
Neil Hunt on Netflix and the Story of Netflix Streaming - jedberg
http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2017/05/neil-hunt-on-netflix-and-the-story-of-netflix-streaming/
======
lpolovets
Somewhat unrelated, but I've been listening to older episodes of the Internet
History Podcast for the last few weeks. It's quite good! My favorite episode
so far is the one about Bill von Meister, who started the company that formed
the basis for AOL:
[http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/04/chapter-3-supp...](http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/04/chapter-3-supplemental-1-the-
forgotten-online-pioneer-bill-von-meister/). Von Meister was a very clever
entrepreneur, and the podcast talked about some of his pre-AOL ideas, like
offering free long distance calls at restaurants (in modern parlance, the free
calls were basically the acquisition cost of getting a restaurant diner). Both
that specific episode and the entire podcast series in general are a fun
listen -- especially if you're in your 30s like I am.

~~~
heymijo
Early 30's as well. After picking and choosing random episodes I went back to
the beginning to listen chronologically. Agree wholeheartedly about von
Meister.

Something I've been thinking about lately stems from Chapter 2 about Microsoft
and the Internet: [http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/podcasts-by-
chapter/](http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/podcasts-by-chapter/)

It's the distinction between terms like "Information Superhighway", which was
to be TV enabled Internet controlled by the telecoms and the World Wide Web,
which is the browser-based world that Netscape brought us controlled by no
company. I didn't have this historical perspective before the podcast.

Now I'm wondering, With the FCC's moves to eliminate title II net neutrality,
what will the future Internet look like? If the Internet is a pendulum with
"Information Superhighway" on one end and "World Wide Web" on the other, my
gut feel is that removing net neutrality will swing things in the direction of
the "Information Superhighway" where big co's have more power over what the
Internet is.

~~~
scurvy
This wasn't the case. Maybe in his head it was, but Information Superhighway
and Internet were synonyms for the same thing. I lived through this period and
most used them interchangeably. Multimedia was a big thing during this time,
so people were excited about the tech advances in media, but Information Super
highway was never used to describe web TV.

There was also Internet versus internet. Today, we call one of these a LAN.

Time to queue up the old AT&T commercials? It's amazing how much they went
from a position of dominance to...today.

------
runn1ng
I still think the breakup from Netflix to Netflix+Qwikster (or whatever was
the name) would be the right move back then.

Maybe it was too soon and poorly communicated, but they were right 6 years ago
that streaming was the future and DVD lending was the legacy product.

Anyway they survived that PR blunder, luckily.

edit: and it seems they separated the DVD subscription anyway, to DVD.com.
Well that makes sense.

~~~
dublinben
The DVD subscription service is still far better than the streaming service if
you actually want to watch recent or not-so recent Hollywood content. The
streaming service has lost most of its mainstream catalog, in favor of
original content.

~~~
chiph
The physical disc catalog seems to be culled as well by not replacing
lost/broken discs. My saved queue seldom gets any smaller.

People ask me why I still get discs, and the answer is "guaranteed bandwidth".
I get no blockiness or drop-outs when watching. :)

~~~
op00to
I don't get blockiness or drop-outs either via streaming. My ISP forced
Netflix to pay their peering tax, though.

------
theprop
Around eight years ago, there was an internal slideshow Reed Hastings put
together on the future of Netflix as on-demand streaming that leaked,
amazingly prescient. Netflix is a firm that has had the right vision &
execution.

Entrepreneurs are often discouraged seeing tons of competitors...but if none
of them has a lot of traction and you have a vision of the future and can
implement that product, go for it.

One could have been bothered by the proliferation of streaming companies 10
years ago (as Dropbox could've been by all the storage companies).

"There were so many other streaming experiments around that time, like
MovieBeam, Movielink, you know, Unbox or something, I can’t even…there was
dozens of ’em. There were so many other streaming experiments around that
time, like MovieBeam, Movielink, you know, Unbox or something, I can’t
even…there was dozens of ’em. And iTunes Video Rental starts to come out
around the same time."

~~~
Thrillington
The very next quote debunks the interviewers statement that you've quoted.

When Netflix moved into streaming there were not competitors. Lots of people
saw a market there, but companies didn't start popping up until Netflix showed
it was actually possible.

------
chillydawg
An interesting quote about using data to tailor their original content:

"And so, using the data to make funding decisions is a different game than
using the data to tune the story, which we don’t do."

So, he's saying they won't allow data to influence a script once written, but
they won't buy or fund that script if it doesn't fit the data. I'm pretty sure
two things tend to the same outcome. In ML, you'd be accused of letting the
model train on the validation set. Bad stats.

~~~
ryanmonroe
I think he's just saying they will use data to determine which type of show
gets funded, but will not to use it in ways that affect the internal logic of
the show. So they may fund a show whose main character often goes to a coffee
shop because viewers appear to enjoy that, but they won't change an existing
show to make its main character go to a coffee shop because it might not make
sense for the character to do that in the context of the given show. And since
those involved with the data and funding process will naturally have less
understanding of the show's characters than the writers, they won't attempt
these changes even when they appear to make sense for a show. Of course,
writers could adapt and force things to happen in a show that wouldn't
otherwise, but I don't think funding certain types of shows is equivalent to
changing existing shows to fit a mold.

------
gwbas1c
I switched from Blockbuster to Netflix specifically because of their extensive
back catalogue. There was an old movie that I wanted to watch that no
Blockbuster carried, and it was $30 new. Once I signed up for Netflix I
(almost) never went back to Blockbuster.

I'm still kind of surprised that Blockbuster didn't see it coming until too
late.

(Edit) I also canceled Netflix for a month because I'm an Amazon subscriber,
but it was Netflix's recommendations that brought me back.

~~~
dmix
Now bittorrent has one of the greatest catalogues of films available to the
public. You can find many rare and obscure films that are unavailable
elsewhere.

For example, I heard that Stanley Kubrick's student war film he made was
actually pretty good. But it wasn't available for sale or stream from
anywhere. I found it almost immediately on a (public) torrent site with a
decent quality. I've had this experience on a couple of occasions.

It's too bad that Netflix doesn't keep a backlog of old films plus a rotating
selection of newer films. But I guess their licensee's business models comes
before their customers wants.

~~~
StillBored
I firmly believe that one the best things we could do for copyright (besides
shortening the terms) would be a use it or lose it clause, where a product
loses its copyright if its not available to the general pubic in a meaningful
way after 5 or 10 years. AKA, the copyright owner doesn't want to go to the
effort of digitizing that movie and putting it on amazon/itunes/whatever, then
it becomes public domain. Of course there needs to be a way to avoid the
problem of the million dollar movie domain, where you can view the movie/book
for some amount that results in 0 sales per year.

~~~
jpdaigle
The idea is great, but such a radical change it probably has no chance of
being realized.

Perhaps a less disruptive change would be to maintain copyright protections
the way they are, but attack this at the penalty level: basically enshrine the
idea that

> "X was not available for purchase or streaming in a DRM-free format in my
> country at the time I got a copy of it from a torrent."

Would be a valid defense for personal use, capping penalties at 1$ or so,
without opening the public-domain box and opening the field to companies
instantly cropping up to snipe a 5-year-old TV show the day it goes free, and
resell it.

~~~
dmix
That's a good idea. Similar to 'probable cause' but from the citizens
perspective or the various legal tests created by courts to ascertain guilt.

Basically that the consumer went to reasonable lengths to purchase the product
legally and wasn't able to as a legal defense. If the owner doesn't make the
content reasonably available than they have no claim that it shouldn't be
consume by other grey-market means.

As easy as torrenting is, it's still not ideal to just watching it one Netflix
or Prime. There are real incentives to not pirate assuming the content creator
utilizes these (mainstream) options.

This creates market incentives to maximize the return on the copyrighted
content and still forces the bigger distribution platforms to follow the
rules.

