
Netflix loses 1,794 videos from its streaming catalog - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/05/netflix-loses-1794-videos-from-its-streaming-catalog/
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jerf
Dear Warner Brothers:

This is not going to work. As a consumer, I am not going to subscribe to a
dozen different streaming video services, one per distributor who thinks
they're too good to be aggregated. I don't care how good you think you are or
how good you're going to be, and frankly I don't even care if you were each
trying to charge me a dollar a month, because _it's just plain too much
hassle_ to be subscribed to one service per distributor.

Even free, it would be a bad deal. It's not hard to imagine a world where
Warner Brothers works on my phone and my XBox, but not my PS3, Fox works on my
PS3 and my Linux computer, but not my XBox, Discovery doesn't work anywhere
because they don't have the technical chops to properly set up their network,
and _on_ and on it goes. There's a lot of distributors, even accounting for
which of you have merged and operate under a dozen names. None of them as good
as Netflix, working in as many places as Netflix, and as reliable as Netflix.
(Oh, you think it's _easy_ to serve video at this scale... yeah... heh heh
heh. Your little websites with bits and snippets of video was barely getting
your feet wet in that world.)

And of course it won't be free. Perhaps $9.99 a month for "everything" is
unsustainable at any level (even though Netflix is generally not exactly the
freshest content in general), but I'm just not going to chase you all down to
give you money individually, and I know at least some of you are going to get
really big heads and think you can charge $19.99 or something for a vanishing
fraction of Netflix's content.

This is bullshit, and nobody's going to put up with it. I don't necessarily
want there to be just One Uber Aggregator either, so you're going to have to
deal with Amazon and Netflix and iTunes, but you can't go it alone. I'm not
going to follow you. You're lucky I've even _heard_ of you.

Even HBO is either going to become an aggregator with a viedo side business
(see Netflix) or eventually join one.

~~~
Houshalter
On the other hand it's not really fair that Netflix becomes a monopoly and
everyone has to agree to Netflix's prices or lose most of it's audience. Even
if Netflix is completely fair about it, they are still have to somehow divide
$30 per month per family, among all the videos they watch (and no advertising
revenue either.)

But you are right that 50 different competing video services would be absurd.
Perhaps it would be better to distribute videos in a marketplace, like steam
did for games. They set their own prices so they don't have to worry about
"exclusivity". And then they could allow for subscriptions to watch unlimited
content for a set price, for people that value that.

The weird thing about movies is that they aren't like other commodities.
People want to watch a _specific_ movie, even if there are others that are
just as good. Supply and demand doesn't work as well.

But I am worried about Netflix becoming monopolistic. They aren't now because
they do have competition and have only a fraction of movies and TV shows
available. But if it or something like it becomes the dominant video streaming
service, they could charge consumers or producers whatever they want (within
reason) because there are no other platforms to distribute your movies, and no
one else has the ones you want to see.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The more content that becomes accesible, the lower value each piece of content
can command.

If artists were pissed about being paid pennies by Spotify and Pandora, film
houses are about to sail down the same river of hurt.

Wait? What's that you say? You'll hold your content hostage? Compete with free
(Pirate Bay, etc).

~~~
moheeb
" _The more content that becomes accesible, the lower value each piece of
content can command._ "

Not many people realize this fact. As our ability to record and retrieve stuff
increases, the prices for 'entertainment' or 'art' will drop. Production of
any unit that is not consumed (i.e. used up/destroyed) will result in surplus.
The counter-example is food. Food production will still be valuable in the
future because the old food is used up or destroyed. Movie and music
production, book writing, etc. will be near worthless for most folks because
there will be infinite choices.

Might want to start planning your children's future careers appropriately!

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jedberg
And adds a whole bunch too, but no one seems to mention that in these doom and
gloom articles.

The Netflix catalog changes almost daily, but the bigger changes tend to
happen on the 1st of the month, because that is just when contracts tend to
expire (lawyers like it that way). Other big changeover days are Jan 1, July 1
and Dec 31.

The 1,794 movies represent a small fraction of the total viewing on Netflix.

~~~
jlgreco
Hmm, is it lawyers that like it that way, or maybe accountants? Making
everything start/end at the beginning of months seems like it would remove a
lot of mental overhead.

One or two of my personal bills are due in the middle of the month, and I find
even that fairly annoying.

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driverdan
I'm pretty close to canceling my Netflix subscription. Their movie selection
sucks. I found Amazon Prime Video to have a better selection. Netflix is
missing a lot of TV shows I want to watch (eg Dexter, The Simpsons). They're
constantly losing content.

I wish they'd raise their price and get more content contracts. $15/m for good
content is better than $8/m for stuff out of the Walmart $5 bin.

Exclusivity shouldn't matter. Subscribers don't care if content is available
elsewhere. They already have a Netflix subscription.

~~~
thematt
What they really need is an on-demand option like iTunes. I'd pay a couple
bucks to stream the latest movie one time.

~~~
gnaritas
Amazon does that.

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zdw
As much as I like using NetFlix's product, they're just the new face of
content aggregation, like the Cable companies before them.

Many people want a-la-carte cable where they get to pick what they want - why
not video services? Why not have it be so open that anyone can provide
anything to anyone else, ala the more open app stores?

This is the route that most of the settop box vendors like Roku and Apple are
going, and I tend to think it'll win in the end.

Aggregators like Netflix survive based on their marketing and negotiating
strength, and economies of scale with servers and such. I tend to think that
the latter will become less of an issue as technology progresses, and the
former will be around as long as people are making media - this entire thing
comes down to setting a price on specific content.

~~~
kenjackson
There's more than that. The problem is that the cable operators made two big
mistakes (1) they priced their service so high that you always asked yourself
if it was worth the price. (2) They had tiered pricing, but at horrible
granularity that didn't maximize customer happiness, but rather their profit.

Netflix does neither.

There's almost no advantage to a-la-carte streaming services. Are you going to
pay less? I seriously doubt it, unless they do something like charging twenty
five cents per hour of streaming of a movie/show. Are you going to get access
to more content. Not likely unless they do the $.20/hour thing, since I'm not
going to pay monthly fees to 10 different services.

Also Netflix provides DVD service that I still use. Having a unified search
experience and ability to manage my queue is useful. As is a unified rating
system.

Lastly, Netflix simplifies things greatly for my child. If my child now has to
figure out which app to use for each show -- that becomes a nightmare.
Shortcuts reduce this, but now the child has to learn a bunch of UIs as each
service will likely have a slightly different UI.

~~~
nobleach
Don't forget that cable companies ALSO saw fit to take feeds from
NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX/etc that were free OTA with HD and 5.1 surround and cut them
down to 4:3 480i in stereo and resell them as their "base" package.

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mikegreco
This is horrible for both the content providers, and for Netflix. When moves
like this drive people to piracy due to convenience it obviously hurts the
content provider, but with such lackluster offerings who will bother
subscribing to Netflix in the first place? It's not very hard to imagine a
world where the only companies to survive the death of TV and the rise of
digital are monoliths like Google, Apple, and Amazon. I'm sure they would do
as good of a job providing video content as they do today, but without
specialized companies like Netflix and Spotify in the arena to shake things
up, stagnation is inevitable... and then we're right back where we started

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draugadrotten
netflix content delivery quality, their excellent apps and multiple-stream
policy for a household is superior to the competition at this time.

I will not go back to 49.99 cable or subscribe to 5 different 9.99 accounts.

netflix is the spotify of the movie world, embrace it movie moguls!

~~~
sukuriant
Would you pay $20-25 a month for Netflix?

~~~
mtgx
If it featured same-month movie releases, probably. I'd pay $20 a month for a
service that brought all-you-can-eat cinema to my home. I'm sure a lot would
pay $30 a month for that, too, but the market would be far smaller - only for
people who go at least once a week to the cinema. At $20, I think it would be
the sweet spot for the much larger mainstream market to buy into it.

Also, they could go global with that kind of pricing, even in poorer
countries.

~~~
Lucifero
Agreed. I'd double my Netflix payments if the DVD only movies were streaming
and if TV shows were added as they were aired.

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727374
Carry on. Nothing to see here. WB owns that content and Netflix as well as
other firms like Hulu, TBS, etc buy rights to show it. Just business as usual.
Netflix can always buy the rights again or work out some other agreement,
which I wouldn't be surprised to see happen.

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chrislaco
New rule: if it falls out of Netflix and/or Amazon, BitTorrent becomes the new
distributor of choice.

~~~
driverdan
That's not new.

~~~
chrislaco
Thank you for being pedantic.

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kbenson
What I would like is a more open aggregator _market_. Take Netflix's
infrastructure, and allow rights-holders to group their offerings into sets of
movies that I can subscribe to within that aggregation network. The aggregator
and the rights holders would then share the revenue under a standard rate
(e.g. 30/70, whatever).

I could then, as a consumer member of the aggregator service manage my
subscriptions. Maybe I want all Starz and WB, with nothing else. Perhaps
that's $8 for the WB catalog, and $4 for Starz.

Rights holders could even partition it's offerings into different subsets, WB
Modern ($5), WB Classic ($5), WB Full ($8).

Searching would show available or all shows depending on the search type, and
for non-available shows let me know what subscription I would need to get.

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tempaccount9473
I currently pay for two Netflix accounts, and I use neither of them. I have a
collection of about 2,300 movies and TV episodes, some ripped from DVDs I own,
others from less licit sources.

I pay for two Netflix accounts to salve my moral principles. I would love to
pay content creators in the most direct fashion, maximizing the money that
goes to the people who make TV shows and movies, minimizing the money that
goes to ad firms and middlemen, and _eliminating_ any money that would be
spent lobbying the US Congress to destroy my civil liberties and privacy.

Anyone have a suggestion on a better place to send my conscience money?

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smsm42
_Netflix contacted Mashable to state that it prefers to license TV shows and
movies “on an exclusive basis… [to] provide a unique experience” and
emphasized that the goal of the service is to be an “expert programmer” rather
than a “broad distributor.”_

Netflix used to be an example of the "long tail" provider where you could find
content that you want, because of the breadth of the offering. Not anymore, it
seems. It was a fine ride while it lasted, but looks like the age of Netflix
as a primary place to look for movies to watch is at its end.

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chourobin
Piracy it is :)

~~~
robmclarty
Seriously. I have access to almost unlimited media at my fingertips. Companies
need to provide incentives (like convenience, selection, and reliability) to
convince anyone to pay money for their services.

I felt Netflix was moving in the right direction in that regard. But if their
selection is reduced, if multiple systems are too hard to use and manage, or
if different things work in different ways on different devices, I may be
willing to put up with the hassle of copying files over the networks myself.

Please Movie Industry, give me what I want. I'm willing to pay you money for
it. Stop screwing around.

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hcarvalhoalves
... and that's why copyright is f __ __up. It enables dysfunctional market
practices like these, where they actively make it _harder_ for you to consume
their product. I went on to see their offering (WB Instant), and it's not even
available in my country. WTF.

There's no other market in the world where this is a valid practice. I don't
understand how they are able to fly with this crap.

~~~
driverdan
Copyright owners can choose to do whatever they want with their content. It
may be foolish but if they don't want you to consume it they don't have to
offer it to you. You don't have a right to someone else's content, they have a
right to not offer it.

Of course the result is "piracy". If someone wants to view content that's not
available through legal channels they'll find another way. But that doesn't
mean there's anything wrong with copyrights. It just means the business model
is wrong and the people in charge are fools.

~~~
biff
It's always felt like a fundamental flaw in copyright to me, though, if as
implemented it discourages the legal dissemination of content.

At the start a 14 year copyright term (+ 14 if author was still alive and
chose to renew) was considered sufficient in the U.S.; these days, it's life +
70 years. And copyrights are recognized (more or less) internationally, and we
live in a time when nothing has to go out of print and most copyrighted
material can be paid for and delivered over the Internet rather than cranked
out on a printing press and carried by horse into the territories.

In other words, routinely creating artificial scarcity strikes me as a
relatively modern usage of copyright protection -- there might have been the
odd case where somebody only wanted to produce five books or something, but as
a matter of course it seemed like authors wanted to get their material out
there. Things seemed fairly hunky-dory until copyright terms got extended,
publishers and movie studios began amassing libraries of content, and
alternative strategies to simply publishing content to meet demand became
viable.

If nothing else, it seems weird to me that a radio station can go out, buy an
album, pay set royalties to the appropriate organizations, and be clear to
broadcast or stream... yet the equivalent does not exist for streaming
audiovisual content.

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drcube
On first thought, I would be annoyed at having to subscribe to multiple
services to get the content I want.

On second thought, however, isn't this basically a la carte programming the
cable companies have been refusing us since forever? A few different $10
services is a lot better than a single $100 service, 70% of which I don't
watch.

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pramodliv1
Here I was thinking Netflix lost some of their data. Nice title, arstechnica

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lubujackson
For the first time I'm starting to see the advantage of the cable company
monopoly. At least if I get cable (from any provider) I can get ALMOST every
channel if I want it.

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Lucifero
Seriously, Now they want me to pay $10/ month to 15 different studios? Back to
piracy it is.

------
amalag
The only watchable thing out of all that is Reno 911

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austenallred
Wait, Netflix has movies?

Seriously, their movies selection wasn't compelling enough to warrant the
money for streaming. Without TV shows the business would already be a bust.

~~~
rollo_tommasi
Is this based on actual data they've released about service use, or just on
your own personal viewing habits?

~~~
austenallred
My own personal (anecdotal) evidence, that I can never say, "I want to watch a
movie right now" and find anything on Netflix.

~~~
illuminate
The problem with this (and my viewing habits) is not that Netflix doesn't have
any good movies, it's that they've got mostly good movies I've already
watched.

