

Amazon Video vs. Netflix - Jun8
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/amazon-video-vs-netflix-which-will-prevail/?hp
NYT has an article about a study conducted by the The Catalyst Group on which service users prefer on a Roku box: the all-you-can-eat approach of Netflix or the $2-$3-a-pop one from Amazon. One key finding: Both of the TV interfaces are clunky.
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SwellJoe
I use both, but predominantly Netflix, because it works from the XBOX. I don't
like having to boot up a PC, and move cables around just to watch something.
Irritatingly, the only way to stream to XBOX from Unbox is to also have a PC
running Windows Media Center...which is a special breed of stupid.

Netflix also has the benefit of providing access (via mail) to those movies
and TV shows, of which there are still a surprising number, that are not yet
available online from any provider.

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Readmore
"“The parties were unanimous in their wish that more of the experience be away
from the computer,” Mr. Gould said. “People are expecting and really
preferring a simpler, more straightforward experience that doesn’t involve the
PC,” he said."

This is great news for my next project ;)

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smiler
Interesting market to be in, but very tough for a startup I think. Xbox 360
already has Netflix streaming support. TV companies are offering more
sophisticated set-top boxes all the time. Amazon / Netflix could easily
release their own set-top box.

Are you planning something which you think will be really disruptive?

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Readmore
My product is disruptive and goes beyond Netflix/Amazon streaming. It's most
easily described as a web based evolution of XBMC. The goal is to make it dead
simple to pull in and organize online video as well as locally stored video.
As a user you shouldn't have to know what online site streams the show you
want, or check different services to see who has the movie you want to see. It
should all be presented in one easy to navigate interface.

My goal is to develop an online site along with a consumer device that
integrate together. The best way to do this would be through a licensing deal
with set-top box makers. Take the Netflix strategy of putting the service on
every available device instead of solely focusing on selling a box a la Tivo.

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psranga
You mean an aggregator? That's an idea which can support at least two big
players in any segment (Reddit/Digg, Yahoo News/Google News). Good luck.

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Jun8
I have tried both of their interfaces on TiVo and they both suck. It takes
about 10-20 seconds for TiVo to switch to NetFlix or Amazon list view.
Navigating the lists and entering text is agony, even with TiVo's nice remote.

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jamesbritt
Navigating any of the Tivo on-demand menus seems painfully slow for me. Is
this common?

I typically just give up. I really don't want to spend five minutes to see if
_maybe_ there's something I might like.

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briancooley
Seems like an iPhone/Android app could turn a smartphone into an effective
remote for setting up the queues. It's not a holistic solution, but seems like
it could be built relatively quickly.

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modernhermit
There are already quite a few iPhone apps that do this for Netflix

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Splines
Personally, I use Flixster, but there are indeed many apps that can interact
with Netflix. Apparently Netflix also publishes an API to do precisely this,
so the apps (hopefully) aren't doing any funky web-scraping in the background.

