Ignoring the argument about whether or not my ISP supports SuperHD yet, I have to ask the question -- What happened to Netflix?
Between Hulu Plus, Amazon, Crackle, iTunes, Verizon On-Demand, regular and paid cable channels, I can't even remember the last time I found something on Netflix worth watching. In fact, I took an inventory the other day to see whether or not it was even worth the $8 a month I'm paying for it, and of all the movies 'added' to Netflix since 2011, I was only able to recognize the titles of about five. Of those five, none of them were blockbusters I'd been waiting to see particularly.
It seems that either their streaming catalog has grown stagnant, or to enjoy it I have to learn to study the independent movie scene more closely to figure out what is worth seeing.
Did I miss a big chapter of their story? I know that many people had situated Netflix out of the '28-day window', but while I'm happy to wait another month to see most movies, I'd like to eventually see it at some point, and frankly, none of the 20 or so movies that I had gone to the theaters to see in that same time frame had ever appeared on Netflix as a streaming option.
Just checked, and I have 82 unwatched items in my Instant Queue, a mix of documentaries, independent films, older films (5-10 years back), and TV series that I've heard great things about but never got around to. No, Netflix doesn't have all (or even most) of the big blockbusters that everyone has heard of, but it definitely has a ton of great content if you're willing to find it. I've watched and rated enough content at this point that the recommendation algorithm is providing really accurate recommendations, so much so that I don't think I'll ever make it through everything in my queue. To each his own I guess.
> Between Hulu Plus, Amazon, Crackle, iTunes, Verizon On-Demand, regular and paid cable channels,
This is a bit of an unfair comparison. You listed sources that, together, have available tons of content, yet individually most of those services are missing things that the others have.
Netflix still has a lot of great content, but it's going to depend on your taste. If you are looking for new TV shows and lots of blockbuster type files, Netflix will come up empty handed. If you are looking for a content library with lots of different kinds of shows and films in many different genres and production levels, Netflix is still a very good value.
That comparison is perhaps unfair, but the real thing I'm comparing it to is the Netflix that it used to be. I was an early adopter of the disc-based program, and was early in on the streaming program -- in years past, whenever I turned on Netflix, there was something new to watch. Nowadays, there just doesn't seem to be.
If I compare it to just one of those, Hulu, it's still an unfair competition of course, but Hulu has something new for me to watch almost every time I turn it on. I understand that there's a huge difference between how the two services operate, but there is not a huge difference in price. Hulu Plus is only $2 more expensive than Netflix, but by the value delivered to me comparatively, I should either pay much more for Hulu, or much less for Netflix.
I'll likely keep subscribing as I'm a long-time fan of their service, but I just didn't know what happened, and while I've been frustrated with it for some time, it only recently occurred to me to actually sample all their new content to see what I was getting. Ideally, they're on the cusp of something that will bolster their catalog (I know there's supposedly a thing with Disney, but as I hear it that's years off yet) or in some way alter the service such that makes it a more worthwhile spend... I'd even pay them more if it would help, but in the midst of all the other content providers, I just don't see why I should be giving them any money other than out of loyalty.
I came to the same realization as you did, and stopped my Netflix subscription a few months ago.
I figured that as far as watching a movie goes, I'd rather rent 3 latest releases a month on iTunes for $3 each than pay $8 for a sub-par catalog on Netflix.
Netflix does have a bunch of shows that I enjoy re-watching everyonce in a while, but buying the physical copy used for cheap on Amazon is again a better option.
I might resume my subscription for a month when they release the Arrested Development exclusive season, but that's the only interesting they'd offer that I can think of.
I mean, it's sort of obvious. If a movie has a big enough pull for you to go drive to a theatre to watch it, the company that owns the movie realises you're willing to pay a direct rental fee for the movie off itunes or something. I'm going to wing it and say the studio might make 2-3 dollars on a single movie digital rental, but maybe 20-30 cents of your 8 dollars a month if they stuck it into a streaming service.
Do you really expect to get a pile of movies and TV you'd willingly pay, idk, 30-40$ a month for if bought individually in an 8$ streaming package? Netflix doesn't have big films because the people who own big films know that on the bottom line, their product has enough draw to be worth more when sold alone. And I mean, sure, a subscription model has more reliable cashflow sometimes, and maybe they can trade product worth for popularity and bulk sales and make more money, but who knows what might happen? Combined with the fact some of these studios have enough content to make their own web distribution services and remain in control of their web presence, and the worry that putting too much content on the web might kill the money they make from TV, it's just an iffy decision to shake up everything and put stuff on the streaming web until somebody comes around and makes a netflix people are willing to pay 20$ a month for - maybe even the 40-50$ you'd pay for a nice cable package, and can offer them some real royalties.
Their streaming offer blows for "mainstream", popular content. And.... many items I had queued in the instant/streaming queue -- and not just "big ticket" items -- have been becoming unavailable.
I find this ironic, in that just a year or two ago their emphasis was on streaming, to the point of attempting to spin off the disc-based segment into a separately named/branded company.
If they hadn't kept the discs, my (uninformed, and somewhat pissed off) bet is that the "Netflix" brand would be close to if not contracting, at this point.
It sucks to be the middleman, when either end can find a way around you. (In this case, primarily the content owners, in various fashions.)
I'm a longtime 3-at-a-time + streaming subscriber and my queue is never empty. Streaming selection on Netflix is pale in comparisson to their DVD selection. Granted, I'm not so "current" on the movies, but 95% of the time I'm looking for something, Netflix has it one way or another. Another 5% are the movies obscure enough even for their DVD selection. :)
This is actually a good point. It's been quite some time since I've even bothered searching Netflix when I want to watch a movie. These days I just go straight to iTunes. I can't remember the last time the movie I wanted to see was actually available on Netflix.
They have a fair amount of pretty good TV programming (subjective I admit). They also have a significant amount of kids TV programming which is not to be underestimated.
Hostile content providers also happened to Netflix.
I got a peek into how the studios feel about Netflix while at a previous job and they all see it as a snot-nosed punk that is acting to ruin the value of their precious content. They are firmly against the all-you-can-eat model that essentially defines Netflix.
When Netflix was the only game in town they could change the minds of the content people by pulling up in fleets of money trucks, but now that there are viable alternatives that push rentals and digital ownership (via UltraViolet, etc), the content people are mostly just cutting Netflix off and hoping they die.
Of course, Netflix is aware of this which is why they've started to get into the business of funding their own content.
Interesting: I'd be interested in seeing a list of ISPs that support Super HD (presumably this list will be forthcoming once they've got at least one big-ish name ISP). But also, this seems like a method of Netflix trying to strong-arm ISPs/have more of an outwardly "harmonious" relationships with them. If an ISP supports Super HD, then how can they possibly complain that their customers are using too much bandwidth by viewing Netflix? Oh, and if you're a netflix customer, here's an alternative to your curmudgeonly ISP that supports Super HD!
Is this an issue of how much bandwidth is costing NetFlix or something? I pay Comcast for a 105Mbps connection, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to stream 5Mbps or even 5MBps.
As an aside, my PS3 Slim's wireless card is really subpar, so I'd assume a wired connection would be required to take advantage of this on a console.
I think it's mostly to penalize ISPs that don't play ball, but I'm sure there is some cost aspect.
I get the impression that PS3 networking is really slow, even wired. Trying to DLNA any video over 8 Mbps seems to cause stuttering and HD content from PSN downloads slower than real time.
It's obvious in retrospect but it took me a while to think of it in my own setup: set up a wireless bridge for the PS3. In my case, this had huge immediate returns for all streaming content.
Apparently PS3 and some other devices have already been able to do 1080p [1]
Maybe there is also a change in compression algorithm involved, which improves the quality at the same resolution?
Even things that were at 1080p tended to be real low bitrate. Ever notice that 1080p movies bought from iTunes are like 10% bigger than the 720p copy of the same movie?
Take a chill pill, then read https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect to inform yourself what it's about. Hint: cost savings for Netflix and the ISP. The ISP can even get free storage appliance hardware from Netflix to cut their out-of-network costs for streaming Nextflix content to next to nothing (only needing to cache new content, presumably).
It's equivalent to you complaining about road neutrality should a company only deliver their products via Fedex trucks. The fact that the company chooses to only deliver their goods via Fedex doesn't affect your right to drive whatever street legal vehicle you want on the highway.
Within your ISP's network bandwidth is cheap, once it has to move over to other networks then those 5Mbps streams start adding up quite quickly. If 1600 people on an ISP were to steam in HD simultaneously (which really isn't a large number of people for a large ISP) then you're talking about 1GB (thats byte and not bit) of bandwidth every second. There's a reason why content distributions networks like Akamai and companies like Google tend to peer at ISPs as well.
What it certainly isn't is anything to do with net neutrality, and trying to claim that it is is either born of misunderstanding what net neutrality is, or trying to be deliberately obtuse. No one is prioritising one type of traffic over another, nor are they prioritising connections to one website over another. They're simply saying that there are real practical limitations involved in offering certain services, so they're partnering with any willing ISP to offer those services.
It was an amazing let down to see this. Despite my 100mbps connection, I get a line of text that says nothing more than "Ask your ISP to join the Netflix Open Connect Network".
Yeah, uhh, okay. My ISP is the largest in the country. If you can't arrange your content sharing network with them, I'm fairly sure me calling a Tier 1 CSR reading off a scripted dialog is going to make all the difference in the world.
The point is, and maybe I was vague about it, hence my downvotes:
If Netflix is offering a service and can't even get the largest, most common ISP that their customers use to agree to their "free" peering arrangements to offer even better content, then that appears a little ... disappointing, and not particularly hope-inducing to me.
To be fair: net neutrality as a policy is intended to protect the content providers from unfair pseudo-extortion and competition from the (literally entrenched, and in some cases monopolistic) consumer ISPs. The point was to prevent Comcast from making a deal with Microsoft for fast Bing searches and then squeezing Google, etc...
What's happening here is the opposite: Netflix can't afford the data at the price they're charging, so they cut a deal with Comcast where they (presumably) pay them for the right to cache static content locally. It no less onerous to the consumer, but it doesn't fit the policy goals that net neutrality is designed to enforce.
That said, your last point is dead on. Netflix has invented yet another way of making their service harder and more annoying to use for the poor consumer then The Pirate Bay.
> That said, your last point is dead on. Netflix has invented yet another way of making their service harder and more annoying to use for the poor consumer then The Pirate Bay.
No they haven't.
They're simply offering a 'better' service to a subset of their customers, they're not stopping you from watching a film if you don't use an ISP that peers with them.
"Netflix can't afford the data at the price they're charging, so they cut a deal with Comcast where they (presumably) pay them for the right to cache static content locally."
Ironically, my 105mbps cable connection with Comcast. The SuperHD service tells me to "Ask my ISP to join the Open Connect Network", helpfully.
Netflix: Okay, everyone can have HD movies now, but they cost more. Also, only if your ISP supports it because hey these require 5Mbps from edge locations. So it's the same as before just more expensive.
w1ntermute: What the fuck? They want to charge extra money for movies that my ISP is capable of delivering for free? This is why piracy exists.
>Netflix Super HD requires an internet connection with at least 5Mb/s download. Not all devices can play Super HD. Super HD is only available via Internet Providers that are part of the Open Connect network.
>ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free. ISPs can do this either by free peering with us at common Internet exchanges, or can save even more transit costs by putting our free storage appliances in or near their network.
>Major ISPs around the world have already connected to Open Connect, including Frontier, British Telecom, TDC, Clearwire, GVT, Telus, Bell Canada, Virgin, Cablevision, Google Fiber, Telmex, and more.
That sounds like something that would be hard to get an American ISP to agree to, since some have their own offerings (Comcast's stake in Hulu and own Xfinity, for example.)
I'm in the UK and our provider is Be Un Limited [1][2], who use BT's exchanges. Unfortunately, we live in an area of London that is a notorious internet black-spot, so even though we pay for up to 16Mb, 1.5 is what speedtest.net tops out at. Given that though, I'm pretty impressed with what Netflix manage to do with what's available. Other services such as BBC's iPlayer and the on-demand of other TV networks are either vastly inferior quality or involve a lot of buffering (though seem to have improved over the lasty year).
Between Hulu Plus, Amazon, Crackle, iTunes, Verizon On-Demand, regular and paid cable channels, I can't even remember the last time I found something on Netflix worth watching. In fact, I took an inventory the other day to see whether or not it was even worth the $8 a month I'm paying for it, and of all the movies 'added' to Netflix since 2011, I was only able to recognize the titles of about five. Of those five, none of them were blockbusters I'd been waiting to see particularly.
It seems that either their streaming catalog has grown stagnant, or to enjoy it I have to learn to study the independent movie scene more closely to figure out what is worth seeing.
Did I miss a big chapter of their story? I know that many people had situated Netflix out of the '28-day window', but while I'm happy to wait another month to see most movies, I'd like to eventually see it at some point, and frankly, none of the 20 or so movies that I had gone to the theaters to see in that same time frame had ever appeared on Netflix as a streaming option.