smart, it's Blu-ray. If they're not, it's streaming. _BUT_
I'm willing to take the long bet and say DVDs last longer than two years,
regardless.

If you are willing to take the other side, let's make a bet.

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dasil003
This link is locking up Safari before it even loads. Can't even get the menu
bar to activate. Works fine in Firefox. Anyone else experiencing this?

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MikeCapone
Works fine in Safari 4.0.3 on OSX 10.6.1.

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zandorg
My old laptop isn't fast enough to play newer video formats, so I need DVDs.

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DanielBMarkham
So let's get this straight: consumers of movies are going from low-bitrate
DVDs to BluRay and even 3-D TV in the future, and this guy is predicting
consumers going for _lower_ quality movies because the delivery mechanism is
faster?

Hell if I know, but it sure looks like hardware manufacturers are making
different bets looking at the same market. Perhaps NetFlix spins off into a
low-end video-at-any-quality delivery service and another part of the market
goes 3-D?

~~~
MikeCapone
I'm constantly surprised by how many people can't tell the difference between
HD and standard DVD. I even know some people who don't really care if it's VHS
or DVD (well, one girl at least).

Maybe their research shows that a big portion of people are fine with DVD
quality, and that the others will just rent the blu-rays via mail while
waiting for streaming HD?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
That's the thing of it -- obviously there is a market for "video at any speed"
and a market for hi-fi/prosumers.

For instance, research has shown that more people actually like hacked-up,
low-bandwidth mp3s over higher-quality ones. So perhaps this guy is thinking
the video market goes the same direction? That the price for bits will always
trend towards zero?

If so, this will be a major shift in the movie business -- as big as MP3 file-
sharing was to the music industry.

~~~
MikeCapone
It's probably better business for Netflix to buy servers and big fat pipes
than to buy more gigantic warehouses full of discs.

The cost of handling and mailing discs probably stays fairly constant, while
the cost of handling bits goes down (as you said).

Netflix certainly isn't an uninterested observer in this. Things might
naturally trend toward more streaming, but Netflix is probably pushing hard
too.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I think we're on exactly the same channel. Netflix is betting on a market
split between prosumers and casual movie watchers, (where, of course, casual
movie-watchers are the biggest share and they pick them up). Hardware vendors
(and moviemakers like Cameron) are betting on a trend towards more realism,
both in sound and video.

Hard to say where the market goes. For me, I'm always into more and more
fidelity with reality. But I think there are a huge chunk of folks who only
want bragging rights to have seen the latest flick first.

The problem, of course, is that if NetFlix is right and the market only wants
something-right-now, that it might take anything-right-now: that people get
stuff for free and NetFlix no longer has any market at all.

Very interesting quote. Not sure if he realizes the implications.

