
The future is arriving too fast - zdw
http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/the-future-is-arriving-too-fast
======
iamben
A friend works in TV and film and deals with the licensing for this kind of
thing. It seems like a colossal disaster at best. It's complicated, convoluted
and greedy. We've discussed it many times before, but it doesn't look like the
TV/film industries will ever get themselves to a Spotify-esque point.

Which is a shame, because it'll be to their own detriment (as it will be for
the music industry again, if 'stars' persist in exclusivity for streaming
rights) when people revert back to torrents (as one comment here has already
stated). The fact is, most people are prepared to pay for a VOD and/or music
service. We just don't want to pay for 3 of them. Money aside, it just isn't
convenient. "Can we listen to The Beatles? Yes, I'm not sure whether it's on
cassette, CD or vinyl, so search through all three collections, then make sure
the appropriate player is plugged in. If it's not there, we'll need to look at
buying the minidisk. Or shoplifting it."

Anyway, I appreciate the point of the article wasn't purely a rant about
VOD/DVDs, and it was a point well made.

~~~
dkfmn
There are two fundamental problems:

1) What's good for the consumer isn't necessarily good for the creators. In
other words, they have an incentive to fight the future rather than embrace
it.

2) The extra efficiency of distribution created by technology is hell on
legacy business models. Streaming media is an example of disruption shrinking
the whole pie. Craigslist wrecked the classifieds business and became wildly
successful but it did so NOT by moving 90% of the industry's revenue to
Craigslist; it did so by capturing 10% of the revenue and destroying the rest.

~~~
mkesper
Creators != content industry

~~~
dkfmn
I tend to agree but this is really a separate conversation. These days, the
struggling musician will give away music for extra exposure in the hopes of
becoming famous so they can make money touring. That's the best they can do
because nobody sells 50 million vinyl records anymore, although that's
probably more likely than selling 50 million CDs (note I didn't say albums).

Still, regardless of where these dollars flow, to creators or the "industry,"
it's fewer dollars.

~~~
makapuf
well, digital sales only (which are still less than CD and I think
streaming/radio + public performance make much more now than by then) are
currently worth more than total music sales in the seventies, which I don't
think were a particularly bad time for music creativity.
([http://publicradio2.wpengine.netdna-
cdn.com/files/2014/02/un...](http://publicradio2.wpengine.netdna-
cdn.com/files/2014/02/units-vs-dollars-riaa.jpg))

~~~
amouat
1) I don't think that graph is adjusted for inflation.

2) I haven't done it, but I'd be willing to put a few quid on the 1970s having
the largest proportion of albums in the best of lists e.g.
[http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/500-greatest-
albums-...](http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/500-greatest-albums-of-
all-time-20120531)

Also 1970s rockstars seemed to have a lot more money than their 2010s
equivalents.

------
MaysonL
On the contrary, the future isn't arriving anywhere nearly fast enough. I'm
old too – but when I was a teenager, I expected that by now there would be a
moonbase or three, not to mention thriving orbital colonies, Mars expeditions,
self-driving cars for sale, solar power satellites, and maybe even brain-to-
computer direct interfaces or augmented reality a la _Rainbows End_. The
future ain't what it used to be, dammit!

~~~
Filthy_casual
And flying cars. Jetsons lied.

~~~
wolfgke
Flying cars exist - they are called "helicopters":
[http://xkcd.com/1623/](http://xkcd.com/1623/)

~~~
tim333
Or Terrafugias [http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/flying-cars-get-faa-
approv...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/flying-cars-get-faa-approval-for-
testing/)

As someone who did a pilot's license, real flying is pretty complicated at the
moment by the time you've checked 20 things, radioed air traffic control etc.
To get a movie flying car like experience I think you'd need self driving car
type AI to deal with that stuff. Which could happen before long.

~~~
wolfgke
But here the problems are clearly in the laws. Don't complain to the engineers
where the flying cars are, but complain to your representative for
deregulation in the laws.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And then complain about evil government not doing enough about half-ton metal
bricks falling out of the sky and killing people.

Humans are too dumb to be able to drive cars safely, as evidenced by over a
million people dying in traffic accidents each year. That the air travel
industry has so little accidents is a miracle, and in big part owed to all
those pesky and annoying regulations that can coordinate thousands of people
on the same task and make them do their jobs right.

~~~
wolfgke
> And then complain about evil government not doing enough about half-ton
> metal bricks falling out of the sky and killing people.

I believe that the class of people who complains in this case is rather
disjoint from the class that wants less regulation.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Maybe among the people who think deep about those issues. You'd be surprised
if you talked to the general population. It's "deregulate all the things!" but
then they complain that the food they eat is crap and companies keep screwing
them over.

------
dcw303
The Netflix ambition of a smorgasbord streaming product has slammed straight
into the reality of the murky world of internationally licensed content.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it"

The public has seen the future with Spotify, and wonder why video can't be the
same. But there are a lot of people with influential positions in the industry
whose livelihood depend on this red tape. Byzantine licensing laws fund entire
departments of faceless middlemen, greedy regional affiliates and dark armies
of lawyers.

Music wasn't particularly different, it's just that we are further along in
the capitulating-industry-dinosaur story there.

~~~
AlisdairO
In fairness, the raw product of music has the advantage of being very cheap to
produce. A lot of the value that the industry provides is in marketing.
There's also an extent to which bands can afford to give away music on
generous terms, because they can use it to publicise other, non-reproducible
forms of entertainment like gigs.

By contrast, with the exception of a small minority of films that rake in on
merchandising, in the movie/tv industry the film is the only real product.
That product is extremely expensive to make. If everyone only streamed Netflix
to consume video, the industry would have to drastically reduce investment in
making original content. That might be an acceptable outcome to many people,
but I can see why the industry would want/need to fight it.

------
dc2
Some small part of me was hoping this post was a little deeper than Netflix.

~~~
wutf
The post successfully made the point, evidenced by it evincing a deeper
feeling in you.

~~~
dc2
I think the title made the point.

------
thenomad
I do wonder whether the licensing snafu that is the movie world is, in the
long term, going to kill it or at least badly damage it as an artform.

We already know it's hideous and irritating from a consumer's point of view.
But what you may not know is that it's horrendous from a creator's point of
view too, at least if you're making a film with a less than $20m budget.

And that accounts for a great deal of the talent _entering_ the industry.

In order to sell a film the conventional way, you have to visit multiple film
markets to meet potential buyers, do a festival run for social proof (and go
to all those festivals), potentially pay out of your pocket for a cinema run,
negotiate with a bunch of people who all have far more information than you do
as to the value of your film, employ third parties (sales agents) who have a
near-universal reputation as crooks, and finally, quite likely sue to get
anything beyond the advance you're promised.

(And other stuff. Lots of other stuff, which I'm not going into here. Masters,
E&O insurance, delivery formats...)

Selling a film - not making it, just selling the finished thing - takes 1-2
years, and can easily require a $50k budget.

(Yes, you can sell the film as an MP4 from your own website. But the problem
is that people won't buy it because that's not how the public are used to
getting their films. At a film festival I recently attended, a very respected
sales agent - and that's a rare breed - asked the audience and other panel
members if they knew of _anyone_ who had made a profit selling their narrative
film digitally from their own site. Nobody did.)

By contrast, selling a book involves uploading that book to Amazon, setting a
price, and promoting it. If you're being thorough about your launch process it
might take 3 weeks.

I've been a filmmaker for 20 years. I'm currently dipping my toe in the world
of games development, for pretty much exactly these reasons.

~~~
aluhut
> At a film festival I recently attended, a very respected sales agent - and
> that's a rare breed - asked the audience and other panel members if they
> knew of anyone who had made a profit selling their narrative film digitally
> from their own site. Nobody did.

Has that ever happen at all? I didn't hear about that yet.

~~~
loudmax
Is the "narrative" qualifier there to exclude documentaries?

I paid to stream the Minecraft documentary
([http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft](http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft)).
I think that is the only documentary my kids ever got excited about watching.

~~~
thenomad
Yes. Documentaries are a completely different world to narrative feature films
and one I don't know a lot about. The financials work very differently.

------
guelo
The weird thing about the law that we ended up with is that if you receive the
digital bits via a plastic circle you can do whatever you want with them
including make money off of them without giving any of it to the copyright
owner. But if you receive the bits via the internet the copyright holder can
get you thrown in jail if you try to hand the bits off to anybody else. It
makes no sense but Hollywood outmaneuvered everybody on the lobbying in the
90s and it seems this is what we're stuck with going forward as they get their
rules codified into international trade agreements that will last decades.

~~~
edraferi
Not entirely true. You can't use a DVD for a public showing, for example.

------
shmerl
_> Streaming may be preferable in some cases, but it’s clearly not the only
means of distributing some movies. That remains the plastic circle. _

What's still lacking are digital stores which sell video files. DRM-free. Who
needs circles if you can have a file and use it any way you want? But DRM
poison prevents the future. So I wouldn't say it's arriving too fast. It's
arriving way too slow.

~~~
Aleman360
But why buy a movie when you can just rent it on demand? That way you're not
locked in to a particular format or quality level and don't have to worry
about backups.

~~~
shmerl
_> But why buy a movie when you can just rent it on demand?_

If it's something I like, I prefer to have a backup of it and watch it where I
want and how I want. I always do that with music, games and e-books. If it's
one time use, then not making backups is more acceptable. You can ask same
question about physical books. Why buy it and not just get it in the library?
Similar answer will apply.

Secondly, unless that streaming is using some ubiquitous cross platform
technology (like Web browser without DRM garbage), it won't be available on
many platforms and will be tied to provided application. DRM-free file makes
it platform independent.

Thirdly, I find it weird that streaming should be equated to inability to get
a DRM-free file. Streaming is simply convenience (no need to download). But it
shouldn't preclude ability to download itself. They are not contradictory,
except in the mind of DRM pushers. For instance GOG's failed video service
provides ability to stream video, and download it as well. Equating streaming
to renting is incorrect.

------
ipsin
At this point, Netflix is almost like the streaming company that acquired a
plastic disc company, and hasn't quite gotten around to killing it yet. Search
also feels biased towards streaming, to the point where it will suggest
several "not even close" streaming movies before the literal title that you're
searching for.

~~~
MichaelGG
I think Netflix intentionally provides bad suggestions. The last week I've
tried several times to use Netflix. In each instance, I spend 10+ minutes
trying to find something, fail, and give up. Netflix "recommends" stuff that
it rates at 1 star. Terrible junk.

And they don't even have the decency to make it easy to see 3rd party ratings
or trailers. And if you start something that sucks, it's hard to tell it to
stop showing it to you. They also removed the easy way to mark "Not
Interested". It's become a much worse experience, perhaps bounded by their
limited catalog.

They must know this. They must see the stats on how long people spend browsing
vs cancellation rates.

~~~
nkurz
I'm also confused by their approach to interface. Perhaps there is some hidden
benefit to having people accidentally start watching films when they just want
to learn more about it, even if they immediately stop?

Maybe it somehow satisfies some arcane distribution requirement in a way that
saves them licensing fees on the more popular films? Maybe it helps some
department improve some metric that some other department cares about?

------
elementalest
The biggest hindrance in the country where I live is licensing agreements.
Companies buy exclusive rights to popular content, limit it to their
restrictive and expensive platform/service. This license will often last from
6 months to a year. I'm tired of getting the, "this content is not available
in your region" because its either unlicensed or been elusively licensed.

I understand the benefits of exclusivity in distinguishing products, but
rather than 6-12 months (or sometimes more), it should be more like 2 weeks,
or a month. Unlike exclusivity on xbox/ps4/pc, where the content is
specifically designed for those platforms, there is no technical reason for
exclusivity for media content.

Half the time the rights holders don't even license some content for my
country until a few weeks to months later. Occasionally, not at all. They
could license it on netflix for my country, or other similar service, but
refuse to do so. Yet this is in spite of netflix having a license for the same
content in the US, or other regions.

With the internet, regional licensing just makes no sense for digital goods. A
service like netflix should be able to obtain a license for content and
distribute it to whom ever they want to, where ever they are. The only
barriers to this are artificial.

So while the future may be rushing forward, in many ways, we are partially
stuck in the past, held back by archaic and antiquated systems of past
generations that are unable to let go. Its a matter of perspective. For some
the future isn't coming soon enough, for others its rushing by.

~~~
sievebrain
Content is rarely/never designed _specifically_ for a games console. Game
engines are always mostly portable and the porting costs are quite low. Video
game exclusivity, when it happens, is nearly always a business decision to try
and boost the popularity of the platform.

The main problem is that the big audiences are still on the older platforms,
not Netflix or equivalents (and if all audiences moved from older providers
which are at least competing, to Netflix, would that really be better? Or just
replacing the devil you know with the devil you don't?)

~~~
cableshaft
Speaking as someone who has ported games to other platforms before, it's not
as easy as you say. There's almost always platform-specific issues to deal
with. It's rarely as easy as "Export -> to Xbox" (although Unity tries real
hard to do this, it took us several months to convert one of our games from PC
to iOS).

Differences in input, resolution, screen sizes, and RAM often become hurdles
that take real time and manpower to overcome, and can be insurmountable,
depending on how the game is structured. The companies might have legitimate
concerns over whether their time is better spent on porting to new platforms,
or spent working on the next title.

That's why you see so many third parties handle the ports, so the core team
can move on to new projects.

------
davemel37
On this note, I met an entrepreneur in Maryland making hundreds of millions by
buying (or getting for free) used music cassette tapes and scratched cds, and
cleaning them up, repackaging them and selling them at gas stations throughout
the US. There is still gold in them circle things and them thar hills.

~~~
iagooar
You cannot do millions doing that kind of job all by yourself. So I guess that
you need a whole company for it, which implies managing people, money, paying
salaries, taxes, etc. It's not only "cleaning scratched cds".

~~~
davemel37
Yes, he has a massive warehouse with a huge operation. He also sells dvds to
walmart.

Edit: he also sells used video games.

PSA: Just because a dvd is shrinkwrapped, doesnt mean it is new.

~~~
Eupolemos
I may have seen him doing covert advertising on reddit.

------
onion2k
A different way to look at the author's point is that rather than Netflix
streaming everything the problem is actually that they don't maintain feature
parity between their desktop and mobile websites. If he could manage his disc
queue from his smartphone he wouldn't have neededto write this blog post. And
that is a very valid point - huge numbers of people use their phone as their
primary way to access the internet, so having features that are only available
to desktop users alienates a big chunk of your market. For a company the size
of Netflix to fail in this regard is quite irksome.

~~~
jim-greer
These people need to learn about "request desktop site on mobile". It's buried
in Safari, but still doable.

> For a company the size of Netflix to fail in this regard is quite irksome.

As a shareholder, I applaud them for not spending resources to include little-
used features on their mobile site. Being a big company doesn't mean you can
do all things for all people.

~~~
dclowd9901
Request desktop quite often fails. I'm assuming the browser is passing a
desktop use agent so I can't imagine why it does. But it seems to happen more
on sites with the "m" subdomain.

~~~
jim-greer
I've never seen it work on a site with an m subdomain. But Netflix serves both
sites from www.

Edit: I take it back. Somehow it works right on my own site, Kongregate. I
wonder what the trick is?

Edit: The trick seems to be a session variable that remembers the browser used
to say it was mobile. Then a request to 'm' with desktop headers should
redirect to 'www'.

------
TorKlingberg
The DVD mailing is really a separate business from the streaming. Netflix were
right trying to split it off. Unfortunately they did it too early and there
was a big backlash. Had they waited a year or two longer few would have cared.
Qwikster would have been a separate company with its own leadership and its
own app, focused on those who want plastic circles in the mail. Ok, you would
need two subscriptions if you want both services, but I am sure there would be
a cross-promotion package deal.

------
intrasight
bittorrent = new plastic circle

~~~
pietro
Not for movies that we old people like. Either the movies are not to be found,
or the quality is lousy, or it's seeded by one person with a dial-up
connection.

~~~
Kristine1975
Reddit's OpenDirectories subreddit sometimes has non-bittorrent servers with
older movies in what I assume is good quality (judging from the file size).

Of course that's not a solution for when you want to watch a movie in the next
few hours.

------
dragonwriter
Netflix only supports DVD queue management from its desktop page. That's a
mildly annoying work if a particular service (but since the desktop page world
fine on mobile, only mildly annoying), and hardly worth the overblown drama of
this article, which is our histrionics.

------
simula67
> The mobile version of Netflix’s site also has no provision for managing
> plastic.

Has he tried switching to Firefox and use the 'Request Desktop Site' option ?

~~~
rcthompson
Pretending not to be a mobile device is not a solution for a deficient mobile
site, it's a workaround.

~~~
simula67
Agreed, I was not contradicting the author.

------
carsongross
A good friend has an extensive pirated media content library.

He insists, and I believe him, that this is not primarily because he is
unwilling to pay for the content, but simply because getting it on demand
through a commercial channel is too difficult and inconsistent.

------
okyup
We are the mindless, soulless, mass of consumers and we are the future! New is
good, old is bad. Forget the past, forget history - we are forging the future
without any of that! An ideal future! Quality is measured in Megapixels, truth
is what our prophets tell us, and individuality be damned. Now off to the
future we head for the sake of it! Follow us over this cliff - redemption lies
at the bottom. Anyone who claims otherwise is a racist troll!

Don't get left behind, old man. You will surely be a miserable person without
the latest apps on the latest iGadget. Besides, there is no place in our ideal
world for people like you.

~~~
stephengillie
Everything that's new is old already.

------
JeremyNT
We recently encountered a situation where (brought to mind by recent political
events) my wife wanted to watch Bob Roberts[0], an obscure "mockumentary"
about an outrageous wealthy political candidate.

I'd never heard of it. She asked around, and almost none of her friends had
either. She was so insistent regarding its relevance that we set up a viewing
party to see it.

Being naive, we both assumed it could be streamed... somewhere. We haven't
used those plastic discs in a while either, but we figured we would not need
them. We didn't know whether Netflix would have it, but we figured _somebody_
would take our money so we could see it.

Nobody. Nowhere. It was completely unavailable.

I figured that the rights were tied up to keep those physical discs moving
from shelves. I thought I'd run to the nearest big box store and pick it up. I
went to their web site to see if they had it.

Nope. Not there.

I mean, I suppose you can imagine how my story ends: I go to a shady looking
site where I can find this particular movie for free and have it saved on my
hard drive with no restrictions. Just as I was becoming annoyed with the
future, I was reminded of how senseless this problem is.

It was a good movie, and it was good that our friends could enjoy it. But it's
easy to imagine a future where it disappears forever, for everybody.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Roberts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Roberts)

------
cletus
The tl;dr is "Netflix has no way to request 'plastic discs' via the mobile app
or mobile website".

I guess that's fair. Personally I don't even _own_ a device that can play
"plastic discs" anymore, which I think is kinda the point (of Netflix not
making that a first class use case).

Some commenters for some reason have seemingly just taken the title and
extrapolating to the entire content industry (did all these people actually
click on the link?).

A lesser point is finding content. Movie A is on Netflix and Amazon. Movie B
is on Hulu. Movie C is on plastic discs only. This is a general problem (for
consumers) as the content producers fight the inevitable commoditization.

The movie industry is suffering not from piracy or streaming (IMHO) but from
TV. Streaming and "plastic discs" made long form serial content viable.
There's something deeply satisfying about the almost 48 hours of Breaking Bad
vs the 2-2.5 of almost all movies (most of which these days seem to just
regurgitate the same superhero formula time and again).

Additionally, good TV can be produced pretty cheaply too compared to any
modern movie budget.

------
6stringmerc
Because I am also old (getting there, okay), I remember doing this thing
called 'writing stuff down' on like a bar napkin and then going home to my PC
and looking something up, like little plastic discs that could be sent to me.
Yes, I frequently still carry around an analog user interface communication
device...yeah, a pen. Just sayin'.

------
adamzerner
As demand goes down, supply will too. There comes a point where it isn't worth
making something anymore. Those that demand it still will miss out. To me,
this is an acceptable outcome of capitalism.

But I don't think that's what the article is saying. I think it's saying,
"There's a difference between wanting and liking
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive_salience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive_salience)).
Demand is determined by wanting, not liking, and so that's what the market
responds to. People don't do a good job of wanting what they like, and thus
the market is reducing supply too quickly."

Ie. plastic circles (and their analogs) really make people happy. If people
were smarter, they'd realize this demand for them would be higher. But because
they're mistaken, supply falls too quickly.

I agree, but don't know of a solution.

------
jimbokun
Just decided to go through a ton of super hero movies with my kids, mostly
catching up with the Marvel time line.

Impossible without the Netflix Plastic Circle service. Overall, the First Sale
Doctrine makes the Plastic Circle service much more valuable than the Netflix
Bits service, in my opinion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-
sale_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine)

Seems more and more difficult to find something we haven't seen, appropriate
for all of us to watch, and decent artistic quality on streaming. I think our
need for immediate gratification is leading us to give up long established
legal rights. Watching bad content because we're too lazy to put something
good in our queue and wait for the plastic circle to arrive.

------
kruczek
> Apple killed the floppy

What'd Apple do to kill the floppy? I remember that floppies really only died
after pendrives became common. Even with CDs before, there were still floppies
around, since it wasn't as simple to copy data to CD (not to mention lack of
removal).

~~~
tyingq
I assume the reference is to the 1998 release of the iMac G3...the first
popular mainstream PC without a floppy drive.

------
tekklloneer
The future's been arriving too fast since velocipedes (bikes) were corrupting
our youth. This sounds more like a business problem Netflix has invented to
solve a (to them) bigger business problem, and such tactics have always
existed.

------
is39
Use dvd.netflix.com from mobile.

~~~
ansible
Yes. So the basis of this rant is a poor UX decision on the part of Netflix.

It would be fine to sort of hide that there are discs... if my account didn't
include that. But if it does, there should at least be a button somewhere near
the top that takes me to the DVD website from the normal mobile / streaming
website. There's certainly one going the other way!

------
jim-greer
To paraphrase Louis CK:

Everything is amazing and some people aren't happy. The amazing new things
make them forget that the crappier old things are still around. They just need
to look underneath the big pile of amazing new things.

------
karlshea
The unfortunate part of this situation is that the only good content Netflix
has is their own TV shows.

They don't have rights to stream any decent movies, those are all still just
discs. Exactly one time in the last three years when I've gone to search for a
movie I wanted to watch was it available for streaming.

~~~
enjo
__They don 't have rights to stream any decent movies __

That seems hyperbolic. Just browsing around (I decided to cap this at 5
minutes):

The Interview

Forrest Gump

Major League

Pirates of Carribean

Hot Fuzz

Armageddon

Kingpin

A League of Their Own

Inglorious Basterds

Scarface

Django Unchained

Legally Blonde

E.T.

Days of Thunder

The Princess Bride

Crocodile Dundee

Clear and Present Danger

V for Vendetta

Galaxy Quest

Running Man

Big Trouble in Little China

Talladega Nights

Kill Bill (1 and 2)

Star Trek Movies (including The Wrath of Kahn)

Tommy Boy

Team America World Police

Lilo & Stitch

Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back

Wayne's World

Clerks

Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure

~~~
brandonmenc
That's a great list if you're 12.

They don't have The Godfather.

~~~
vogt
Scarface and Django Unchained are movies for twelve year olds?

~~~
tremon
Yes. In terms of content, most of Hollywood's movies don't reach any more
depth than your average comic. The PG rating system is only concerned with
maintaining a standard of purity, it doesn't reflect a movie's story depth.

------
Aleman360
Hold down Apple TV mic button, say movie name, rent movie from cheapest
available service and start streaming instantly.

The future is here, it's just a different business model than music.

------
cbeach
Back in the DVD/Bluray era, I wonder how many hundreds on tonnes of plastic
was consumed, and how much carbon was burnt shipping it? And how much of that
now sits in landfill?

------
tempodox
An iMac doesn't even have a CD/DVD drive any more. And the movies that I want
aren't offered for sale, but only for rental. Apple is destroying my present.

~~~
stock_toaster
Can't you still buy the "USB SuperDrive" accessory thing?

~~~
tempodox
Yes, increasing the clutter. iMac is a failed design that forces me to add
mess and clutter in order to get to an appropriate functionality. The computer
itself is not extensible and hardly serviceable. The alternative, Mac Pro, is
now only for rich people.

------
raldi
It's possible Netflix is crippling your experience on purpose, to provide
leverage in their negotiations with content owners.

~~~
gozur88
Netflix can buy DVDs at retail prices and rent them out over and over. If it
want to put pressure on content companies it wants the DVD part of the
business to be as robust as possible. That way it can say "We'd love to stream
your stuff, but we don't really _need_ to. We're really sort of doing you a
favor here."

------
everyone
Solution: Just torrent stuff :)

~~~
imtringued
Well to be honest they don't even want my money anyway.

------
_nickwhite
I expected the last sentence to read "And I was born in 1980."

~~~
lobo_tuerto
So young?

------
tomc1985
This is relatable on a couple of aspects...

First, that the advances of technology are outpacing the scenarios which they
are used. As I have voiced elsewhere here, it is alarming to see billions and
trillions of dollars flowing towards people who seem incapable of balancing,
let-alone considering, the higher-order consequences of their actions, like,
say, shutting-down the home-automation systems your customers bought as a
consequence of being absorbed by a competitor. Or, denying random people
things and services they used to have access to.

More disturbingly, it seems that many do see these later effects, and they're
sacrificing their customers' interests on the altar of the almighty dollar. Is
this really what we want?

Secondly, modern media consumption via streaming is simpler, yes, if you're a
first-world citizen with money and typical interests. It does a disservice to
people who do not fit this mold, and they are legion. The older, peer-to-peer
model of file-sharing (and, in some cases, sneakernets) thrives and survives
in this adverse environment, in addition to providing personal independence
and privacy.

Thirdly, the chain of variables in a streaming economy is so much longer than
a world of plastic shiny discs. As an example, to watch a movie via a DVD you
bought or rented, you need:

* viewing device with electricity and a screen (one-time cost)

* a DVD player, properly connected (one-time cost)

* software on said device able to execute and play the disc (one-time cost and not even a consideration historically)

* the disc, in a workable condition (edit: and a compatible region), and the funds or means to acquire it (one-time cost)

* knowledge to operate the DVD player

... and thats it. Compare with Netflix, Hulu, et al:

* viewing device with electricity, internet access, and a screen (one-time cost)

* a working, high-bandwidth internet account that can reach your servers with an acceptable latency (recurring cost)

* a current account with your service provider(s) of choice (1x+ recurring cost)

* current software, able to execute, on said device (recurring cost due to updates)

* a provider that is online and accessible

* knowledge to operate the media player, but also possibly the web browser, on a phone, or tablet, or computer (one-time cost)

* knowledge of current account credentials (sometimes difficult for some)

The cost side of streaming media is so much higer, and entails significant
recurring obligations. If you can't pay your streaming bill, much of this goes
away. There are many more points of failure. This is simply unacceptable in
many parts of the world.

~~~
brusch64
Well you forgot the region code problem the DVD had. At least in the beginning
it was really hard to get around this. It's definitely easier if you were in
region 1 and only wanted to watch content for this. But in the beginning it
was pretty hard to get around that if you were living somewhere else.

I've bought a region 1 DVD (beeing in a region 2 land) and had to reflash my
DVD drive to play this DVD. And don't get me started on store bought DVDs
which were in English and German, but if you wanted to watch the English
version you had to watch it with subtitles.

~~~
Kristine1975
_> And don't get me started on store bought DVDs which were in English and
German, but if you wanted to watch the English version you had to watch it
with subtitles._

Assuming you are talking about playback on a computer: Only the officially
licensed software did this, along with blocking fast-forward during movie
previews etc. But VLC for example let you select whatever audio track and
subtitle track you wanted.

------
seandoe
is this guy serious? Ambitious title for some lame words that leave my heart
weeping. Could've searched and completed a torrent download before finishing
the second sentence. Obviously not many people experience your roadblock,
otherwise there would be a market and it would be filled. Maybe there is a
market. Get off your ass and get to work. I thought this article was on some
Wait but Why, AI, tipping point or something.

------
jim-greer
In this thread - a lot of people who don't have a Netflix DVD plan saying that
it's hard to use their DVD plan.

------
didibus
This guy is missing out on the present waiting for a future where Netflix has
all content availaible to stream for 9.99$ a month.

As far as I know, you can stream much more content from say Amazon, Google
Play, iTunes, Crackle, etc. Just need to be willing to pay. You can also buy
plastic discs from a lot of places. And if you don't want to pay, you can
torrent the world.

So I don't really understand what's his complaints about? He preferred it when
Netflix was a mail rental company? I doubt that's worthy of HN.

~~~
douche
Really old movies are surprisingly hard to find... Outside of Turner Classic
Movies (thanks, Comcast, for dumping that from my package and leaving all the
other shit), and the Criteria Collection, it can be kind of difficult to find
anything that isn't Oscar-winning or older than 30 years. Torrents don't even
really help - you might have 4000 seeders for the latest shaky-cam movie
theater rip of a super hero movie, but for a somewhat obscure John Ford
western from 1947, you might have two, three, maybe.

~~~
Falkon1313
I wonder how much of that is due to the reign of terror of the hollywood
monopolies in their fight against torrenting? Of course the consumers of
obscure movies are less common than the latest blockbuster, but they're out
there, and there are enough of them. They're turning off seeding and peering
once the download's complete so that they won't get caught. Torrenting can
help preserve those old/obscure things and make them available even when the
owners don't care and think it isn't worthwhile. But because of the fight to
protect the new pop things, the old /obscure ones vanish. Meanwhile, the new
pop things have so many more people interested, that they are readily
available.

------
deepnet
So in a bar he gets a Movie recomendation, send a SMS to his home server which
dumps the stream, rips and burns it to a plastic disk, ready when he gets
home.

If he can't code hire a dev, $200 should suffice.

I found the problem in the past was licensing 'issues' prevented whole swathes
of old movies ever being shown in the UK - this is pretty efficiently fixed
now.

Solving the legal issues is a separate problem that was trivially solved for
previous disruptive innovations.

Compulsory blanket licenses, existing media taxes, distribution agencies -
just like when radio & libraries were innovations would allow outdated laws to
catch up with technological reality. Maximalist copyright is an anti-
capitalist protection racket devised by ancient distribution monopolies.

~~~
nkurz
I think you misunderstand. He's not objecting to streaming and does not prefer
a physical DVD. Instead, he's saying that the movies he is recommended are
rarely available for streaming. If he could legally stream the movie rather
than waiting for a DVD in the mail, he would do so.

~~~
deepnet
I beg to differ, my last sentence suggests compulsory licensing to solve this.
Pay musicians just like radio & libraries from the existing media taxes. This
would allow all modern expression and access.

