I bought Netflix @ $75 last year. It was the first time I ever bought stock, but I had to do it out of sheer confidence.
> "You are never as smart or dumb as they say," Hastings said in a Wednesday interview.
This is exactly why I bought. Everybody and their mother was jumping all over themselves to talk about how stupid Netflix was. I figured the stock was pummeled about as low as it could go because at the end of the day Netflix has amazing infrastructure and product assets (I say this as a direct competitor). It's certainly the case that they are being squeezed mercilessly between price expectations of customers and profit expectations of the content cartels, but at the same time, Internet streaming is an irresistible force and no one is positioned better to capitalize on it than Netflix.
That's generally a good strategy for beating the crowd at speculating. The problem is knowing when you are following or beating the crowd. The other problem is timing it right. Normally when 'everyone knows' that tech stock, property, or gold is a good investment, it's not a good time to invest in it.
Yea, I have been looking into shorting gold for a while now, but you really need to get the timing right to do that. It went from 1600 to 1900 and back to 1600 in the fall but there is so much volatility it's impossible to really know the market.
Distribution power, maybe, but they're probably still significantly disadvantaged financially, since $8/mo is considerably less than anybody (who has cable) pays for cable.
I was looking into this just last night, actually. I'm not with Comcast, I'm not even American actually, but I wanted to add a couple channels to our account and I went looking at pricing. For the basic crappy channels - the first 20 or so, I think - I was $25. Our roommate, by which I mean by would-be brother-in-law, controls the account so I don't know how much it all comes to, but looking at the different packages, I'd say it's got to be at least $80-100, not factoring in any discounts for bundling with internet and all that.
> Distribution power, maybe, but they're probably still significantly disadvantaged financially, since $8/mo is considerably less than anybody (who has cable) pays for cable.
Not entirely true. I'm part of a growing number of people that have cable tv who don't actually use cable tv. Let me explain. Once I explained to Comcast that my household no longer watches cable tv and that I'd rather spend the money I used to spend on cable tv for faster internet (up to 50 mbs). They in turn explained to me that if I have super basic cable plan for $9.99 / month, they would give me a $15 discount off my entire monthly bill. So for a $5 monthly discount, Comcast gets to keep me as a ghost cable tv subscriber.
Fair enough, but I doubt that adds up to enough that there's a real impact to the spending ability ratio of the two companies.
You're paying negative $5 for cable, but how many other people are doing that. I don't know the going rate for Comcast cable, so I'll use the $25 basic service fee from Eastlink in Canada (my service) as the exemplar.
Assume there are only two possible monthly payments for Comcast. You can get the basic service for $25 or you can get the "they quit the service but we're keeping them on the books" service for $-5. Given these prices, you would need to have 3.4 subscribers at the latter price for every one subscriber at the former price before Comcast and Netflix would be making equal money off subscriptions alone. I seriously doubt 77% of Comcast subscribers are ghosts like you, so I stand by my argument that Netflix is massively financially outgunned by Comcast.
> I seriously doubt 77% of Comcast subscribers are ghosts like you, so I stand by my argument that Netflix is massively financially outgunned by Comcast.
I don't disagree but time is not on Comcast's side. Anyone who went to college in the 90s and younger is a huge threat to cable tv.
I'm sure they'll piss a bunch of people off when the inevitably raise prices again. However, in 6 months when those people realize that cable still sucks and there is no viable competition they'll sign back up.
If netflix cost exactly the same thing as cable I would happily pay because they distributes content in a way that is convenient for me and they don't run commercials to subsidize their income at the cost of my enjoyment.
Doesn't Comcast have a legal monopoly in many areas? While that may be further damning to Comcast from one angle, it does make them much more of a stable bet than Netflix.
Netflix is magic. It has the only recommendation engine that actually works. I'm a streaming subscriber, and the only problem is their somewhat limited catalog: many movies I look for are only available on DVD. There are very few recent releases.
But their catalog will inevitably expand.
It's incredible how one comes to love something that works so consistently and dependably.
> It has the only recommendation engine that actually works.
I wish it let you split out recommendations based on users, with the option of "recommended for the whole account." I like Sci-Fi, and I've watched a fair amount of it on my Netflix account, including 10/11 Star Trek movies, but the last time I went into the Sci-Fi section, it was recommending me random kids shows and things I'd clearly not like.
This is because my girlfriend uses it a lot and has watched a lot of older, especially teen (nostalgia), shows. To quote from A Christmas Story, Netflix "labor[s] under the delusion that I [am] not only perpetually 4 years old, but also a girl."
Not knocking their engine, just a random anecdote.
Didn't Netflix run a competition once for people to come up with a better recommendation engine a while ago? Maybe that's why it's so good. Crowdsourcing.
I agree, and the annoyance of split recommendations between my wife and I made me think that it was worth having two separate accounts. Compared to the horrible deal that is satellite TV, paying for two Netflix streaming accounts seems like a good deal, and I have been paying double for about 6 months.
BTW, I have had no luck in talking my wife into dropping Directv, even with Netflix, Hulu+, and a good 7 screen movie theater near our house. Wish me luck :-)
Yeah, but how the hell do you switch accounts on devices? Both Android and Roku require me to go through the insane process of typing my login and password in.
I'd pay for double accounts, but Netflix apparently won't take my money.
I agree strongly with this; we've observed the same problem. Within our family, we have many common tastes and many differing tastes, and it would help to have recommendations that took those into account.
The same thing goes for the "recently watched" list on Watch Instantly, which mixes together shows watched by any user on any device.
I sort of dislike the "recently watched" list since it sometimes limits what I am willing to watch.
There's a British movie on Netflix, at least in Canada, called Cashback. It was a really decent movie, but it was really poorly marketed. The cover art is a woman frozen in a state of undress (with the title obscuring her bare breasts), and the description of the plot talked of a bored employee at a grocery store with the ability to freeze time who used the frozen time to undress customers and sketch them nude.
I was curious, as many men would be, but I didn't want to watch it because I didn't really want that to be the first thing on screen in the "recently watched" list when my girlfriend turned on Netflix.
In fact, I only ever watched it because Netflix later recommended it to me as "mind bending", which seemed like an odd description of the boob-filled teenage sex romp it seemed to be. I looked it up on Amazon and discovered the real plot, and decided to watch it anyway.
The frozen time nude artistry was mostly contained to a single throwaway scene (the time freezing was also initially presented as a time-passing fantasy rather than a real ability, though the film does play fast and loose with that line as the movie progresses), but it still made me hesitate because of the "recently watched" list.
I have no idea how I'll get away with watching Barbarella.
That's interesting. Netflix keeps recommending me Cashback too, even though I don't normally watch that type of movie. It's been recommending it so consistently for so long that I've been curious too, but I still haven't watched it.
Are you honestly expecting the algorithm to magically know if it is you or your children watching the movie?
They advise against sharing accounts. I understand this is not really enforcable and no one really cares, but it's the only way the recommendation engine works well.
I'm not expecting the algorithm to magically know anything. The first line of my comment was "I wish it let you split out recommendations based on users". I thought specifying "users" was enough to indicate that I meant an account with multiple named profiles.
Now, I understand that Netflix would prefer that everyone have their own separate Netflix account, and that adding this feature might be looked down on as promoting the use of a single account for multiple people, but that doesn't make it a bad feature.
They need to understand that most people don't see the need for having multiple accounts. How often do you really find that two people want to watch two movies at once? When that does occur, how often is it such a high priority that nether party is willing to wait until the other is done to watch their movie?
Adding accounts results in significantly diminished returns right away. The second account is only of use when two people want to watch something at once, which I've never found to be a serious problem. Adding a third or fourth account is absolutely ridiculous[1].
[1] It's ridiculous now, but if Netflix ever becomes a serious provider of new TV, supplanting the current cable TV structure with an a la carte, on demand model, then I'd gladly maintain multiple accounts. When that day comes, they could allow roaming profiles, allowing a new account to start using the viewing history/recommendations of a named profile on another account.
You can stream multiple things at the same time with one account. The limit is low though like 2 or 3. At one point in time you could have sub accounts with their own dvd queue, recommendations, etc. I find the whole thing odd and starting to become user hostile.
You can't stream multiple things at once, at least not in Canada (emphasis mine):
> Q : Can I watch movies instantly on more than one PC or Netflix-ready device?
> A : Your account can have up to six unique authorized devices activated and associated with it at any given time, including personal computers and Netflix-ready devices; however, you may only watch on one device at a time.
I've heard that there's nothing stopping you from starting a second stream, but that it can cut off at any time when the system notices, and that they're enforcing it more now than they used to. YMMV in the USA or UK.
While you might find it user hostile, I, personally, don't see anything really wrong with only allowing one stream per account. I doubt you can't understand why it's being done either.
You have to assume that most people watch a lot more movies via streaming than they did with DVD-Only, both because you don't have the lag time between sending movies back and getting new ones (you just choose a movie and watch it), and because you can't watch a movie then delay the next one by procrastinating/forgetting to send it back (you finish one movie and the next is instantly available without user action). Because of this, there are likely fewer ghost/inactive accounts silently collecting their monthly charge, and content producers probably demand additional funds using the additional viewings as a negotiating tool. Adding additional accounts per household both adds revenue, which is additional funding for content licenses and original productions, and drops the view/account metric, which couldn't hurt when negotiating with content producers.
Again, I can only speak for how things work for Netflix Canada. It could be different in the US, or it could be the same but nobody realizes it because it's never enforced.
We never had a combined service in Canada. The only DVD-by-mail service I've heard of up here is Zip.ca. I looked into them recently and discovered they also have a streaming service now, but I'm much more interested in the service of theirs that was impetus for that search, which was their "redbox"-like DVD/BluRay kiosk I just found at my local grocery store.
I've often heard people speak online about these kiosks, but there weren't any near my current apartment until recently (either that, or I've just never known it was there since it's on the opposite side of the store from the self-serve checkout machines). $1 per movie is a wonderful price point for new releases, though between Christmas present movies and Netflix I haven't really been inclined to use it yet.
Well, yes, if they want to use the recommendation system as it is intended, then yes. It's how the thing works, it recommends based on what has been viewed before...it's not magic guys.
This is precisely why I held on to the underused "2 DVDs at once" plan until the Great Netflix Exodus. One queue for me (gritty/scifi/tragedy/guy-movies), one for my wife (sappy/Hallmark/romantic/Christmas-year-round-movies). Easy to toggle queues, easy to see corresponding recommendations. The DVDs themselves tended to sit for a month or so at a time in favor of "I wanna watch X now" streaming.
But, alas, that's gone. Now Netflix thinks I'm fond of gritty survivalist Dora-The-Explorer romantic comedies featuring Barbie.
Is it possible to use their recommendation engine without being a paying member? I could use some help tracking down more movies in a cluster that's kind of hard to define (think American Pie, Superbad, Fired up!, films of that nature).
It's so easy for great links to come and go on the new page without even getting a single vote. Everyone, make sure to browse the new page and vote up good links! It's your civic duty.
Having 4 friends helps too. Get them to vote up your story (simultaneously!!) so that it goes on the front page even for a few minutes. After that, if it's any good, it'll be self-sustaining. (If not, having those friends won't help much - it'll fall off if it doesn't keep getting votes from other people who think it's valuable.)
I never actually done this, but I see it all the time.
We signed up again. Where our previous plan was "Keep a Netflix subscription and tell our friends about it", our current mode is, "This is the cheapest way to watch the existing episodes of TV series _____, then we'll cancel again."
> "You are never as smart or dumb as they say," Hastings said in a Wednesday interview.
This is exactly why I bought. Everybody and their mother was jumping all over themselves to talk about how stupid Netflix was. I figured the stock was pummeled about as low as it could go because at the end of the day Netflix has amazing infrastructure and product assets (I say this as a direct competitor). It's certainly the case that they are being squeezed mercilessly between price expectations of customers and profit expectations of the content cartels, but at the same time, Internet streaming is an irresistible force and no one is positioned better to capitalize on it than Netflix.