Qwikster: Netflix's NGE

[WayAbvPar]

I am being heavily recruited by trotski to give up Netflix altogether and go with Amazon Prime. I will have to set my TV up to stream it and see how easy it is to use- need it easy enough to use for my mom to do it for my son. Although he will probably be teaching me how to do this stuff in a year or two 

[Khaldun]

So I suspect it's right to think that behind the scenes the scenario is roughly like this:

CONTENT PRODUCERS: Congratulations, you have won our little Hunger Games, Mr. Netflix. Your strategy of hiding under the stairs and shooting all the other contestants as they ran by was brilliant.

NETFLIX: Why thank you sirs. Now that I am the last survivor, I assume I get to join the shadowy true rulers of our world?

CONTENT PROVIDERS: Why, no, Mr. Netflix, we expect you to die! Or at least, pay us enough money to compensate us for your murder of the profitable DVD business.

NETFLIX: But you had me kill them! Mr. Starz gave me the poison!

CONTENT PROVIDERS: Quite right.  They were...unready to use the new weapons that content ninjas must now employ. Not that we know much about them, either.

NETFLIX: So, suppose I tell you to go fuck yourselves?

CONTENT PROVIDERS: In Zimbabwe, do you know what is on television? Robert Mugabe's speeches and Australian soap operas. Do you think your subscribers will enjoy these things? Because they are very affordable to you.

NETFLIX: I'm going to make my own content then. And next I will be making bubble wrap and sandwiches if this doesn't work out.



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That said, Reed Hastings is pretty obviously an idiot fuckmonkey. If he had any business being in business, he would say, "Ok, fine, shitheads. Let's see how many of the people who are loving your content and buying all sorts of secondary value around it will love it when they have to pay $6.99 per view on Comcast and Verizon for it. Guess what: the only content you have worth that price is content that people already own in their DVD collections or content that they'll pirate. Guess how much value you'll lose from not allowing people to discover stuff and promote it the way that the Onion A.V. and other online sites do? Lots of value. So here's my puckered asshole, and go ahead and kiss it. See you in five years when you're on your knees begging to get back in."

Instead he pretty much has decided to say, "Yes, boss, whatever you say, boss." And then to say to the public, "Hey, look, a steaming pile of shit! We love shit and so should you! It is delicious and we will soon call it by another company name."

[Johny Cee]

Eh?

The problem is that Netflix DVD wing is basically buggy whips, and on the streaming side they are a small fry compared to Cable, Amazon, and Itunes.  To make at as the internet middleman, you have to either be so large you have monopsony power or be vertically (be a major content producer) integrated or have the internet side as a portion of your horizontal strategy (Apple with iproducts, Amazon with everything else).

As Netflix is none of those, they are going away.  The swings in announced plans are them realizing that they are fucked, and that they have to have a Plan B or they are all out of jobs.  Their whole streaming business model was an all-or-nothing roll of the dice:  either corner the market and be Amazon, where you have the market power to dictate to the content makers, or don't and go away.

If anything, this is another take away about the health of subscription models versus reasonable pay as you go models.  I know the posters here tend to be the type of person who will maximize their value from a subscription, but for most people?  That's $10 (or whatever a real monthly price is rather than a price based on getting free product) or $20 that is more effectively spent in other places, if you are only consuming a couple of things a month.

That said, Reed Hastings is pretty obviously an idiot fuckmonkey. If he had any business being in business, he would say, "Ok, fine, shitheads. Let's see how many of the people who are loving your content and buying all sorts of secondary value around it will love it when they have to pay $6.99 per view on Comcast and Verizon for it. Guess what: the only content you have worth that price is content that people already own in their DVD collections or content that they'll pirate. Guess how much value you'll lose from not allowing people to discover stuff and promote it the way that the Onion A.V. and other online sites do? Lots of value. So here's my puckered asshole, and go ahead and kiss it. See you in five years when you're on your knees begging to get back in."

Huh? 

More than likely, we are going to see a continuation of the way things have been going:  older stuff is low cost or free, new stuff gets sold for a couple of bucks an episode... and pirating and a switch to more people using streaming will probably knock that price down more.  The difference is that the content producers will be pocketing more of the money from the older stuff rather than letting an internet company that doesn't actually do anything make that money.

Both Amazon and Itunes have more market penetration, and FAR more casual consumers who will shell out a buck or two while they're online shopping for books or songs or whatever.  The subscription plan is not a viable mass market approach, as it locks out anyone who isn't sure they are going to consume at least the amount they are paying each month.

[Ragnoros]

The subscription plan is not a viable mass market approach, as it locks out anyone who isn't sure they are going to consume at least the amount they are paying each month.

Right, because cable was a total failure using that approach. 

[Salamok]

The only thing I can see saving netflix streaming is if they introduce some sort of addon/upgrade/channel model (or the content owners change their greedy little minds).  I would pay extra for streaming all HBO or Showtime content for netflix package (even if it was everything but current season).  If they could get live streaming or even a few hours delay on live and offer local news and sports I'd pay quite a bit for that as it would make it very easy to tell the cable co to fuck off.  For many sporting events the netflix model makes way more sense than a few dedicated cable channels, no longer at the mercy of the broadcaster to pick which match ups will be shown in a tournament just make all the match ups available on demand.

[Merusk]

If HBO or Showtime were to show-up on Netflix, you can bet your ass it would be for more than the $9 or $10 a month it should cost and probably even more than the $16/month that adding it to cable costs and for less content.   

[Khaldun]

People would pay more in a subscription for comprehensive content bundling, for sure. But I think they are also going to be increasingly unwilling to pay much for unbundled content past a short period of first-viewing. Hollywood still operates in an imagined world where most unbundled content is supposed to be worth something on a continuously renewed basis, where the long tail is filled with nothing but detritus and bottom-feeding.

[Mrbloodworth]

I have said it before, and say it again. I have my entire cable TV budget to toss at someone who gives me ONE streaming service. Not 5.

[MuffinMan]

I got a notice in the mail that my apartment complex is no longer offering free cable as of the end of March. Time Warner reps will be on site to sign people up for service, I can't wait to not answer the door.

[Mrbloodworth]

You got free cable?!?!?!?!?!

[MuffinMan]

Yep but now that the NFL season is over the receiver rarely gets turned on. Everytime I do it's nothing but Friends on every other channel.

[Salamok]

I have said it before, and say it again. I have my entire cable TV budget to toss at someone who gives me ONE streaming service. Not 5.

that is the most fucked up part about this, the content owners see the internet as an opportunity to get you to pay for their content again.  until they start seeing it as an alternative (instead of in addition) to cable we are all fucked.

[UnSub]

But it is a substitute. We're moving to a world where you watch movies / shows on demand, not when scheduled by stations / content providers. If you have a streaming service, you are probably not going to be buying DVDs, or watching the show if it comes on TV and broken up by ads because you can watch it whenever you want. That's less ways to earn revenue (and I know that it is popular sentiment to say, "Screw the studios! Let them earn less!" but that is people out of work in those areas and we still love our US$100m blockbuster nerd films that are funded under the current model).

That's the future - a reduction in the number of ways people watch things (i.e. pulling back to cinema launches, then streaming, and less revenue from TV rights, DVD sales, etc). After severely underestimating how the internet could impact on movie / show distribution channels, the entertainment industry isn't going to let that happen again. There's a realisation that being in the content distribution business is a better bet than being in the content creation business. But the studios have a lot of content to sell, so they have that advantage at least (until they sign away those rights to distribute to someone else).

If you are looking for a single streaming provider (and that's yet another example of how people are happy to support a monopoly if it means they only have to remember one password) it will have to be a big player such as iTunes, maybe Google, or some kind of partnership involving a tech backbone provider and the big studios. But it's more likely there will be 3 - 4 players each distributing their own limited content from one or two studios.

[Merusk]

It doesn't help that half of US households with broadband also need a basic cable sub.   The cable companies can use that against the content providers, particularly since they have monopolies and have consolidated into a few huge semi-national providers vs. numerous regional ones.   It's been ugly enough with networks negotiating vs. being blacked-out by a cable company as it is.  Think it would get any better if even a large name like HBO said "Hey, I'm going to start providing content to Amazon for their Streaming-cable-like service!"

[Xanthippe]

Yep but now that the NFL season is over the receiver rarely gets turned on. Everytime I do it's nothing but Friends on every other channel.

Goldrush Alaska is awesome.

[Xanthippe]

I don't know if this is the right place to discuss this, but how does Comcast get away with having an Xbox Infinity on demand app that doesn't count against your 250g data cap?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/124041-the-new-comcast-xbox-xfinity-app-is-the-first-nail-in-net-neutralitys-coffin

And do I really have to hook up an old computer to my TV in order to get to watch TV shows over the internet? I understand that devices made for that (Roku) are having channels blocked by Comcast (like HBO Go). Gah.

[KallDrexx]

They will just argue that the comcast on demand stuff never leaves their internal network, and thus doesn't count against your cap.

[Numtini]

I honestly don't get the point of having an into-the-home streaming service when you already have on demand (and you need to have an on demand package in order to qualify for the streaming service).

Returning to netflix, we are just now watching Game of Thrones on DVD from netflix and I noticed that they have apparently chosen not to get blu rays for the series. The DVD quality is just fine on my 720p tv, but I am paying the extra $3/month to get blu rays. (Or more accurately, I have been, I just cancelled it.)

[Mrbloodworth]

Are blu-rays out for it yet?

[Numtini]

Yeah, they came out March 4, same date the dvd's did.

[Lantyssa]

30-day moratorium on the blu-rays probably.

[shiznitz]

I didn't want to start a new thread for this, but holy shit I love the Roku.  Just installed one last night.  I thought streaming to my 27" monitor was nice, but it cannot come close to 46" 1080p.

How can anyone say Netflix is dead?  The Amazon Prime selection is good, but Netflix is cheap to add a lot of incremental content.

[Yegolev]

I'd say it depends on if you like what they are offering.

[Morat20]

I'd say it depends on if you like what they are offering.

It's perfect for us -- it's got a backlog of shows I want to catch up on, but don't necessarily need to be up-to-date on. I've got a LOT of stuff I want to watch that's either off the air or on seasons 3+.

80% of what we watch comes from Netflix. It'd be 95% streaming from them if I had the bandwidth for the other two TVs (and a device to stream netflix to).

But, you know, I still haven't finished season one of Game of Thrones and I haven't seen season 2 of Sherlock and, well, I do miss a lot. But for 8 bucks a month, Netflix is a hell of a lot more bang for my buck than basic cable.