TL;DR: A former Netflix employee isn't surprised because films very little business sense for Netflix.
Former Netflix employee here--though I left in late 2013. I remember sitting at a company meeting and Reed Hastings explaining that AAA film content was never going to be the bread-and-butter for Netflix for several reasons. Most importantly: Between traditional, "linear" television and Netflix, the experience that Netflix brings with a combination of a low subscription cost, no commercials, and the ability to watch as many episodes of a show as you want to watch whenever you want to watch them is VASTLY superior.
Netflix survives and thrives on binge-watching--and people just don't do that with movies (they have a LOT of data to back up that statement). Combined with the realities of the costs associated with feature film licensing and there's very little incentive for Netflix to put any emphasis on films.
The only way they could do it is to tack on a pay-per-view service for films (because their subscription fee alone will absolutely NOT cover the cost of licensing more feature film content) and they are highly averse to such a service. The general feeling is that it's better for the average user if they can open up Netflix and watch whatever is there without ever thinking about whether it's an "included" title or a "PPV" title. When I was there, we regularly revisited this assumption and research always found that it continued to be the prudent move.
If that's the case, that leaves the problem (from the consumer's point of view) of where to get access to a complete(ish) catalog of films. Netflix actually achieved this back in the disc-by-mail days. So we're actually moving backwards.
I'm not particularly ashamed to say I turn to unlicensed torrents for this purpose, but I would prefer if it weren't necessary.
My willingness to deal with physical media, let alone the postal service (any more then I am forced to, anyway) disappeared a few years ago.
How is Netflix able to get rights to send physical media, but not stream? It seems to me that literally the only real difference is physical media means there is a limit on number of concurrent viewers.
I understand the desire for instant gratification, not to mention the desire to be free of the money pit called the USPS.
That being said, physical media has far superior audio and video quality. A Bluray disc vs streaming 1080p (especially a Netflix stream) is a world of difference. Streaming media is usually bit-starved to near death. If you care about quality (and you very well may not), it's the only way to fly.
If you don't mind the subpar video and audio quality, then I can understand why people use the streaming service. It's just not for me, though. I have a 49" 4k TV and a Bluray player that upscales for a reason. I don't want that swill they serve up over ethernet, lol.
The value Netflix provides is primarily convenience. There are other ways to watch movies and TV shows, the reason to use Netflix is that it's more convenient than the alternatives.
Having to deal with physical media (and wait for them to be delivered) is less convenient than other alternatives to Netflix. Therefore, it's a flaw of Netflix.
Streaming is definitely more convenient, but since Netflix's streaming selection is atrocious, it's not worth my time or money.
I'd much rather put up with the minimal hassle and a bit of a wait to get a great selection of DVDs.
The "hassle" amounts to me opening up an envelope, putting the DVD in to my DVD player, putting it back in to the envelope when I'm done and throwing it in to a mailbox on my way to work.
Sure, it's not as easy as hitting play in a streaming app, but not really a big deal, either.
I used to love going to blockbuster to rent a flick, because I could do it on a whim (near-instant gratification). Because of streaming services like Netflix, blockbuster went out of business.
I don't plan for movie night days in advance. I'm not going to rent that shit in the mail. So after a few years of not touching my DVD player, I threw it out.
The content owners are the real ones losing out here. I'd pay $4 to stream any movie, there's just no service I'm aware of that offers them all digitally at that price.
You can rent and stream many movies from Amazon for 3.99 SD and 4.99 HD. I'm not sure if these prices are discounted since I am a prime member.
I just recently started using VidAngel though, and I'm happy with it so far. They advertise being able to filter movies, but you can always just filter a single word if you don't want anything filtered. It's $1 for SD and $2 for HD. They have an interesting licensing model though so you sort of have to have a constant $18-$19 deposit with them.
We stopped DVD service because we moved. After the move 4/5 disks came unplayably scratched. And it somehow took two weeks for the next disk to come in the mail. So you can imagine we found we were getting zero value for our subscription fee.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but my Netflix history shows I've watched close to 100 DVDs, and only one of them was unplayable for me. For that one, they shipped me a replacement right away and it worked fine.
Yes. That was our experience before we moved. Customer service kept blowing us off, too. So very likely where we are now is not a priority market or something. Which is sad because serving rural america was supposedly part of the whole long-tail thing.
I'm nostalgic for Blockbuster's disk-by-mail service, which had a much better selection than Netflix's ever did. (Ironically; considering how poor the selection in actual Blockbuster retail stores was.)
Whenever I wanted some mega-obscure Japanese or Thai movie, Netflix never had it and Blockbuster always did.
There was a company called GreenCine which had the same business model as Netflix, but focusing more on independent and rare films.
I meant to give it a try once I ran out of interesting movies to watch on Netflix. But I guess I waited too long, because now they're out of business.
Despite Netflix not having absolutely everything, I think Netflix still has a really good DVD selection, with plenty of relatively obscure films (along with tons of mainstream ones).
It could definitely be better (on selection, and also wish they offered more letterboxed and full-length films instead of shortened ones), and I wish there was more competition in this field. But overall I'm pretty satisfied and would recommend their DVD service to others.
That was my thought as well.. no, it isn't instant gratification, but it does have value... I wonder how legal a dedicated feed rental system would be. Effectively, you rent a movie (as available) and someone puts it into a drive in a data center, that is then played for you directly, with the software interface controlling playback... you then click "return" when done watching... maybe a bonus for early returns (vs checked out for 24hrs).
It might take some custom hardware, but just a few larger central stores vs something like redbox for example.
https://www.vidangel.com/ does something similar. You buy the movie for 20$ and then can stream it whenever, but if you return it within the first 24 hours, you get 19$ back.
Is there anything that competes with that in terms of catalog? Redbox has replaced all the local rental places around here (Colorado) If something isn't streamed then dvd.netflix.com is the only option I know of.
With Amazon Prime, iTunes, and Redbox, you can get access to pretty much anything. Yes, it costs $1-4 per movie, but that was actually the price of a rental anyway and I had to get in my car, drive to the store, and hope that they had what I was looking for. Netflix still has DVD service if you choose. For me, the risks of being caught stealing outweigh the benefits of saving a few bucks.
Some rentals are cheaper than Starbucks, but many new releases are $5-$6. Also, I frequently find that a movie I'm looking to rent on iTunes is only available for purchase ($15). I understand why studios push for these sort of arrangements, but since there aren't any brick and mortar rental locations anymore, it means there isn't a way to check out that movie for less than $15.
It's hard to argue with the convenience of free and immediate, that's for sure, but it's really hard to care that a person craves entertainment so strongly that they feel their unwillingness to pay for it is somehow a compelling argument to take it.
Could you recommend some that have deep catalog? I find the that iTunes and Amazon don't have anywhere near the deep catalog that I once enjoyed at my local video store.
For a real film buff being able to go rent F. W. Murnau's "Noseferatu", Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup" or Polanski's "Knife in the Water" was really important to me and something I took for granted. Almost every large city had a least one such film nerd rental place. And now that video stores are gone there's just a void for so much of this content.
One beacon of hope though which is supposed to launch soon is a streaming venture by TCM and The Criterion Collection:
I prefer Google to the Amazon option. Much better device support (it works on pretty much every device out there) and the overall UI is just fantastic.
Ha, wow. OK I guess I need to give Amazon another look then. I think I maybe looked for these or similar ~ 1 year ago and went away disappointed. This is great. Thanks.
Just be warned that Amazon actively goes out of their way to block you from streaming movies to devices they don't like. So don't expect to play them on a Chromecast or something.
Make sure you try it first with a free or test movie before buying.
Well, there's iTunes (a PPV service, of course). I'd like to know how big of a catalog iTunes have in terms of % of the 1,000 most popular movies they have.
A while back I decided it wasn't worth trusting any online service - netflix or otherwise - for my personal favorite content (whatever that may be). For that reason I invested in a nice NAS that can stream to my ps3/ps4, phones/tablets etc and to just rip my own content. Otherwise you may suddenly find Twin Peaks is not available to you (it's on Amazon Prime now btw), or some other such lost classic film or tv show.
In the economic sense consumption means a resource is used and cannot readily be re-used at its original quality. Copying a file does not deprive anybody of anything, I cannot even see a reasonable argument when the case involves a market where the good is not even offered for sale.
I'm pretty sure that they meant "consume" as in "watch", not "consume" as in "make unavailable for further use". So, watching a movie doesn't consume it, but one does consume movies.
I suspect if the studios had to choose between people not watching a film at all and people using torrents, they'd probably want the torrents, particularly if they could document it for the companies paying for product placement.
Though obviously they'd much rather have you pay for it and watch it.
Sadly--this isn't really something Netflix (or anyone) can possibly offer given the way that the entertainment industry licenses content.
When they made the transition to streaming, they had to acknowledge that they could no longer provide the one-stop shop with everything to watch. Instead, they had to pivot to a model largely based on "something for everyone to watch." My personal opinion is that they missed a good opportunity to socialize that pivot.
In the Uk at least you should check out cinema paradise, great range of films (especially independent and world cinema). Furthermore if there's something you want and they don't have just ask them and they'll get it in. Reasonable price too.
Do you seriously think there'll be a legit service which can replicate the arthouse, cult and alternative films selection of a certain tracker with four A in the name? I think we would sooner see a blanket fee making it legit.
This assumes the product can still be purchased or is for sale in the country.
Not every country has a licence to sell certain movies. Literally can't pay the money the makers of the films what they want to charge me because they don't want to charge me. This also applies to music and other products (though other products can't necessarily be pirated).
My options are:
a) Pirate the movie at no cost to the creator
b) Do not watch the movie at no cost to the creator
Morally - I don't see the difference. Financially - there is no difference. Culturally? There is a huge difference. Many people fail to realize how much culture is shared/discussed around movies/music (esp. American movies/music).
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is actually a pretty good argument for why piracy is still relevant. There's been numerous occasions when I wanted to share something with a friend, but the content was blocked just because of geographical differences. These limitations create incentives to find the content elsewhere, which is usually illegitimate means.
I didn't downvote, but... well, honestly this is a bit of a strawman, if you consider that most of the internet using public is able to legally view the content in question.
That a small percentage of people can't... OK that's true. but bringing that up as a reason why piracy can be justified doesn't really seem conductive to a cross-discussion.
What is a small percentage to you? Its extremely frustrating that there is basically no way to access large swaths of Japanese media because the companies don't think there is much market outside the country. They even go so far as to block their biggest stars on youtube. I thought it was extremely ironic that AKB's Fortune Cookie video was not watchable in the US on youtube, when the entire premise of the video was that people all around the world were posting videos on youtube doing the dance featured in the video because they had such a global reach.
Good luck finding anything but the most popular animes legally in the US. I don't think I've ever even seen a Japanese drama through a legal means.
for what it's worth, i use torrents regularly, I just don't see this reason to be conductive to the argument.
If a title is not available in a region, the copyright holder implicitly doesn't care at all. They care about piracy of their goods in regions where it's legally available for purchase. So sticking to arguments that revolve around that seem to make more sense, otherwise you are "preaching to the choir" as it were.
c) Watch another movie, paying its creator
(possibly the same as in option a)
If the minority's of people do that, the shared culture is going to stay, but it will ignore the movie of options a) and b), and include that of option c).
The culture surrounds the media. Changing the media changes the culture and even within sub-cultures those sub-cultures themselves have niches. Sometimes cultures even rise out of a singular media.
You can't just replace "Vocaloid Music" (Miku, Rin, Luka) with "other synthetic vocals". It's "similar" but it is not "the same".
The cultures around Gumi and other Megpoids differs from that around Miku and other Vocaloids.
Yes, _we_ can. If some group, by the way they choose to distribute their product, indicates it doesn't want to be part of culture, culture can easily adapt to include other music.
When a billionaire buys a Van Gogh or it is sold to some museum far, far away, we look at other van Goghs. If all van Goghs were to get out of reach, some other painter would be brought to the spotlight and become _the_ painter.
(And edit on my grandfather post: s/minority/majority)
>by the way they choose to distribute their product, indicates it doesn't want to be part of culture,
That isn't how that works. Cultures get built around things - those things don't "choose" their culture. Even creators do not get to "choose" the culture their work belongs to. For example, Pepe the frog. Contrast the popular 4chan/pol/ usage of Pepe the frog with the viewpoints of the creator of Pepe the frog. Even the artist recently drawing Pepe taking a piss on Donald Trump won't stop or change the culture that has built up around the meme. Sometimes trying to not be part of a culture backfires. Ben Garrison learned that the hard way. The more he asked 4chan to stop - the harder 4chan pushed. Eventually it seems like he has given up fighting against it.
>When a billionaire buys a Van Gogh or it is sold to some museum far, far away, we look at other van Goghs. If all van Goghs were to get out of reach, some other painter would be brought to the spotlight and become _the_ painter.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Not too big into art culture and don't really care if I have a cheap $30 copy or the $30mm original of the painting. If I wanted a van Gogh I'd get a van Gogh. Even if it weren't an original.
I can't edit any longer - but I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this issue. I do not think you can change the focal point of a culture without changing the culture itself - as the focal point is what defines the culture.
I think it is the case and it is where Amazon video is winning seats. Basically if you want to watch any of the IMDB top 250 films you can do so using the Amazon Video app on Roku or many smart TVs by renting it for $4 - $6. (depending on SD or HD).
People may spend more time binge watching TV than watching films on Netflix. But they should be concentrating on customer satisfaction, not racking up viewers.
My girlfriend already jokes that if you search for a film on Netflix they realise and immediately remove it. Then you get the dreaded "Films related to X" search result.
It's really really bad if Netflix gets a reputation for having a small catalogue, even if most of it is rarely watched.
It's kind of like Linux vs Windows. Linux has 90% of the apps you need. But when you need Solidworks or Altium or GTA 5 or whatever you think "pff screw this I will use windows". With Netflix it has lots of stuff but when you search for Die Hard or 12 Angry Men or whatever... well let's just say I treat Netflix as a moral way of paying for Bittorrent.
> But they should be concentrating on customer satisfaction, not racking up viewers.
I assure you; they are.
Despite the very vocal people around the HN community to talk a lot about hating the selection, the data says that most people are pretty happy with it--and only getting happier.
Where is this data? Are you talking about the hilarious statistic that 94% of subscribers are happy with the service?
I tried to watch a film last night and searched for all of these very popular films.
* Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
* 28 Days Later
* Go
* Gladiator
* American Beauty
* Speed
Then I gave up. When you try 6 very well known films and none of them are on there it changes how you think of the service from "most stuff is on there" (like Spotify for example) to "I have to search Netflix to find something I like" (like a normal TV channel). It's very different.
The data is internal; I obviously don't have access to it anymore. That said, having worked at many companies in my career, I can tell you that Netflix is far more data-driven than any company I've personally experienced--even to a fault since pure data-driven thinking is where Qwikster came from.
You don't like the selection. You're looking for films. Films make up a very small percentage of Netflix streaming content and Netflix streaming usage.
If you are still thinking of Netflix (the streaming service) as "most stuff is on there" then I'm happy to see you reframe your thinking--it's not now, nor has it ever been, that.
I think there is merit to you netflix windows analogy, but Netflix is just entertainment. Comparing it to something with financial leverage is not a clean comparison. I will never be forced to own a video streaming account with access to a specific or lose my house. I am routinely forced to own a windows pc for some specific piece of shitware or I will lose my house.
"Bread and butter" - there's no differential income stream from anything on Netflix. It's just two bits' worth - streaming yes/no, DVD yes/no.
I'd be hard pressed to find the link to support this, but my understanding is that DVD/BluRay sales are the mechanism by which the "last mile" of movie finance is accomplished.
My wife and I recently made the decision to stop Netflix. We'd kept a tally and Amazon Video was used more than 10:1 than Netflix. We do have Amazon Prime ( which I suspect Amazon cannot keep up forever ). But for movie movies, we still DVR them from cable.
The Netflix experience is like giving up on the new releases portion of Blockbuster and trolling through the back of the store for older titles, leaving disappointed. From here, it smells like artificial scarcity. But I'm not buying too many more titles on physical media - I don't want to store them and if I ever get a buyer figured out, I'll sell a lot of what we already have.
Most of what we'd buy are the TCM offerings of classic movies.
It's $10/month, peanuts considering what you're getting. Your careful analysis of a purchase that's doable using the literal change falling out of your pocket is not representative of the folks who purchase Netflix (not representative of any purchasing group, really).
What is the point in talking about that, though? Giving your anecdote that you don't want to watch anything on Netflix falsely implies your anecdote is statistically significant, when in reality it isn't.
What is the definition of "binge-watching"? For me, that would be three episodes of Bojack Horseman, or about 75 minutes of content. On the other hand, I would happily watch a Tarantino film, say 140 minutes, in one sitting. I guess it doesn't count as a "binge" but it keeps me in front of Netflix longer than a television show.
Not quite. Iirc, Bojack has 10-12 episodes per season. If you watch the first three today, you will watch the next three tomorrow. If you watch django unchained today, that's not a guarantee you will rewatch kill bill tomorrow.
Binge-watching is putting on a show and leaving it on for a good chunk of the day. Think watching a whole season of a show over a weekend, so at least 4 hours per day. And you can do this with every original Netflix series from the first day the show is launched - you don't have to wait a week per episode.
I'm really surprised that this model works for them. I simply get bored!
I love the Marco Polo series, but I've only once watched more than two episodes back to back. Likewise for Jennifer Jones. Guess I'm just not a binge watcher.
OTOH, I have no problem watching a 2:20 long movie or even two of them back to back. Movies simply draw me in more than episodic TV does.
Funny, I'm the exact opposite. I binged on Mr. Robot recently, and did similar for some of the other netflix/prime shows in the past. It's something akin to that Civilization "just-one-more-turn" phenomenon.
To me, "binge-watching" is along the lines of watching a season of a TV show over a weekend.
I don't think of watching several movies in a row as binging them, I'd call that a "movie marathon" especially if they were a series (e.g. watching a trilogy like Lord of the Rings one after another).
Isn't it more expensive for Netflix if people are spending more time watching it? Obviously they need to watch it enough to be willing to continue paying the subscription, but it seems like movies might be enough to do that.
I don't think binge-watching, as many people here are defining it (watching a whole season in a weekend) is useful to Netflix.
What is useful to Netflix is watching a whole show over the course of several weeks, a few episodes at a time.
The primary way my wife and I consume shows is to watch a few episodes a day, every day, until we've watched from the first to the last available episode. We are currently watching through The Good Wife on Netflix which, at 134 episodes, will take us about 2 months.
For me that's a good deal, because it would cost about £35 for a DVD boxset (yes, I could shop around, but only if my time is worthless), while Netflix only costs me £18 for 2 months. For Netflix that's a good deal, because they've got 2 months of subscription from me for 1 show.
Once we've finished with The Good Wife, we'll find another show to watch.
We watch about the equivalent of a movie each night, but we aren't going to watch enough movies in a month to make it feel worth keeping the subscription. Movies require a larger investment, because the characters and world are new and different with each one. With a TV show the characters are recurring, so you don't have to invest as much, which makes them easier to watch a lot of in a row.
Bandwidth costs for Netflix, despite the insanely high usage, are a drop in the bucket compared to the licensing of the content (which is not priced per view or per viewer--so the more people watching more of the content, the less the "cost per stream")
Do people not binge watch movies on Netflix because of something inherent in the form, or because Netflix doesn't make continuous play of related sets of movjrs, especially serial franchises (where it would make sense just as it does for TV series) possible, both because it doesn't support it as the default (or even an optional) mode in the UI as it does for TV series and because it also rarely has whole franchises in its library to support it even manually?
It's definitely more in the first category, and the psychology behind watching shows vs movies:
1) We live in a multitasking world where people are half watching netflix and half on their phone. TV plots typically develop in smaller chunks, requiring less attention.
2) Most people do not set out to binge watch multiple hours of netflix, but instead get caught up in the shows. Movies feel like a larger commitment, even though many times people watch for the same total length of time.
3) Binge watching often happens because the TV show model is to often end on a cliff hanger.
I really wish Netflix had the YouTube-esque ability for users to make and share playlists.
All the Star Trek series and films are on Netflix. Wouldn't it be great to have a playlist of every episode by original air date? (So you don't get confused when Deep Space 9 refers to an event in First Contact?) Wouldn't it be awesome to have a playlist of only the top 20 Voyager episodes, so you don't have to suffer through the awful ones?
It surprises me they haven't implemented this. If they did, any user could solve your problem of putting a movie series in order.
Of course I also wish they had a "back 30 seconds" button for when you miss a line of dialog, and that's never been done either. Sigh. It seems like all their revenue is going into making Marvel shows and zero into software development.
I think their UI is purposefully bad to make it hard to notice titles coming in and out of circulation, as the deals they have with different production companies expire.
Their UI (which I worked on heavily) is actually VERY optimized and an immense amount of testing around success metrics goes into it.
It has far less to do with "not noticing" and much more to do with the algorithms knowing what you might want to watch that you didn't already know you wanted to watch.
Serialized fiction has a fundamentally different structure from feature films. Even in film series, you don't typically have the sort of multi-layered narrative with cliffhangers that keeps people going from one to the next. Star Wars ends with the good guys winning and the death star blowing up. There's no reason to straight to Empire Strikes Back.
There aren't that many film series or sets where you can easily jump in and out of attentiveness, like you can with a TV show once you're familiar with the characters. I do remember having the James Bond marathons on TV all day, but anything less formulaic means having to make a substantial investment of attention when starting a new "chunk".
I suspect there’s a question of causality. Do people get netflix so they can binge-watch, or do they binge-watch because it’s the only thing netflix does well?
Another point is that it's good to encourage viewers to watch popular shows, so that caching at the edge works better. Having a rotating, small number of AAA movies at a time encourages this. Multiple browse categories based on current popularity encourage this. While Netflix offers tons of choices, the network is most efficient if everyone is watching the same thing, and and it's not at all surprising if Netflix guides people toward that behavior.
Over the years, I've watched all of Daredevil, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise.
They have all of: Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The West Wing, Cosmos, Planet Earth, Sherlock, House, Friends, The Office, Parks and Recreation, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and more.
Plus tons of their in-house and supposedly top-quality shows: House of Cards, Daredevil, Narcos, Orange is the New Black, Making a Murderer, and more.
It sucks that Netflix is pushing their own content as a solution. Don't get me wrong, some of their own content is great, but I don't want to subscribe to 10 different streaming services that all have their own original content, I want to subscribe to one.
Netflix--and others, like Amazon Prime--are becoming less and less worthwhile, and piracy is becoming more and more convenient again.
Last weekend my wife and I wanted to watch the movie Goat. It was pretty recently in theaters, so we didn't expect it to be on Netflix. We searched HBO Now, Hulu, Starz, and all of the other video streaming services that we have (and pay money for!). We found two options - rent it on Google Play Movies, or rent it through Amazon Prime. Now, we wanted to Chromecast it, and Amazon (to the best of my knowledge) does not allow you to do that, presumably because they want you to buy their Fire TV instead.
So, we spent the $6 to rent the movie on Google Play. About 10 minutes into the movie, the quality plummeted and playback stopped with an error code. We called customer support and they talked us through possible solutions for ~35 minutes before we gave up and asked for a refund. It wasn't a problem with our Wifi, since Netflix/Youtube and other services worked just fine, it was a problem with Google Play streaming to the Chromecast.
After searching and trying for over an hour to watch a movie legally using paid services, we went to putlocker, plugged an hdmi cable into my computer and streamed it just fine. We really, really tried to do it the legal way and pay money for the content we wanted to watch, but it was far too complicated to even find a place to watch it, let alone actually successfully watch it. I was reminded a lot of this comic http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones throughout the whole thing. All of this fragmentation is going to become a huge problem again, when piracy is just so easy and convenient.
The only service I pay for is a VPN. It allows me to access any tv show or movie I could dream of without any problems ;).
No but seriously, it is sad that with my setup I can search something and stream it instantly, or have it download and automatically be renamed and organized ready to watch on Plex. TV shows can be grabbed automatically and alert me when they are ready. I can use Plex and stream them anywhere in the world right from my own server, and now they even have beta for streaming from amazon cloud so you don't even need your own server.
I hate that my most convenient option is the illegal one. I'd gladly pay. I have no problem paying the $10 a month for Spotify. I never illegally download music anymore because of it. I used to do so before, but now it is so easy and accessible with Spotify that I see no need to.
The Canadian version of a service like Netflix has even less content than the American versions. We barely would find anything we wanted on it, and ultimately got rid of it pretty fast. Just wasn't worth the cost. We had to resort to no longer searching for things we wanted as they rarely had them, and instead just viewing what they DID have.
Edit: I should also add that I am a student on a fairly tight budget, and despite this I am willing to pay for a service monthly to get access to these things. That is why I pay for Spotify. However, I am definitely not going to spend money at multiple video streaming services, and then have to go on some wild hunt to find the content I'm interested in.
> It wasn't a problem with our Wifi, since Netflix/Youtube and other services worked just fine, it was a problem with Google Play streaming to the Chromecast.
Movies you buy/rent in Google Play Movies are actually available in YouTube as well. There's a section in YouTube called "Purchases." I've used this to stream Google Play Movies purchases on my Fire TV. I would imagine the same would work for an Apple TV since it has the YouTube app.
I know it is a cumbersome workaround, and that a company as big as Google really should have a product that just works, but since you mentioned that YouTube works fine, it is a possible workaround that might save you 35 minutes next time.
That is the best and straightforward workaround. Thanks for letting us know that we can rent on Play and watch it on YouTube. I just didn't know that's possible.
If you want to rent the movie or show on Amazon Video but are avoiding using that option just because it doesn't work on chromecast then here is what you can do :
1. Install Amazon video app on phone. Here's link for Android : https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/splash/sd/t/appstore
2. Cast your Android screen (mirror) to chromecast via OS's cast option.
3. Go to Amazon Video app and play show. Do a full screen view.
In addition to this, most smart TVs ( I have an LG from 2013 ) have an Amazon app, so no need to screen cast. I use this to watch directly on TV content from Amazon. Never had any issue with playback, even on slower lines ( now I have fiber, is always HD ).
I have to admit, nice trick with Google Play and Youtube, will check too.
Yes. It's essentially mirroring the phone screen so you've got to focus on watching movie or a show and not worry about playing with the phone notifications. That's a trade-off.
There are two issues here, the fragmentation of the services, and poorly implemented services.
I have really really tried to use Google Play for video because it seems to work on the broadest array of devices, but the service itself is a second rate experience. Too many clicks, laggy unresponsive UI, silly JS driven pages that require reloading in order to start working again...
I too really want to do things the way that supports content producers, but the middlemen are doing such a poor job that it's difficult to get my money to them.
I don't know why Google doesn't make any effort to tell users this, but: you can access all of your Google Play video through YouTube. Just search YouTube for the thing you bought, and you should find the full-length legal video marked as "purchased" that you can watch with YouTube's interface, casting and all.
We rented a movie on Google Play and this was literally the only way we could watch it. It didn't even show up in our library on Google play. I have no idea but I was just lucky to have thought to check YouTube as well.
Another sub-aspect of the poor implementation is oppressive DRM and player restrictions.
Netflix and Prime are finally acceptable on Linux thanks to Pipelight but that solution's not for everyone.
If you want a single settop box, you might run PI with XBMC/Kodi but you can't get DRM'ed things on there. So you need a Roku or AppleTV for your DRM, a chromecast for things coming from a PC, and you still need a Kodi for your personal needs.
There's a lot of fragmentation, but things are getting better. You can do all that with a FireTV stick for $40. It runs DRM apps, has a Kodi fork MrMC in the store (or you can sideload Kodi), Miracast for general screen casting, apps for other casting protocols, a YouTube app for Google content.
Against Balkanization, Fan.TV and other guide apps combine all your streaming sources and antenna TV into one. And everything can be controlled from your phone.
There's still room for improvement, but we have it pretty good. The biggest problem is figuring out what hardware and software you need with all the options out there. We're just spoiled for choice.
This is what I use, and I love how responsive the Amazon FireTV remote is. I have the FireTV hidden behind my TV and the remote works from anywhere in the room regardless of if I'm pointing it at the device or not.
Now they use a accelerator/gyroscope and a dedicated RF channel to provide input. Plus that you can transmit also more data ( Wii remotes send the battery status too, for example ).
Does make me wonder if that evil bastard genius Steve Jobs was still alive, if he would be able to fix this situation.
I actually think Apple is still doing OK on the technology front, and the Apple TV UI seems to have the right ideas.
But actually negotiating the content licenses is something calling for the full power of the Reality Distortion Field. Like how Jobs was able to convince the music industry to provide all their content because it would be available "just on Macs", or to get AT&T to give full control of the iPhone to Apple, in exchange for an exclusive over Verizon.
What would be the negotiating play to trick (I mean, convince its in their best interest) video content owners to make all their intellectual property available from a single excellent UI?
> We really, really tried to do it the legal way and pay money for the content we wanted to watch, but it was far too complicated to even find a place to watch it, let alone actually successfully watch it.
Why didn't you just stream Amazon or Play Movies from the computer since you plugged it in anyways? How was stealing it more convenient?
Because after having such a terrible experience they went with one that, should things go wrong, doesn't entail spending 35 minutes on the phone with support for them to get a refund?
...and it didn't work. I get frustrated after having to spend ten minutes talking to a customer rep. Half an hour of an evening wasted trying to resolve something that shouldn't be an issue in the first place would leave me seething and agitated.
Now, there are certainly some out there who would soldier on despite all these inconveniences and still go through the trouble of finding another legal avenue (OP did say he spent another hour searching for it), but if your business plan relies on people taking the legal route just because it's the "right" thing to do, experience be damned, well, you'll have piracy at levels that you do now.
It would be ideal if they wouldn't have to spend time, but just because things don't work it doesn't mean you're now entitled to take something you didn't pay for.
If the blender I bought doesn't work I should be able to take it back to store and get a refund. But just because I spent 30 minutes driving back to store, that doesn't mean I can just take another one from the shelves and walk out without paying.
It's amazing that some still don't acknowledge this point. It's the difference between 99% (or higher) [1] profit margins and less than 10% profit margins, in the case of a kitchen blender.
Even more so, the 99% profit margin isn't the whole story, as torrents are arguably more efficient (by making use of spare bandwidth among the populace). The 1% marginal costs for legally downloaded media primarily exists only because of the company's need to tightly control distribution and charge for access. With torrents, this requirement disappears and the marginal costs drop even closer to zero.
But you are allowed to, because as long as you don't greatly abuse the privilege the law will not penalize you at all.
Do while the legal system does not say he has a legally enforceable claim to watch the movie, the same system will not punish him for doing so.
Now, if we are talking morally, I'm going to guess we have different moral systems and thus not reach the same conclusion.
P.S. for the blender example, it would be more as if his purchased blender didn't work so he used a working one to turn his blender into a working copy, while the second blender continues to sit on the shelf for someone else to buy.
Being the 'chaotic good' person that I am, my family stopped trying to view entertainment content the normal legal way many years ago. I've been using a torrent friendly VPS in eastern Europe for quite a few years now to avoid any complications.
That, plus a little web service that presents youtube videos without commercials, gives us pretty reliable access to most anything we ever want to watch. The downside is that it's not setup to be 'live'. It can take a few hours to torrent it and then securely transfer home. But honestly that's kind of a feature.
To be clear, if there was an always works and reasonably priced way to legally view content, we would jump right on it.
I agree with your post. Had a bad experience with the chromecast recently, but I managed to figure out that it required an update (through the android cast app) even though it did not indicate it anywhere else. I guess they assumed that it would automatically update frequently enough that my problem would be a rare edge case, but I'd had it unplugged for about a year and wanted to use it for a new TV. Haven't had a TV for ages, I learned a few days later it had the cast protocol built into it out of the box...
Even with 1g internet I have had issues streaming from some sites which always astounds me. However what really is annoying is that it is so much cheaper and with better quality to just redbox a movie than stream it.
I cannot recall a recent movie I have streamed simply because most of the time it can be a third to more than half the price of buying a blu-ray.
That's funny as my wife and I have probably streamed hundreds of items with our Chromecast from various sources including the Play Store and have never had the slightest issue. We do have quality issues with Netflix sometimes, but its pretty rare and seems to be related to choppy wifi connections due to interference (since moving to 5ghz wifi we haven't had issues - which may be coincidental). Online services have issues sometimes. I think we need to accept life will have the occasional inconvenience. I bought a $35,000+ car that had engine trouble one year in and had to arrange with the warranty people at the dealer about replacing the engine. A $3 movie not playing isn't remotely comparable with that, but we accept that cars need work sometimes, so why the double-standard for IT systems? You just gotta accept that life is not perfect and not to over-react or toss out the baby with the bathwater.
I think you're playing up an edge case and frankly that seems disingenuous to me. It seems like every pro-pirate person has some shaggy dog story that "validates" their pirating. I also take issue with how 'easy' it is to pirate. Sure, if its for a current hot item and everyone is seeding it, but once the fanboys go away the seeders are mostly gone and now you're waiting hours (or even days!) to pirate something. Worse, you may expect a lawsuit from the copyright holders as torrents expose your real IP address unless you're using an offshore VPN or VPS which also adds a another layer of inconvenience and monthly billing.
Currently, we have two FireTV boxes and two Chromecasts for our two TV's and they're borderline magical. We have so much content on tap that "just works" that the argument of "its better to pirate" is pretty unconvincing to people without a political agenda. I also want to be part of a system that pays investors and producers of said content for moral and practical reasons. We don't need a Sega Dreamcast-like situation where the pirates kill platforms, hurt competition, and create disincentives to innovate, distribute, and create.
Listen mate. I am not playing up an edge case here and even if I were, you are very much doing the same thing.
When I pay for a service, travel frequently, and cannot use that service because of licensing restrictions due to ads, that is a problem. That tells me these streaming services put more stock into my viewing ads than accessing content I am already paying for. I am not pro-pirate. Nor is your car analogy relevant. You are comparing apples and oranges (the business models aren't remotely the same and the value propositions are completely different, to me, that is disingenuous.
I agree, it's an anecdotal rationalization, as is yours. Yet, it's also true that creators actively frustrate efficient use of distribution platforms in support of their bad business models.
Given how selective enforcement works, I would say you did it the legal way in as much as so.eone doing 70 on a 65 interstate while everyone else is doing about 70 is legally driving. As long as the infringement isn't massive it is largely tolerated and if the law as written was fully enforced, it would result in the law quickly being changed. Much like if they started handing out tickets to everyone who went even a 1 mph over the limit the law would change.
Now, I don't like selective enforcement and think it has many problems, but it does seem to be how our legal system functions these days.
Well, if you want to keep using a Google service, you could open Google.com and search for the mkv you want. Use intitle:index.of to get directory listings. Tons of stuff on Google.
I highly recommend using something like fan.tv (I don't know of any competitors, but I assume they exist) for finding where content is available. It looks like it doesn't include Google Play, but shows that Goat is available on Amazon and Vudu, and makes it easy to compare prices.
There're probably other services it doesn't support (which limits its usefulness), but I've been using it for years.
Yeah I'm not sympathetic. The alternative to finding (and failing to find) a service to watch the show could possibly be - not watching it? The conclusion 'naturally we then had to steal it' isn't entirely justified.
Shoplifting is easy and convenient too. Next time you forget your wallet at the corner store. Just sayin.
Devils Advocate: The alternative of "not consuming" digital products is less valuable to creators than "consuming for free."
Allow me to reference a very famous Bill Gates quote on Chinese piracy of software:
"And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
There are more ways to monetize a media property than pay-per-view so to speak. Merchandising is a big one, not to mention word of mouth marketing.
I don't know. I think there is a difference between applications and platforms like Adobe Software and Windows which often get pirated but at times hugely cost prohibitive to new entrants (e.g. students, young people) vs pirating movies/shows. I'm persistently left unconvinced by moral arguments on show/movie piracy, especially in an age where there's no shortage of new content being created, be it on YouTube, your local bookstore, or your RSS feed. I still have a huge backlog of podcasts/books to catch up, let alone movies I still haven't seen.
I'm not trying to make a moral argument one way or the other.
My point is strictly relating to the business end result of the following three alternatives:
1) DO pay for and DO consume digital product.
2) NOT pay for but DO consume digital product.
3) NOT pay for and NOT consume digital product.
Only alternatives #1 and #2 provides a way to monetize the consumer, either via direct monetization of the product (ie pay-per-view) or indirect monetization (ie merchandizing, willingness to pay for new versions of the product in the future, etc), or by leveraging that consumer as a marketing agent to bring in additional consumers (ie that consumer's best friend ended up being monetizable when previously they would have never heard of your media property).
Because there is no expense to the business when a digital product is pirated, then intelligent business management would always prefer option 2 to option 3. That said, business management cannot publicly endorse this preference without the threat of converting #1 consumers into #2 consumers (which are still more valuable than #3 but arguably less than #1).
The other aspect is which of alternatives #2 and #3 point out through tracked metrics that a business decision may not be working as intended? itunes, Netflix and others have reduced piracy, if this kind of balkanisation of content shows a large uptick in piracy, are they likely to back off of it more so than just reduced viewership?
Regardless of whether there's a moral argument or not at the individual level, at an aggregate there's plenty of evidence to suggest that piracy will be widespread so long as the legal channels to obtain the content are more cumbersome.
There's a clear correlation between ease of access and reduced piracy in music and games. TV and movies are in a funny place right now where in some ways the situation is arguably worse than it was 10 years ago - back then you could be reasonably assured that you could find whatever you wanted at Blockbuster and it would work in your DVD player. Nowadays finding which providers have the rights to the content you want to watch, and whether they can be watched on your proprietary devices can be a nightmare.
Meanwhile, the piracy route for the most part works completely seamlessly. Using Popcorn Time for me is a better experience than the legal route - that's indicative of major problems.
Piracy and larceny are entirely different crimes. Nobody "stole" anything, in this particular situation. In order for something to be "stolen", the victim must lose something that they already had. You might try to argue that streaming services lost a sale, but they never had the sale and they make the process so arduous that they would never get the sale.
To be clear, I am not promoting piracy, it does pose ethical problems. The metaphor to stealing simply fails to illuminate any of them.
The 'book value' of items in the corner market is negligible. The real value is in having that soda available, cold and ready for you. And in marketing that fact.
So in a very real sense, stealing the soda and stealing the movie are hardly any different?
Except in this analogy you have to spend time to find which corner store claims to have the soda you want and then pay 6 bucks just to enter the corner store. Once inside you have to spend more of your time trying to fix their fridge so your soda is cold. After you can't fix the fridge they give you your six bucks back on the way out. But your time costs are never compensated.
> So in a very real sense, stealing the soda and stealing the movie are hardly any different?
But again, stealing a soda voids the ability for someone else to obtain the good. "Stealing" a movie via piracy doesn't neglect someone else from obtain the good. This is the GP's point - stealing implies there is something of loss.
I can't believe people are still equating copyright infringement with physical theft. Didn't that tired old argument die a long time ago ? If not, why not ?
> they make the process so arduous that they would never get the sale
It's all too easy to make such a claim - particularly if you are the one benefiting from piracy.
If the couple chose not to watch the movie, they aren't going to sit and stare at a blank wall for two hours. Maybe they would have watched a movie on regular TV with ads - thereby benefiting the businesses who placed the ads. Maybe they would have watched a movie on Netflix who therefore gave a small percentage of the Netflix subscription fee to the movie studio. And maybe a month later Google fix the technical problems and the couple decide to pay to watch the original movie.
The point is that if the couple hadn't downloaded the movie illegally, somebody somewhere would probably have been financially better off.
Why pay for something which requires no resources to acquire?
If I hire a programmer I get software from the programmer's time. The programmer's time is an expended resource.
If I buy a Coke I get a bottle full of liquid. There was a loss of resources to get it me.
Once that programmer has already written the software there is no cost to duplicate it infinitely. Same with movies.
Since it requires no resources why is there a distributor? A middleman has to work hard to provide his value. Netflix does with impeccable service and high reliability. In this case Google failed. Torrents use otherwise unused bandwidth (ie no resource) and are the baseline for value that these middlemen must compete with.
This isn't forgetting a wallet when you get to the store. This is going to the store, buying the product, and then having the product just magically evaporate once you get half way home. Then you go back to the store, ask for help with your disappearing product, and be told they can't help you. Your analogy is terrible.
I've made that argument myself, but agree that the current video streaming situation is just dumb. Could you explain me why that analogy is wrong? I understand there is no damage done as in, they don't have less money than they had before, but they still have less money than they would have if i bought/rented the video.
That is why the analogy is wrong. If you're in a situation where you're definitely not going to buy it (because nobody will take your money and give you the product, for example) then there's no difference to them if you watch it or not.
Imagine I really want your car, so I take it. Or imagine I really want your car, so I use a magic wand to make an exact duplicate of it. Are those two scenarios at all comparable?
> (because nobody will take your money and give you the product, for example)
This argument fall apart in many of the examples cited in this thread because most of the time, those movies are available digitally for a price. The fact is that most people just don't want to pay that price so they use other means to watch the movie.
The argument works equally well if you simply wouldn't buy it.
The issue, of course, is whether or not you're correctly estimating whether you would end up buying it if you didn't pirate it. But if you take it as given that you wouldn't buy it, then there's no loss.
Because you go into a store and take something that store on longer has against its will. Copyright infringement is just someone else willingly duplicating data that you want, while the entity that holds a state granted monopoly to duplication (not necessarily creator) has not authorized the transfer.
One is robbery of scarce resources, one is a legal framework around imposing scarcity on something that is not naturally scarce.
You can steal a movie - in the traditional sense of the word - by breaking into MGM / Disney / Universal's internal network and copying the movie out from their own internal servers. This does happen, where scene releases of unreleased movies happen, often done by employees with access to get access to these films prematurely. That is the only situation remotely comparable to the shoplifting scenario, because in the normal piracy scenario nobody is not voluntarily participating (the original buyer of the movie who then shared it did a voluntary transaction, then violated the distribution terms given them when distributing it to others voluntarily).
Violating a contract and violence are on entirely different planes of ethics.
If transfer of ownership does not actually occur when a digital product is "purchased", then how can one argue that ownership is lost when a digital product is "stolen"? In both cases, what is happening involves licensed use, not ownership. What is lost when a digital product is pirated is not ownership, AKA property rights; what is lost is potential demand for licensing rights. What is lost when a physical item is stolen is actual possession, which would enable one to use or sell the actual item. Losing actual possession of the item will also cause loss of demand, though, since someone else having possession enables them to use or sell the actual item in competition with the legitimate owner, who is concerned with maintaining market demand for the physical items.
They dont have less money than before because its either you cant watch it in this case or you watch it illegally. Nobody loses money, its lost opportunity at best.
The reason the comparison is objectionable is because 'theft' is not the same as 'failing to pay a fee'. Theft implies a non-duplicatable object has passed from the possession of one entity to the possession of another thus depriving the first entity of any use or advantage from it.
While we might disagree on the moral shading of copyright infringement can we agree that piracy and theft are different things?
...and there's the convenient, highly abstract argument. When wanting free stuff, no mental gymnastic is too hard.
I'm a pragmatist. I see folks wanting to avoid disappointment (can't see favorite show) suddenly becoming theoretical philosophers. Like a 12-year-old deciding their older brother's belongings really belong to everybody, because socialism or whatever.
But it's not interesting to you that the gross majority of people, even people who lean to your opinion, are constructing abstractions in order to reason about the problem?
If you consider yourself a pragmatist, you should also consider that you have under analyzed the issue at hand and that trying to generalize digital media with anecdotes of exchange for goods or services in meat space is inappropriate.
Your position sounds more rooted in laziness than pragmatism, at this rate.
"I'm a pragmatist. I see folks wanting to avoid disappointment (can't see favorite show) suddenly becoming theoretical philosophers."
I can understand (though not agree with) the point of view that people are selfish and just make up excuses to justify to themselves and others that they are in the right whenever they take some action that benefits themselves.
But I don't understand why you would attribute those selfish, self-justifying motives only to those that make copies of digital media but not to those who proclaim to "own" them or who decry copying as theft?
Wouldn't your view also have to apply to the whole concept of ownership, which you'd have to dismiss as a pretension to "theoretical philosophy"?
JoeAltmaier didn't actually say, "piracy and shoplifting are both examples of theft". It was more like, "piracy and shoplifting are examples of taking something valuable to which you are not entitled simply because it's convenient".
This kind of piracy existed before. Remember sharing music CDs with friends? Remember libraries over buying books? Remember letting your friends borrow your comics or reading photocopies?
Well, our corporate overlords are trying really hard to make these things a criminal offense in the future. How DARE you share a piece of content you bought with another? The licensing terms forbid it!
Sharing a piece of original physical media is different than sharing a photocopy or burned copy. Sharing the physical media with the license attached to it is legal, making a copy is not as you can't create an additional license (unless allowed by the publisher) with the copied media.
You seem to be missing the point that you continually bringing it up does not make it accurate or even relevant. You wouldn't download a car! This is a dumb argument.
I know this: the subject is complex and many varied and valid arguments are made on all sides.
But amazingly, folks accept whatever argument gives them free entertainment. Objections are suddenly 'irrelevant' when watching their favorite TV show is at stake.
Folks who wouldn't go in the back window of a bar to avoid the cover charge, will gladly go in the back way online to hear their favorite band. And they rely on the (pretty indirect) argument about how the source is generated to rationalize it.
Well if the front door was inconvenient and hard to find, and then I paid for it and the front door wouldn't work, then yeah maybe I would go in the back window. Your argument is so flawed, and it really seems like with your comment above that you just are looking for a reason to call the younger generation "entitled".
Stop using physical examples, they don't correlate to a digital good that can be duplicated digitally, with no physical presence.
The word "took" when applied to physical objects implies that only one person (the one who took it) has that object, and the one it was taken from no longer has it.
In the digital world that can only happen if the original is deleted or destroyed, which does not happen in the case of a copy or a "pirating". The original is still in the possession of the "owner", but now also in the possession of the copier. The "owner" does not lose his own copy, so nothing is "taken" from him.
It's analogous, in the physical world, to making a photograph of a photograph. The original photograph still exists, and the "owner" of the original photograph does not have anything "taken" from them by the existence of a copy in the possession of someone else (except perhaps in the legal or potential sense -- depending on the laws, the jurisdiction, and the interpretation of those laws -- but certainly not in any kind of physical sense).
I like your photocopying example. I have personally used the library on my school campus to sign out some temporary textbooks they have on hold so that I can take a couple pictures of pages I need, and use those for my classes. Is the publisher losing anything? No, because I was never going to go pay $200 so I could read a couple pages from their textbook.
Yes, they got a refund because they wasted their time to get nothing. Absolutely nothing. They actually were at a loss because they wasted time and got nothing but frustration for it. So yeah, I don't see a reason why they are not entitled to it.
What does the time and effort required matter in anyway in this case? If something is copied, it is copied. They can't lose something they didn't have. If I could clone a car and then I took that cloned car is it still the same as stealing the original car? No, if a friend cloned me their car I don't see how you could even come close to saying it was the same as stealing the car.
Are they entitled to the entertainment? Sure, why not? If they tried to get it already why not. Not to mention in this day in age there is a lot more social pressure to be up to date with current hit tv shows and movies. And sure, you could be "that guy" who doesn't watch these things, but most don't want to be in that group.
So yes, if they tried to get it legally, and the legal system failed and wasted their time, I do see them entitled to try another avenue even if it may not be legal. I would not say the same about a physical item.
Why is the streaming services not the entitled ones in this scenario? According to you they should get payment when their sole contribution was wasting their want-to-be-customers' time.
This is no different from the situation during the US Prohibition era. Pragmatically speaking, the threat of punishment did not cause sufficient change in social behavior or attitudes. The ideal model of using law to manipulate society failed.
I don't necessarily sense any sense of entitlement from it. It's just that the access mechanisms are Byzantine-complex and full of people charging rents.
Rents are completely inherent in entertainment product - it's just that we have a faux facade of competition between services for the charging of rents. This is confusing.
Is that the entitled corporate generation you're disappointed in ? You know, the kind of entitlement that thinks "the author's life plus 70 years" is a reasonable term for copyright length.
How many more works does the author create in the +70 years after death ? If the answer (I suspect) is zero, what possible:
".. promotion of the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
FWIW, sometimes when I forget my wallet at the corner store, the clerk will just let me take the stick of gum because he knows I'm good for it later.
There's a lot of reasons that analogies between mom and pop face-to-face businesses and massively-middleman'd intermediary transactions break down; this is just one of them.
> the clerk will just let me take the stick of gum because he knows I'm good for it later.
So you're still going to pay for it. That's not the same as the story here, where they paid for it, got a refund, then got it for "free". They aren't intending to go to the content creators and hand them $5 for it later.
A portion of it is. But regardless, via pirating nothing goes to the content creators. Not one penny. If you actually like content, at some point you need to pay for it or you won't get more of what you like.
Actually, I'm ok with "pirating" it if they tried to legally get it first. Also, I personally probably wouldn't ask for a refund if I was going to watch it anyway- figuring that what I was doing was morally right I was just hacking the implementation- and the content creators would get their fair share.
I, like you, am disturbed by the "if it's easy to steal then it's ok to steal" argument. It really hurts people who make a living as creatives.
The problem is that it is easier to pirate than it is to do anything else because of the stranglehold that distributors are trying to place on the goods that the creatives are making. The distributors add a negative value to the product that becomes extra cost for the consumer to get his payment to the creator.
My only problem with that is that you have not only paid for the content, but you've paid for the service as well. If you have to provide the service (in the form of finding a equivalent quality of work, receivable in a not inconvenient amount of time, and take the risk of potentially being flagged as a pirate on your ISP or sued by a rights holder), then it gets more complicated. The content creator certainly isn't getting 100% of the fee you've paid - so ultimately you are rewarding both the content creator and the shitty-service provider.
You may be OK losing the provider's portion to assure the creator is paid.
2) the content owners don't lose more money weather it's "stollen" or just not watched at all. (In fact, it's better in some ways since these people will tell their friends about it now who may also watch it)
It's not really equivalent. He paid for the product, but then the store wouldn't let him take it home with him. His end solution probably wasn't legal, but to me it feels morally just.
Your reference to shoplifting is so knee jerk and tired it fails to even apply to this instance
If you read it again you'll see the person paid for the product and then the product they paid for was kept from them
Same thing happened to me, I tried to rent a film on touyube but the stream consistently erred after 2s of low quality viewing.. what really bugged me was I could watch any trending video on the free service without issue on any quality setting but the movie I paid for lacked the same supply attention and was buggy for the entire rental window
Who's going to go after googs for the 6$ I spent trying to watch a movie but an error on touyube stopped me from having the access I paid for?
How is it high ground to withhold sympathy when it is a mega corps stealing from a user?
It really seems to me that the knee-jerk reaction here is the one against the shoplifting analogy. All analogies are approximations; you're meant to focus on the similarities instead of the differences. If you're choosing to focus on the differences, than you're choosing to misunderstand. Why would you do that?
p.s. If you read it again, you'll see that the person asked for a refund. It's somewhat unclear at this point whether that refund was granted, but my interpretation is that they did.
Shoplifting is when someone buys something, then has it withheld from them, then get a refund, then access that product from someone else offering to share it with them?
I guess I was trying to move the conversation away from what I see as a flawed analogy to what I think is technically interesting, and that I have first hand experience with, in that the companies offering paid services fail to support them to the same standard as their free services
For the record the phone time seeking the refund, for me, lacked an appropriate roi so i am out the money and was stunted from exposing myself to the media.. media which the creator and distributor trusted goog with making available to me
There are so many interesting subtleties it's frustrating to bury the conversation in a flawed analogy
To be an issue of entitlement the person would have to say something that sets them apart, akin to: it's ok for me to pirate but for everyone else its bad;
Whereas the gp was just describing their process without applying any opinion on the ethics of others doing the same
an excuse is just an excuse, the special treatment is what makes it entitled
Have you ever pirated anything? If you have then your position would make you the entitled one because you are claiming it is wrong for this person to pirate though you have done so yourself
Why offer your opinion with lazy pithy statements and attempts to compartmentalise complex ideas into a single word?
It reads so demonstrative and finite as if these issues lack any capacity for dialogue
I think your perspective is important to this conversation but I'm unable to access it due to how you are presenting it
Nah. Entitlement is the belief that one is due something unconditionally. Its ego at heart; an entitled person probably has no opinion on what is due others.
Then the confusion arises from you applying your own unique definition stead the one agreed upon by the publically accessible literature chronicling the definitions of words
> We really, really tried to do it the legal way and pay money for the content we wanted to watch, but it was far too complicated to even find a place to watch it, let alone actually successfully watch it.
Hey @Google, @Amazon, @etc., you have UX designers (tons of them). If this problem isn't fixed soon, more will do the same.
Robotguy12 did not describe a UI problem. First there was a licensing problem, then there was a technical playback problem. The movie was nominally legally available, but it might as well not have been, for how hard it was to find and then playback.
The technical problem is relatively easily fixed and probably just an isolated local issue. The licensing problem is a bigger one. For rentals, you have the problem of having to create accounts for all the places it may be, assuming you've even got the searching chops to do it (presumably one gets tired of just trying all of them by hand), and for subscription services you have the even larger problem of accumulating a $10/month service here, $10/month service there until you're talking about real money.
That reminds me, I need to turn off my Hulu service. (Seriously, not just for rhetorical point. Literally gonna go do that next thing. Edit: Yup, just did it.) We're not using it in the current season.
(Edit: Incidentally, Hulu really cut itself off here. Because so many of the shows, even with the paid subscription, only have the last 5 episodes of the most recent season, and then aggressively disappear once the season is over, I have no reason to stick around if I'm not watching anything that's on right now. There's actually two shows that I did not watch as they came out, but might have left on my subscription for if they were still available, but now they're gone from the service like they never existed, so.... cancelled. See ya next season, maybe.)
Is that Hulu making the decision, or the content owners? I'm guessing they're going to keep making the wrong decisions, while the various services throw up their hands trying to deal with the insanity.
As a customer, I don't care. Tone note: I don't mean that snarkily, sarcastically, or dismissively, I simply mean that, I don't care. Or if you prefer, I can't care; there's nothing I can do to fix it short of what I just did.
It really is bizarre to me how protective the entertainment industry can get of its content, in a context that I am paying for it (in fact I buy the Hulu non-commercial plan, upon which they make much more than they ever could dream of with commercials, especially given I tend to watch at most two shows per season on them, so I'm really paying for it). I assume Hulu has some sort of arrangement where payment is based on viewership. Why would a TV show not want all of its episodes from at least the last season up on Hulu, prior to its distribution in some other format?
I'll be specific. I enjoy Penn and Teller's Fool Us; not necessarily my favorite show ever (and yes, I'm aware of the at-least modest amounts of kayfabe going on) but a fine late-night relax-before-bed show. A quick search suggests that it is not currently legally available in any format, though I welcome corrections. What's the motivation for taking it off Hulu? Now they certainly aren't making any money from it.
I mean, I understand greed in the general sense. I understand the principles of differential pricing for different markets and the way the entertainment complex uses time to do that with movies and such. (i.e., it's why movies come out in theatres, then on expensive pay-per-view, then DVDs, then streaming services) What I don't understand is the motivation for taking down content that is not legally available anywhere and making it impossible to make money off of, especially in light of content not likely to be available in any other way in the future (there does not even seem to be DVD sets or anything, there does not seem to be a "downstream" for this to go in the differential pricing). A similar trajectory has been followed with Good Eats, which is only very spottily available legally. (A quick search to make sure I'm not shooting my mouth off shows that seasons 1 and 2 were available but are now $100+ to buy used, because they're out of print.)
Oh, and while this may be perhaps neither here nor there, huge, huge chunks of the show are readily available on Youtube. (Not the paid part, just normal free Youtube.)
The problem is, the whole way licensing is conceived in this industry is not for any individual property to individually generate an income. That's not good enough for studios or networks. They perceive some tremendous added value in the portfolio of shows or movie properties they have to offer. Consumers, of course, don't give a shit about this, as evidenced by their willingness to jump out of cable-land for anything that offers a modicum of greater purchasing power.
Hulu or the network are likely not making any more money off of you watching Penn & Teller's show. Penn & Teller's show is probably less-profitable per-viewer to the network, because Penn & Teller are stars with great agency who can demand a large cut of the pie. Hulu's and the network's incentives are largely to get away with offering you the properties from their portfolio with the lowest market value, without you deciding to cancel entirely. While you and many other readers here are willing to re-evaluate and cancel your streaming subscriptions on a regular basis, I suspect their average consumer does not behave that way.
Parent said "UX" not "UI" problem. UX broadly encompasses all aspects of the experience, not just the UI. Sucky licensing hiccups, buffering, etc. all lead to poor UX.
> Really don't need "UX designers" to tell you any of that
1.) Really? Would love for you to elaborate more. If you don't have a team trying to improve the user experience (i.e. user experience designers) then who will? Will you just wait for you users to tell you there is a problem? If so, then you aren't actively meeting the needs of your users insofar as you are not meeting their goals.
2.) If you are going to downvote me based on an opinion that you have about UX that defeats the primary purpose of downvoting. What I say is true, I work in HCI and UX. You very much need a team who is meeting / understanding the needs of the user. If not, the result is a disconnect between what the user actually needs and what you provide (you being Netflix).
3.) > nor can UX designers fix it. This is just not true. It is the job of UX designers to work closely with the engineering team to meet the needs of the users. I am not sure what experience you have with UX designers, but they should and often do work actively with engineers to "fix it."
So my question for you is: If you don't need UX designers (forgot about the term UX designers as it seems you clearly have a problem with how we are defining a group of people who are actively attempting to design experiences around meeting the needs of the user), then who will you rely on to ensure that the user's needs are being met? The engineers?
1.) I never said you don't need UX designers, I said you don't need UX designers to tell you that your video shouldn't stutter in the middle of playback.
2.) I didn't downvote you, nor did I respond to you.
3.) Yes, exactly. They can tell you there's a problem and monitor whether it's being solved but it's up to the engineers to fix it. Furthermore, I reject your implication that engineers nor anyone who isn't a UX designer (e.g. a PM) is sticking up for the customer. I wasn't belittling UX designers, but you're sure as hell belittling others.
Sorry you have had such a bad experience that you need to attack a strawman to stick up for UX designers. I know the value of UX designers. I stand by my opinion that they don't need to have ANYTHING to do with fixing a video buffering problem, or recognizing that it is a problem.
> The technical problem is relatively easily fixed
except it's not. When content has to flow through umpteen layers of draconian DRM software and hardware, the chances of things going badly are very high. Will the DRM layer in your 2010 tv work with 2020 DRM "standards"? Will some 2016 proprietary DRM solution work on your 2014 OSX that you can't upgrade on your 2009 MacBook Pro?
> The licensing problem is a bigger one.
The licensing problem is the original one from where all the madness flows, but it's actually the simplest one to fix from a technical standpoint: Hollywood just has to write simpler contracts and poof, everything else fixes itself.
> Now, we wanted to Chromecast it, and Amazon (to the best of my knowledge) does not allow you to do that, presumably because they want you to buy their Fire TV instead.
It works on a phone or tablet if you cast the whole screen. Might work on a laptop the same way.
It "works", but it can be really flaky. I've used it to watch at least 2 movies, but at that point it feels really shitty to be jumping through so many hoops, most likely breaking some law somewhere in the process anyway, just to give someone money for something all the while they actively fight me.
Mine sucks bad enough that since I've transferred all my TVs from HTPCs to chromecasts, I'm google play all the way for on-demand movies. I refuse to have both a chromecast and a firestick on a TV, when the firestick would only be used for amazon. The kids are ok using ipads for amazon content for now, and I still left one HTPC connected.
Also, fuck amazon for changing from digital credit to pantry credit for selecting slow shipping instead of 2-day. Google rewards money makes up for it.
In my experience, Google Play has just been awful for video. Their App offerings on platforms other than their own are also quite horrid, trying to use Play or Youtube on a Roku is just a nightmare. If their goal is to get you to switch to Android TV, for a better experience, they need to rethink their strategy because it's really just driving me away from their services.
The whole no Amazon Services on Google Hardware and no Google Services on Amazon Hardware does neither of them any benefit and only solidifies Roku's position as the dominant platform because it's the only one that's open.
> I don't want to subscribe to 10 different streaming services that all have their own original content
Funny how so many people screamed for al la care programming and now that it's happening everyone is realizing it's actually worse.
I know people hated it, but there is something to be said about traditional TV and how it's consumed. Having a centralized menu/guide of all the content you can view makes it much easier to consume (at least for me). Jumping in and out of services can be kind of annoying, and often times has lead me to forget about content on these services.
My hope is Vue and SlingTV pick up more momentum and we begin to decouple broadcast TV from it's hardware. I don't want to rely on the FCC to do this, as we've seen it fail with CableCard and Tru2Way, so maybe more providers jump on this. I doubt we'd see Comcast doing this, but even if they did and locked it to AppleTV or Roku it'd be a huge step forward.
The issue has never been the cost of the bundle, it's always been the cost of the sub-par hardware.
> Funny how so many people screamed for al la care programming and now that it's happening everyone is realizing it's actually worse.
I wouldn't equate balkanization with a la carte. To stretch the restaurant metaphor, the current situation is akin to taking 5 cab rides between restaurants to cobble together a meal, there's a lot of overhead and waste. Traditional cable television is the restaurant with everything available, but you're required to purchase dessert and coffee to get access to soup and salad.
Even worse; many of the restaurants still make you buy a whole bundle to get the one item you want from them. At the end of the day, in order to get your burger, fries and a shake you've also paid for 3 bowls of rice, 3 plates of nachos, 3 breakfast platters, 3 extra-large sodas, and (nobody knows why) 3 whole durian. Edit: oh, and a year of Prime shipping. Wat?
Switching between Hulu and Netflix on my TV is hardly like taking multiple cab rides. It's actually a far superior experience to cable TV.
Let's not forget that we need healthy competition in this space. We can't, and shouldn't, expect Netflix to just have everything, as good as their product is.
A la carte means that I pay $1 for that episode of that series. If I don't want to see anything else that month I don't pay anything else. What Netflix sells is a subscription. Same as for phones back into the times voice only no data services: pay as you go vs subscription. I want watch as I go.
No, you are confusing pay-per-view with a la carte. The a la carte world everyone was clamoring for was to not have to pay for those channels you didn't watch. You were always going to pay for a subscription for the channel.
I guess but both the a la carte and PPV/VOD options do not operate as expected. The biggest issue is geolocation versus point of purchase, and it's very frustrating and often contradictory.
I live abroad and cannot use virtually any of my Amazon Prime since virtually every non-amazon original is blocked in the country I live in. When I was in the US, I could legally copy the file to my Kindle and view it anywhere (with the ticking timebomb that is the download expiry). While I understand the "technical" difference between this and streaming it while I'm abroad, I feel that it's splitting hairs - ultimate I'm using the same service to watch the same content, just instead of a browser cache it's temporarily loaded on my Kindle.
I understand we got here because of distribution rights,but what I don't understand is how it's still so consumer anti-friendly. I have no means of knowing whether or not I can view a video except to open it and check. With other streaming services, I have no idea whether or not their library is available in my country prior to purchase. It surprises me that this is not a function offered to let you browse the library and get an accurate idea of what you can and cannot watch. It may be a fringe case, but I would imagine for many countries, the idea of constantly moving back and forth between countries with different distirbution deals would be common enough that the support cases alone would justify such a feature.
Yeah, perhaps a Blendle model would be better. I recently got Netflix as a present, one show I like is not on there, we generally watch one show at a time, something like 2-3 episodes a week. So now I won't use it for months, apart from the occasional (once every 3 weeks?) movie. I pay (if it wasn't a present) the same as someone who watches 4 hours of Netflix per day.
My son used to watch Thomas the Tank engine occasionally. Guess what recently got removed...
No but the supply of content keeps going up and the demand can't keep growing. At some point, the price for a generic hour of entertainment has to drop. The cost of producing content is mostly irrelevant.
Because sunk costs are sunk, and fixed costs are fixed. In a commoditized market, the cost of the product is most directly impacted by the marginal cost to produce one additional copy. It doesn't matter if you had $100M in your production budget, or just $1k, because all it takes to make one more copy is a few squirts of electrons and a pinch of network bandwidth.
For digital goods, marginal cost of production is so near to zero that the only thing you can really sell profitably is an artificial legal right to distribute the copies.
As far as I now, the answer is yes to Windows (not Linux), and you can legally watch US stuff in Europe as long as your iTunes account is associated with a US account as far as I know (98% certain I did exactly this a couple of years ago).
However, iTunes is only pay-per-view for some films, and hasn't been pay-per-view for TV episodes for some time. TV episodes you must buy (either one at a time for typically ~$3 or you can buy a whole season, or you can pay the remainder of the season cost if you've already bought episodes from it). Some films are rentable ($3-$6, once you've rented I believe you have 30 days to start watching and then 24 hours to finish/watch as many times as you want), but most are for sale rather than rent. It's not unusual for me to run across a film I'd like to watch, but ends up not being rentable so I have to decide if I want to full-on buy it (which is closer to $15-$20).
Not the greatest solution, but usually better than other solutions for me.
Ok, guess I wasn't clear enough. I'm not a US citizsn, so I guess this means a bunch of VPN trickery && buy gift cards using EBay && enter fake zip codes or is there a simpler way?
I, like many others really want to buy. For me pirating is last option (after "let's just do something else, I don't need to see that movie after all")
> As far as I now, the answer is yes to Windows (not Linux), and you can legally watch US stuff in Europe as long as your iTunes account is associated with a US account as far as I know (98% certain I did exactly this a couple of years ago).
Sorry, but according to content right owners (Sony being named among the chief ones), that's not legal or acceptable. If they say you're not allowed to watch a movie in EU, it's copyright infrigement for you to pay for it in EU via US iTunes account.
I have Netflix and iTunes. I nearly always end up using iTunes. It's more expensive but iTunes UK has a great selection and I only pay when I use it. Also it streams to my Apple TV. For me the additional cost is worth the control and selection.
Although the trend now is for streaming services to offer a subscription to that one good show, though at a pretty steep price. Mr. Robot was something like $25-30 on amazon for season 2.
edit: But some are included at no extra cost. Amazon Prime customers got AMC's Humans the day after it aired for free.
It doesn't exist at all there because they don't have everything. The only place that service exists is via piracy. What we need is a donation page for shows/movies/bands/teams/etc where people who want to pay them for their content, but don't want to pay most of that money to a middle man and don't want to be blocked by the arbitrary distribution of said middle man.
The really funny thing is that people seem to assume a la carte would be cheaper, but there's no economic reason it should be. I get 200 channels from Xfinity, and I watch about 5 of them. My neighbor also watches 5, though a different 5.
That is, I've already proven to Xfinity that I'm willing to pay my monthly cable bill for those 5 channels, so if they offer them a la carte, those 5 will cost about what my monthly cable bill costs.
Honestly, it's a classic capitalism vs. communism argument.
Economically: Many channels will die, which would lower production costs, which in a competitive market lowers consumer costs.
More importantly, channels will actually need to fight for consumers. Which means they are not going to soft ball ultra cheap reality TV that most of their core demographic hate. cough syfy
I can't tell if you're arguing for or against bundling, but bundling is what can allow some channels to be given a chance. If I remember correctly Disney/ABC, Viacom, Time Warner, etc use bundles as a way to introduce new channels. They negotiate a price down on a popular channel, say ESPN, provided the service carries a newer station like Comedy Central or Viceland.
Disney could just subsidize 'the puppy channel' or whatever with their own money and have a free 3 month trial to get people hooked.
Really, it's just a question of what they get from all their channels (X + Y + ...). If Y = 0billion and X = 10billion that's the same as Y=1billion and X = 9billion.
PS: Ok, their might be some accounting magic so it's useful for channel Y not to be profitable.
Huh? If you don't like reality TV then you aren't syfy's core demographic (or just about any channel's, really). Basically every channel has moved in that direction because people keep proving they will watch it.
Reality TV is cheap. In a highly fragmented and bundled market it can work. Yet, HBO and other premium services avoid it presumably because willing to watch is different from willing to pay for.
PS: Cheap TV can be compelling. Personally I really liked the primitive technology youtube channel which has 788,764 subscribers and is really cheap to produce 1 guy without any spoken lines. Twitch can also be extremely compelling. However, that's not paying subscribers.
Cable started as a way of people to not have to fool with an antenna. Then it evolved "cable only" channels.
That means that cable operators are sort of duty-bound to offer local stations. I will bet that those local stations are much less likely to be in your list of 5.
So what's mainly driving up your cost is local stations charging for carrying them. You'll see the odd game of chicken between local stations and cable operators when the local stations want to raise prices.
By federal law, US broadcasters can demand being retransmitted for free, or they can negotiate a price (and black themselves out if the cable operator doesn't agree to pay it).
I imagine cable/Hollywood execs learned from the music industry's mistakes. Music is incredibly cheap. That you can get all of your music in one place makes it a commodity. That's why some artists are trying to create their own music platforms, and capture more of their brand value for themselves, as opposed to leaving it to the customer.
a la carte programming assumed you would still access TV channels via one TV, using the same interface as before for all channels, ie. your remote. Click once and you're at a different channel.
Having to deal with several different content delivery services, each with their own sign-in, is much more complicated than that.
So why doesn't this happen in the music industry? And a few exclusives here and there doesn't count. Spotify / Apple / Amazon / Tidal / Deezer have 99.9% of the same content with a few high profile albums that are only found on one or another service.
Good question. Could be that Apple is more hardware bound and music distributors would need to be quite heavily compensated in order be exclusive apple and miss out on all those people with android phones.
It could also be that people are more willing to make platform purchasing decisions when it comes to video and game exclusivity but not music. This would lead to lower interest to buy exclusivity by the platforms, and thus having full market coverage is more economical for publisher.
The main reason is that licensing works totally differently for music. For music, you go to a central licensing source and pay for the license. They will license to anyone with money.
For movies, you have to negotiate separately with every movie producer for every title.
In other words, to start a music service, you need money. To start a movie service, you need money and connections to every Hollywood studio.
The major DSPs in the music space have to license each music company separately. YouTube, Amazon, Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple - all have individual dealings with the majors and with groups of or individual indies. It's definitely not as simple as requesting a blanket license for all music everywhere and paying a single fee.
Sure, there are three major music companies and six major film studios plus a bunch of major tv networks / distributors but it's still a long set of negotiations.
I think the difference is that the music companies understand the value of each service having ubiquitous access to every piece of music. UMG's decision to stop their artists agreeing exclusives with single platforms demonstrates this to some extent.
But with music the creators don't get paid squat for their content. The middle men make way too much. Part of that is because music is a background thing that is on a lot and repeated where a movies tend to be one-time.
Also, it's not just streaming. I buy all my music as lossless audio and I can do so from any store that offers the format, without DRM or any other strings attached. I actually own the files.
I wish the TV / movie would learn a thing or two from the music industry.
Are you joking? Lawyers don't originate and decide the negotiations. The value of streaming rights have increased as streaming has become more popular, so Netflix cannot afford to keep as broad of a portfolio. Especially as the value of content is currently quite ambiguous, due to the early stage nature of stream, and the amount of competitors experimenting with building their own streaming services (their willingness to lose money obfuscates the real value of these rights).
> I don't want to subscribe to 10 different streaming services that all have their own original content, I want to subscribe to one
As long as they are unbundled and easy to subscribe and unsubscribe from, I don't really mind. The bundling is the real thing I hate about cable. Now sub-subscriptions like Amazon Prime has with Showtime and such really suck, and I wouldn't want those, but if registration is as simple as setting up or cancelling a recurring subscription, I'm fine with subscribing to 10 different services. I can also see the market for a free or one-time paid app that will maintain a queue of what you want to watch, and automatically subscribe to the correct channel for that month so you can watch the maximum content for the minimum money.
[Also, this is a personal opinion, but to me, Netflix's original content + their reduced catalog is definitely worth $10/month. Much better than the $100+ "special offer price" that Comcast offers if I want to watch non-stupid channels from their lineup.]
Completely agree. I travel a ton. When I subscribe to Netflix and Hulu and pay them for using their services, I expect to be able to use that service wherever I go. To tell me because I am in Panama I cannot use their services makes me seriously question why I am paying for the service to begin with. The solution, cancel both of them and be done with streaming TV / Movies altogether.
On a related note, a couple of weeks ago I wanted to meet up at a friend's house to watch the Overwatch ELeague finals airing on TBS (basically a competitive video game event on national tv). They did air a bare bones version on Twitch.tv but without commentary and filler stuff. He doesn't have cable but I have a PlayStation Vue subscription which includes TBS, and we wanted to watch the whole production to see what competitive video games on national TV would be like. So I get to his house in the next town over and try to login to my Vue account. That's when we get a message saying that they detected my login location was not my house, and that the only way to access the service was to permanently change my home location. I verified in the TOS that if I agreed to change my home location there's no going back.
In the end we just watched the Twitch stream, which meant I didn't get to access the service I pay for just ten miles from home, and TBS didn't get our eyeballs on their advertisements. Seems like a bad policy on their part.
I like the idea of having one bill for 200+ channels, a single remote/device, no need to change (ugh) apps or inputs on the TV when I go from one service to another. It seems like consolidation was a lesson we learned a few decades ago and are in danger of forgetting. I may only watch 10 channels out of 200+ but from month to month it's not always the same 10.
A service like Netflix that would augment real, current TV with a library of older shows/movies would have been worth a separate bill. (Had that library not shrunk.)
But one more channel of original shows? It's not worth subscribing to a new service and not enough for me to replace cable. And I'm not going to sign up for 4-5 of them. Even if their total cost is a little less than cable, the convenience lost is significant.
> It seems like consolidation was a lesson we learned a few decades ago and are in danger of forgetting.
Despite groans to the contrary, I don't think consolidation is the reason services like Netflix/etc. are so popular and why cable service is starting to become considered gauche.
I posit that it's entirely about:
1) The on-demand content that services like Netflix/etc. provide
2) To a lesser extent, the discoverability of content
I don't want to watch Game of Thrones on Sunday evening. I want to watch it now. I want to re-watch Ocean's Eleven tonight, not Thursday during the day. Netflix (in theory) helps me with that. Cable service doesn't.
I want to watch an action movie, and one that I can actually watch right now. Netflix helps me with that. Cable service doesn't, unless I just put on whatever the "action movie" channel is showing.
Hell, cable service providers try to offer some of this already - it's just that their selection sucks. It's either incredibly old movies, or movies that no one wanted to see the first time around. Or it's just the latest episode of a popular television show, or the first season and we're on season 12 now.
Again, despite what people might say I don't think they really want a la carte programming: They want a Spotify subscription for television and film.
>A service like Netflix that would augment real, current TV with a library of older shows/movies would have been worth a separate bill.
Yeah, for you (and me), as a customer. But what advantage is there for the content creator? You're not going to not watch Game of Thrones because it isn't on Netflix. You'll find a way. The content creators have (and in my opinion, rightfully so) the leverage.
The alternative is not paying for it at all. That may mean not watching it, but it doesn't have to because the owner doesn't have complete control of everything.
So the advantage to the creator is they can get some money instead of none. The have chosen to go the all or nothing route when giving nothing is really easy for people.
I strongly disagree. I'd much rather have upstarts competing with great new content instead of all of them streaming the same dreck from the same handful of major studios. That's exactly what a market should look like.
It's the reality. It is always better and cheaper. If you have a copy of your favorite show you never have to worry about a legal battle between businesses that will change the distribution. Piracy has even become a business because if you are willing to pay a little you can get even more reliable sources.
But the studios all want you to subscribe to their store. And they don't want to let iTunes have everything, because they want you to go to them first. Or their friends with Ultraviolet.
Studios don't like giving up their iron grip, which is what Apple was doing a good job of doing. :/
I'm also on the list of people that don't want 10 different monthly subscriptions to streaming services, and piracy really does look way more convenient. Especially with things like Popcorn Time.
>Netflix--and others, like Amazon Prime--are becoming less and less worthwhile, and piracy is becoming more and more convenient again.
I don't think it's Netflix's choice that they're getting rid of their broader range of content, more to do with licensing agreements. I assume they had so many films in the past because they had old licensing deals, when the production companies were more willing to go "Yeah, sure, let's give that small company a cheap deal to stream our movies online. What does it matter, no one watches movies on their computer, they'll still buy our DVDs or subscribe to our cable packages"
Now they recognise Netflix as a major competitor, and people are actually ditching their cable packages, and watching Netflix rather than buying DVDs. They can't compete with their old business model, so their only option is to demand extortionate prices or simply refuse to do business with Netflix, Amazon, etc.
It's the frustrating reason why companies like Fox, Universal, etc are able to be so successful, because they own the studios, the distribution, and the cable channels. They don't have to worry about getting someone else to give them content, or to distribute theirs. It's frustrating that Netflix is going to same way and being forced to rely on producing their own content, with less opportunity to show others.
Netflix are increasingly becoming like just another cable channel, with it's own set of content, and that's before you even get into all the regional differences. It's still an improvement over the alternative of bundled cable TV packages in terms of pricing and convenience, but I wonder how long that will be the case.
If memory serves me correctly, Netflix's ongoing issues with negotiating access to major film studio or major TV network content without going broke spurred them into the business of 'content creator' status. I mean, they hired professionals and really just joined in the game their own way, and now they're piling up compelling, high-draw programming. Programming that would be going to AMC or FX or even ABC maybe. They're tapping into some film production as well, time will tell if the results are financial winners (that's the yard stick - not if people like it, does it make money).
I've been looking into film and TV production for years as an outsider and come across several mentions that Netflix pays extremely well and is incredibly picky about their productions. So they're in the game to play for keeps it seems. "Come for the Netflix originals, but stay for some binge TV or the occasional random flick like a big on-demand shifting library!" as a tag-line sort of works.
Implicitly, Netflix is pointing out to the studios that they may be charging more to license their content than what it costs to produce a directly competing property from scratch.
Why, for instance, should I pay as much for a season of X-Files reruns as for the production of an entirely new series of Stranger Things? Why would I pay as much for episodes of The Sopranos, that I have already seen, and have on DVD, instead of another new series of Lillyhammer? I wouldn't, and neither would Netflix. The original content is a reminder to the owners of distribution rights that Netflix is the one who owns the ball, and they're the ones that will be taking it with them if they decide to go home and play alone.
And Netflix originals are getting nominated for Emmy Awards, in competition with AMC and HBO shows. Producing exclusive original content was absolutely the correct play for Netflix at the time they decided to do it, and remains so for the present.
>It sucks that Netflix is pushing their own content as a solution.
What choice do you have when you don't own the infrastructure or content?
Let's face it, the barrier to entry to creating streaming app is low. Granted, Netflix is awesome in this department (they have to be), but I don't see how the future isn't in creating and distributing the content you own yourself.
Yeah, I'm sure we are eventually going to see the re-emergence of traditional cable package models, just retooled for the digital age. Netflix is going to become the new Comcast and Amazon Video the new Time Warner. I assume it's only a matter of time before they cross-license content to each other, possibly as a premium add-on a la HBO and Starz.
The engine driving all of this that no one ever discusses is our current copyright regime. This cycle is going to continue to repeat itself as long as copyright remains unchanged. If our copyright laws were more sane, the whole thing would look a lot different.
I think the Netflix content is fantastic - more than enough to pay their pretty cheap monthly streaming price for. And in addition, they have a massive catalog of other content. Who cares how many IMDB top 250 they have. It's similar to an HBO but half the price.
We pay $20/month or so for Netflix and Hulu, plus Amazon comes with prime which I pay for more for the shipping than the streaming. This isn't a lot - compare that to what cable costs. The situation today is better than ever - a bunch of cheap ala cart services that together still add up to way less than cable.
Anyone trying to watch a specific film will care. Netflix is basically useless in a scrnario where you're looking to watch specific content. I maintain a to-watch list with about 20-30 films at any given time - Netflix offers none of them.
Not their fault, I know, but the situation is far from acceptable.
I don't think the fragmentation is a problem since the cost is so low. We used to pay a lot more for cable and got less quality content than if we just buy a few streaming services combined. Some players like my Roku (and I think Apple TV right?) allow you to do a universal search too.
Netflix's problem with movies is intractable because you'd have to pay much more than they're willing to charge to make the studios happy. The studios make more money they way they're doing it (they have accountants too).
The problem is that yourself and everyone else expects to have every movie ever made available for $10/month.
It just isn't financially possible. I'm sure Netflix could have a lot bigger permanent catalog, but you are going to be paying much more than what they charge now.
Netflix (and Amazon) would love to have all the content licenses they used to have. The content companies are the ones making it impossible to have one service where you can get all of the content you want.
Here in Canada almost all English language content is licensed to a single company, Bell. They systematically deny any access to Netflix and started their own service, Crave TV. They are the one responsible for the great Proxy/VPN banning this year.
They are taking advantage of a government granted monopoly they had in the 1900's and now control a disproportionate amount of the media in Canada.
> They are the one responsible for the great Proxy/VPN banning this year.
At first, I thought this meant Netflix banning all use of VPN for streaming. Searching news articles shows in fact a Rogers VP rep had called on the government to outright ban VPN universally[1], but this was back in spring 2015. You are saying this has actually been made law and is enforced?
How did this pass when major corporations require VPNs, and I presume also government officials use it for sensitive communications?
This is _insane_ if it actually happens .. a move I want to compare to China, except here it's the government bending to the will of a corporation, not the other way around!
Dumb stuff is proposed all the time in US proposals[1,2] but with great effort they get rejected (not all, sadly).
You may have to find a manual solution. Have you tried spawning a VPS in the US and connecting to it via Shadowsocks?[1] I apparently can sign up for an account when routed through such a setup and Netflix doesn't seem to think it's a VPN (this was a VPS hosted in Germany, however). I can give more details if interested.
Do you then have to create a separate account "from the US"?
Netflix made sense when we could watch movies from any countries, not just the US. A lot of smaller countries would have movies not available in US/Canada but still in English.
Also: I'm happy to pay for content, but if I have to hack my way around to the point that it's harder than pirating...
So, I was in Toronto in August and used my Netflix account to view movies at the hotel. I think it may have given me the Netflix Canada catalog (since it was over the hotel WiFi). I found that Netflix Canada catalog to be way superior to the one I see in the US. E.g Star Wars TFA was on the catalog, but not there when I got back to the US. Same with Elysium, etc.
It's funny you say that because as a Canadian Netflix user, almost every single person I know prefers the American Netflix catalog. Star Wars TFA is pretty much a one-off, we rarely get new blockbuster movies added to the Canadian catalog this soon after release.
And of these 31 remaining almost half are missing in the Swedish Netflix:
5. Back to the Future
6. Gladiator
7. Sunset Boulevard
8. Cinema Paradiso
9. Django Unchained
12. Reservoir Dogs
13. Braveheart
17. Amadeus
21. Trainspotting
24. There Will Be Blood
25. Spotlight
26. The Princess Bride
27. Zootopia
29. Jaws
31. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
And yet Netflix want the same monthly cost for less of a service. Why?
I keep subscribing to Netflix, then cancel, then resubscribe.
Thing is I'm not subscribing to Netflix for those movies. Because I've already seen those. And yeah, once every blue moon I can get in the mood for some specific title. But that's rare.
Why I keep subscribing to Netflix and why I tried HBO Go as well is because of the TV series. And I'm in Romania, you can imagine how limited the content is down here, but so far they've had a couple of decent TV series that I wanted to watch. If they keep delivering those, then I keep my subscription. You also have the ability to subscribe/unsubscribe at any point, it's not like with HBO GO or other services where you have to commit to an annual plan.
Yes, also in Sweden and when I once tricked Netflix into showing the US library I kind of wanted to cry.
Now I'm tempted to make a pretty graph of "Movies and TV shows per dollar" for the countries they're established in. Should be pretty interesting. I expect major differences.
Well, it's most likely some sort of licensing issue. If Netflix could show you all the same content that it does in the U.S. for the same price they absolutely would.
I agree that it most likely is some sort of licensing issue which prevents the same content. But Netflix isn't paying for Cinema Paradiso, or Braveheart, or Zootopia, or … in Sweden. In fact the Swedish library is less than half the size of the US library[1]. Yet Swedish consumers pay just as much as US consumers. There is a large discrepancy in the value given for customers' money here which Netflix does not address.
What kind of overhead, specifically, would that be?
Swedes speak to the same english-only customer service representatives as US customers do. And CDN cost should scale mostly linearly with the size of the customer base.
License dealings are often per-country, and there are different exclusive deals in different countries which prevent anyone else from offering some film or show on their streaming platform. There's a lot of legal overhead per country, unfortunately.
>"There's a lot of legal overhead per country, unfortunately." //
Which it's worth remembering is entirely self-imposed by the industry.
Why, if Netflix comes along and says "we want to give you more money by showing this media to Swedes too" do the media conglomerates not fallover themselves to make it happen. It needs a couple of checkboxes on a form somewhere.
>> do the media conglomerates not fallover themselves to make it happen
Apparently they are not willing to do so for their own reasons or their licensing demands are too high for Netflix to sustain their service. I somehow doubt Netflix is turning away licensed content because they don't want to make money from that content.
I'm not arguing in favour of the status quo, but merely trying to explain it. I completely agree that the current situation isn't very good---neither for consumers nor (probably) content right holders.
I doubt it, they'd sell it at higher cost because in other countries there are often few alternatives.
Shows established in the USA become part of the global culture, USA is very good at exporting its culture. Once established, in order for people in other countries to buy in to that culture then exported media can be sold at higher value.
This is one of the reasons for regional encoding. You don't want to let outsiders buy in to something that's established as cool
Consider yourself lucky. There are 6 of those 31 available in Hong Kong and the subscription cost is 10% higher than the US, despite median household income being around a third lower.
I really don't understand the logic in charging a higher price for 10% of the content in a poorer country, but perhaps that's why I don't work for Netflix.
Number of TV shows/movies on US netflix: 1147/4593
Number of TV shows/movies on HK netflix: 134/ 392
US Netflix standard price: $ 8.99
HK Netflix standard price: $10.00
Because Netflix is focusing on their own content. They are spending money on developing their own shows instead of licensing shows and movies. They are trying to be more like HBO.
The Netflix catalogue in India is even worse. The surprising thing is they end up charging the same amount as US when disposable income in India is lower and you don't pay the same cost for entertainment services. For example, Apple Music streaming subscription is around $2.5. Also, you can subscribe to every cable channel(including HBO, sports channels etc.) for $8
To be fair, you can find the vast majority of the 250 movies on the first or second page of Google if you type in "MovieName streaming". uBlock and Privacy Badger extensions recommended of course. Also torrenting is available if nothing else.
Different licensing structure and cost in Sweden, and probably also different offerings based on the country and viewers. I'm sure the Swedish would like to see more Swedish content, which the US doesn't have any interest in.
I'm glad for Netflix original content. It's been high in quality, and I've already seen all the top 250 IMDB movies I want to see. What Netflix could do to prove its love of movies, and which would probably make good business sense, is unearth movies that have never been shown on TV, or never been digitized to DVD or even transferred to VHS. There are websites devoted to those lost treasures, and movie lovers who would bow and genuflect to Netflix if those movies were ever aired. Consider that eBay does big business selling VHS tapes to people who don't even own VHS players, but who buy and send those tapes to services that will rip them to DVD. (My latest is "We're Talkin' Serious Money" with Dennis Farina - a 6.0 IMDB rated movie I just HAD to see again.) Who else has the power to deal with rights holders who control rights to old movies not deemed worthy of a VHS or DVD release? I type this hoping that someone from Netflix understands and agrees with me. They could make it a big event, build excitement, even though those movies are not high rated. They're just unobtainable rarities, like the 1998 movie with Molly Ringwald, Twice Upon A Time, that I've wanted to see again for 15 years... Great movie, too bad you can't watch it.
See Karagarga and the vulnerability of obscure films[1].
"Without a service like Karagarga movie-lovers are in thrall to the whims of an implacable market — one whose recent and unerring shift to digital streaming has left vast swaths of cinema history to molder unseen. The myth that Netflix and iTunes offer a frontier where “everything” is available to watch instantly is a bad joke to anyone with a serious interest in movies. That crowd is forced, by the market itself, to fend for itself. Many of us would indeed buy an Out 1 Blu-ray or cue up Out 1 on Netflix if such a thing were possible. But in the meantime Karagarga will be cherished for the rare and valued access it affords."
While I'm sure it's not entirely Netflix's fault (media companies realizing their back catalog has a value), it seems to be a common evolution for movie services to move to providing their own content. Look at HBO. In the 1980s, it was all about showing movies (the name even meant "Home Box Office"). Now it is all about Game of Thrones and what not. With things like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, etc., that's what Netflix is doing as well.
Which has always seemed like a _gross_ misunderstanding of what people enjoyed about Netflix from the very beginning. If Netflix launched with Orange is the New Black, Luke Cage, and Daredevil, would they have even a tiny fraction of the user base they currently have?
My Netflix hours per month has dropped to well under 10 hours per month these days. There's just not much content on there that interests me. I see more use out of Amazon because, even though it's comparatively expensive at ~$5 per rental, when I feel like sitting down and watching a movie, it's nice to actually have a catalog to browse that's not 90% garbage.
I think they've figured out that the people who subscribe and stay subscribed are people that binge watch tv shows, not people who sign on every once in awhile to watch movies. I don't think they're interested in competing with the PPV movie market.
"If Netflix launched with Orange is the New Black, Luke Cage, and Daredevil, would they have even a tiny fraction of the user base they currently have?"
I think there's fairly strong evidence that the answer would be "yes" to that question. More people have signed up for Netflix since the release of House of Cards in Feb 2013 than signed up before then. IIRC that it's right around that time that the Netflix movie catalog really started to shrink, and also the time when Netflix started to have attractive original content.
I think there's fairly strong evidence that the answer would be "yes" to that question.
I doubt that. Netflix didn't start with original content. They had to spend many years acquiring their substantial member-base before they started experimenting with the original content. If the company literally launched with House of Cards with no existing members to speak of, it would have been much tougher for them to convince people to pay them money and watch their as yet unproven original content.
In terms of jumping back to Netflix at the "beginning" the streaming library was incredibly shallow. Netflix during the DVD days was another matter. Yet Amazon has been pushing video searches which are available for stream back to DVD/Bluray results ; has anyone else noticed this? I haven't been able to figure it out.
HBO is a good example but I don't see blockbuster or Redbox creating content so I wouldn't say it's inevitable. Where are the movie companies hawking their back catalog if not Netflix?
I have noticed a lack of black and white movies on netflix. I know Hulu has the Criterion Collection which has some prestige black and white movies but there are tons of them that seem like they should be cheap for netflix to license.
Has TMC bought them all up and refuse to license them to netflix or does netflix think no one wants to watch black and white movies?
How many B&W movies have made it to the public domain? Why are companies not streaming public domain movies? There are many classics available for free.
On roku there are tons of channels that can be installed that stream public domain movies. Unfortunately, the channels I've seen tend to have poor quality prints.
It's very clearly not Netflix's fault. The content owners want Netflix to die. Had Netflix not gone the "make our own content" route, they would be dead now (or the walking dead with just DVD customers).
I find it strange that Spotify is able to list almost any band and music out there, and streaming video providers not. They are even forced to create their own content.
Seems that the music industry has a better separation between content creators and providers than the movie and series industry.
It's not that strange. There is only one real avenue to make money off of music -- selling it, either digitally or physically -- besides a subscription service.
The movie industry can make money during different "windows". Theatrical releases, PPV from cable companies, iTunes, Amazon, etc., physical rentals, DVD and digital sells, subscription movie services (HBO, Showtime...) and regular cable TV.
It's more complicated than that. Artists benefit greatly from repeat customers, so it's to their (and their label's) advantage to expose as many people as possible to their product. This will help drive future profits through the sale of albums, merch, and concert tickets. Movie studios are dealing with a much different dynamic.
Artists barely make money off of Spotify anyway. It's just marginally more than they'd get out of piracy, and a more legitimate platform to advertise their content. Making money in music has been all about concerts and merch for a while.
I think think you're making a distinction where there isn't one. For example, you can license music to TV shows, political campaigns, commercials, movies, and video games. Radio stations must pay royalties for playing songs. There are plenty of revenue streams for music outside of "selling it digitally or physically" and a subscription service.
How many songs actually get licensed for movies and tv shows out of the millions of songs that are on Spotify? Political campaigns do not have to have a license to use music. Artists have been complaining about political parties using their music forever.
Radio stations have to pay royalties to the songwriters and musicians but not the singers.
No matter how bad or unpopular a movie is, a studio will always make some money on a theatrically released movie, with each of the distribution mechanisms.
Music is subject to compulsory licensing. Something that made sense when only big companies could record and distribute music (making cartel behavior easy), not so much now that anyone with an iPad and an internet connection can do so.
-There is a compulsory performance license that allows radio stations to play any music. They have to pay the song writers and the music writers (?) a fee based on a mandated structure but not the actual singers.
-There is a separate compulsory licence for Pandora like services where you can't choose your music and there are guidelines that Pandora has to abide by.
-There is no compulsory license for on-demand subscription services like Spotify where you can choose the music you want to listen to.
I'm not 100% sure about this, but I'm pretty sure that the compulsory licensing law that controls music distribution doesn't apply to streaming services like Spotify. If it did you wouldn't occasionally see work from high profile artists like Tayor Swift and Kanye West not appear on Spotify.
I think the difference ultimately derives from the fact that music is something you listen to again and again, which enables a small fee per listen model, which means that it makes sense to get it out there everywhere.
But you're right though, the difference is stark. I don't think I've ever had a random tune I'd like to hear come to mind and fail to find it on Spotify, conversely I can honestly say that I have not once found a movie I've gone looking for on either Netflix or Amazon Prime.
I watch a movie maybe once a week, in my living room, but a lot go to theaters.
I listen to music constantly, at work, in my car. The music industry can't get away with just ignoring the demand for streaming because of the way music is consumed today.
The music industry also went to DRM-free several years ago (all the stores sell unencumbered MP3 or AAC or some lossless codec); video content has not yet caught up.
I was about to complain about the lack of 8+ IMDB rated films on Netflix UK, but after doing some research[1] it's actually quite high.
Although one thing I did notice by picking a handful of random films is that some are rated 8+ but only have 50-100 votes, which reminded me of this excellent article by Evan Miller on how not to sort by average ratings[2].
Personal opinion now: I'm more of a movie person than a TV series person, but I do appreciate some of the Netflix Original series, but I'm finding it harder and harder to justify the monthly cost when I also have a NowTV movie subscription which seem to have more decent films and are regularly updated (even though research[3] shows they don't have many 8+ movies)
Netflix is clearly making heavy investments in what we've tended to call "Television" programming. It's often deep dramas that are very engrossing, much more so than TV offered a decade or two ago. Netflix likely sees higher returns here.
Movies are quickly becoming the "short story" of the cinematic world, IMO (though those countless sequels and prequels are an exception). When done well they have a strict beginning, middle and end.
I agree - Netflix is becoming synonymous with binge watching. I've gotten months and months of value out of Netflix with Breaking Bad, Lost, The Office, The X-Files, House, etc... If I had to do the research required to get similar satisfaction out of the same number of hours of movie viewing? Forget it.
I couldn't agree more. I think about "Daredevil" season one: 13 episodes, each almost an hour long. We saw more character development in a single season (of both the titular character and Vincent D'Onofrio's excellent Kingpin) than in years of Marvel movies.
If an episode's story needs to run a bit longer, it runs longer. Commercial breaks don't affect pacing. Nobody has to worry about sponsors being upset about content, an episode being interrupted by breaking news or postponed due to a sporting event.
I'd like Netflix to have a larger movie catalog, but if they continue to crank out quality long-form stories I'm quite happy to remain a subscriber.
(Now we just need them to secure the rights for Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin novels)
This is off topic, but I recently watched Hornblower, a late 90s British series based on Forester's novels. It was surprisingly good, and it has basically the exact same setting as the Aubrey/Maturin novels. I'd definitely recommend it if you're in the mood for that kind of thing.
(And, relatedly, it's not available for streaming anywhere that I can see. I had to buy the DVDs.)
Netflix definitely benefits from the fact that they don't have to worry about the FCC guidelines, or the constant complaints from the Parent's Television Council.
I'd much rather watch an HBO show or a Netflix show than anything on traditional TV these days.
I can understand that the media companies don't want to cooperate with Netflix by denying them access to their IP but it's sad that they haven't been able to launch a real alternative to Netflix during all these years.
Sure they have. Torrents are popular and effective. They work great. The studios clearly prefer we use them; their repeated decisions leaving them as the sole functional choice show that.
I think it's safe to say he, sarcastically, is implying that failure to match the ease of getting torrents of movies means that movie studios are by default leaving torrenting as the best way to watch. Thus they seemingly endorse torrenting by offering no proper competition.
Maybe the big ones just can't come up with a way to compete with Netflix without destroying their old business. Customers want content with reasonable monthly fee, but that does not mix up well with dvd/blu-ray sales, rental business etc.
Supporting Netflix is of course also something they don't like, since the more monthly paying customer Netflix attracts, the more viable competitor it becomes. This leads me to wonder that could it be that studios did not originally even consider Netflix as their competitor?
They're hoping that you'll buy the physical media. That's been the plan with Redbox - force a 28-90 day delay on new releases so customers will rush right out and just buy it on DVD. reality is that people usually just wait.
The studios don't really want to cooperate. They want complete control over how you watch their product.
In the UK we no longer have rights to format shift (we did, but they were rescinded), so if you bought it on DVD and want to watch on your tablet - well you'll probably have to buy it again or infringe the letter of the copyright law.
What's that? Want to stream it to another device from your computer, ha-ha, no chance. If media companies made such things legal (they control the copyright laws) then there's no telling what might happen. People watching the media they paid for, how absurd!
They want to sell you a cinema viewing, sell you a DVD, sell you a tablet download, and even then sell you a streaming copy to watch on your TV (because who has a DVD player now).
When they think it makes business sense they will do it. It's certainly not a technical limitation.
Likewise, I doubt we'll be seeing Netflix's OC showing up on regular cable or broadcast networks anytime soon. Not that they couldn't get some licensing revenue from it, but it's just not their chosen model.
Surely I'm not the only person who isn't interested in watching IMDB's favourite content.
Give me the 6 outta 10s, that's my bread and butter. I'd rather be surprised and discover a personal favourite or have something on the TV that I won't be expected to dissect with the nerds at work.
You are basically saying that you can't "discover a personal favourite" when they are highly rated and talked by other people. That's probably the worst mindset for a avid film watcher.
My comment was somewhat tongue in cheek - a reference to the stereotypical hipster who always has to have liked something before it was cool, and once it's cool they only like the older stuff (that you probably haven't heard of). In reality, I'm sure they do rely on word of mouth, or at least less mainstream, centralized-but-still-kind-of-centralized sources to aggregate and filter new stuff for what's good.
The movies in the 7's are more consistently appealing to me than the top 250. Some movies just become "great" so everyone gives them 10's or are more receptive to love them I think. There are some movies I love in the top 250 but also a lot of movies just get buoyed up from their "greatness." Just glancing at the top 10 I honestly didn't like Pulp Fiction at all and didn't feel the Godfathers were special. I almost always like a movie in the 7's that has a lot of votes.
Read a few reviews of the Godfather. There is subtlety to the characters and a slower pace that modern day viewers may not appreciate as we aren't used to this--rather many of us have become accustomed to blunt hit you over the head plots and may likely miss much of what Godfather is about.
Regardless, your point stands. We all have our own tastes & preferences.
More like, I don't usually want to watch something that I have to be overly attentive with or that others are buzzing about. It's not really anti-social although I can see that interpretation, I just like to put something on and have it be an escape from a reality that includes office talk.
Also, movies are subjective and honestly IMDB's rankings don't include the stuff I generally like to watch. Do people actually sit around and watch critically acclaimed Oscar winners all the time? I don't usually like Oscar winners, they always feel like they are trying to hard. It's boring.
I look at it as a matter of cost vs. benefits. My wife and I watch a fair amount of stuff on Netflix each month and our family plan is less than $10/month. How anyone can say Netflix does not provide sufficient value doesn't make sense to me.
We also subscribe to Hulu Plus to watch network TV with no commercials. Also a good deal. If we want to watch a new release, I rent it on Google Play Movies. I don't mind using a few different vendors, and competition is good.
What is not a good deal is cable TV. We hardly ever use it and it is relatively expensive.
As a UK resident, with access to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Sky, I actually applaud Neflix's conscious move away from blockbuster content.
Netflix has created some of my favourite shows in the past few years (e.g. House of Cards and Narcos) and I'd rather have that original content given my access to the other services - Sky is better probably better able (through it's Fox parent company) to deliver the blockbusters should I want to watch them.
The obvious cost is that we have to subscribe to multiple services, and that necessitates cost both in money and in time to find content legally as you have to go through each in turn. If Amazon and Netflix both move further towards unique content then we'll also have reduced competition in the blockbuster space, which might increase prices and encourage a move back to privacy.
(Finally, I have major respect for Netflix as a developer, and so I probably view everything with a certain bias).
I agree, but it's conditioned on the fact that in the UK netflix never had good movies, it was all about it's TV box sets rather than movies from the start here.
Netflix UK doesn't push movies, I'd be surprised if it had more than 5 movies from the top 250, although the catalogue is so hard to browse it's hard to verify.
If netflix was previously advertised here based on it's movie offering I would be annoyed about it's pivot to focus on TV.
My younger colleagues at work simply can't believe that I still have a DVD plan with Netflix. I'm not that old! In response, I can't believe THEY are satisfied with what's available on streaming. Netflix isn't interested in paying royalties for blockbuster films. In house content makes so much more sense.
Ditto. I have a DVD Netflix plan, and streaming, and Amazon Prime.
Yes, it's ridiculous that in 2016, I'm still regularly getting bits via snail mail. DVDs are sometimes scratched, and my player often forces me to watch previews. It's terrible.
I don't have crazy weird esoteric tastes, but I like to be able to say "hey, I heard that Movie X was good" and be able to add it to my playlist. I can pretty much always do that with the DVD service. I can pretty much never do that with streaming services. It's like, "oh, they have a sequel and a spinoff, but not the original."
I'm about 98% sure that the difference in selection is because of Hollywood being jerks about licensing, so I don't blame Netflix or Amazon. But as long as there's such a vast difference in selection, I'm going to keep renting DVDs.
It depends on how many movies you watch whether the mail plan is cheaper than paying on-demand. On-demand prices drop fairly quickly, go on sale periodically, and things like Google Rewards earn you digital credit. Also, RedBox is still an option if needed.
It reminds me of the common trope of the internet containing "all of human knowledge". An average library has as good a claim to that as does the internet. There's so much stuff that is simply not available for free and a far vaster volume of stuff that is not even digitized let alone available on the internet. Wikipedia is a good way to gain some superficial knowledge about something but it is nothing compared to a few good books on a subject.
Netflix is decontenting their DVD catalog too. My "Saved" list is as long as my queue. (I'm another dinosaur that prefers the guaranteed bitrate of a Bluray/DVD)
I bet Netflix would absolutely love to provide all of these movies. I don't have any insider knowledge, but given their past behavior, I cannot help but think the content providers (of which a lot are owned by cable cartels) are preventing this. They are either prohibitively pricing the movies or are trying to dictate too many terms under which viewers have access to the movies. Then there's the fact that some of these movies didn't exist in a "streaming" world and so their licenses (for the music, etc) don't take this into account and so all that has to be renegotiated (which goes back to the prohibitive pricing, surely).
If we had 20 year copyright terms then most of the back catalogue issues would be moot. Companies would have to get their act together and make the most of licensing new works with the added competition of others offering only PD works.
Of course the poor starving actors of all those old movies -- Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, etc. -- would perish under such a regime. They might even stop making new works! /s
There actually has been a few shows on Netflix that had their iconic intro music pulled because they weren't licensed to play the music on a streaming service. Married With Children and Charmed are two I remember.
You and others would presumably watch more if there were more better (especially recent) movies to watch. Personally, I keep my minimal Netflix DVD rental subscription mostly to trickle in the previous year's Oscar nominations etc.
>I wouldn't be surprised if movies just don't get the viewers to justify their cost.
Presumably that is also true. Whatever deal the content providers are offering, Netflix doesn't see the ROI.
To your broader point about TV vs. movies though. A former senior technical Netflix guy once told me that "People come for the movies and stay for the TV shows." (And this was before they had nearly as much original content.)
The danger to the studios here seems to be if people just get out of the habit of watching movies as a format. But that's probably a pretty big leap from where we are today.
I recently set up a Plex server and started ripping all of my DVDs onto it. There were a couple of hiccups, but overall I've been pretty happy with it. You get a nice netflix-like interface for browsers, it still works great when my crappy internet drops to <1mbs (happens a lot in the evenings, presumably because all of my neighbors are watching Netflix and the local ISP vastly oversold the capacity). And if you pay $150 for the lifetime pass, you get the ability to sync content for offline viewing on whatever device you want + a few other niceties.
Ripping DVDs & renaming things to Plex-friendly form is still more work than I think it should be, I'd really like to see something equivalent to CD-ripping software that "just knows" what the disk is by fingerprinting or whatever.
In general, Plex doesn't provide anything that I couldn't do with existing (and mostly free) tools, but it provides a friendly enough interface that my wife can use it without help, and being able to sync content to my iPad before a trip and have it "just work" is really nice.
I'm a subscriber for a couple weeks now, and I've run out of content I'd like to watch in my free month. The homepage is filled with stuff I'll never watch, and I can't even tell them that fact. There is no button to hide stuff. Back to piracy I go.
It always was very interesting to me how so much bad stuff is on the front page and meanwhile there are some gems in their platform (like the top IMDB movies listed in the article) that you might never find out are there. Many years ago they made it much easier to discover content but then they did this massive redesign and made it impossible to find stuff. A few years ago I just pulled a list of movies via their API that listed movies ranked by their prediction of how much they think I will like it. That was super useful. Why doesn't Netflix do this? Meanwhile they suggest me movies they themselves predict I won't like.
This is interesting to me because it's so bad that I can only conclude that they must have incentives for making suggestions to me other than me watching something I like. Do they pay licensing fees per vote? Do they pay different fees per view for different movies? I would love to know the details!
I always appreciate that Hulu has its Criterion collection section.
And I very recently signed up for Seeso for $4 a month because I was craving some Monty Python's Flying Circus. I don't plan on keeping it long term, maybe just a month, to get it out of my system.
And then I still end up digging through shitty cheap roku channels occasionally to find stuff. Mostly just schlock, but I saw, for example, niche titles like Millennium Actress, Ninja Scroll, and Ghost in the Shell 2 on free services.
The idea of one streaming service that has it all is dead, but it kind of reminds me of DVD bundles at Walmart. 10 Sci Fi movies for $10, and one of them will be Existenz and the rest will be straight to TV or DVD.
Hulu is about to lose the Criterion Collection license. Turner Classic Movies picked up the license for a new service called Filmstruck that's launching (in the US) next week.
There's no one single service that can gather all movies. Netflix is moving towards creating their own content. Piracy will not cease to exist unless you want to pay many subscriptions to access all recent content.
I am someone who vastly prefers films to tv. When Netflix launched as a dvd by mail service, it was the perfect service for film buffs. It was cheap, fast, and had a seemingly endless selection. Now that that part of the business is severely neglected, I'm back to requesting films from the local library and waiting months or spending $30-50 for a single film. I am sure their choice makes sense from a business standpoint, but leaves one-time customers like me in the cold.
I managed to watch everything I was interested in (Narcos, The Get Down, House of Cards) during the free trial period and nothing else caught my interest so I never had to pay.
Why would a company using a monthly subscription model pay to license the most expensive top-rated classic film catalogues?
Why would you want them to? A big portion of the money you pay Netflix every month would then go to have indefinite access to films you don't watch or don't watch again often enough to justify this ongoing cost.
Would you lease a Ferrari you drove one or two days a year? Especially if a one-day rental or buying is an option?
Competition in the streaming content industry does not benefit consumers as long as streaming providers compete by trying to monopolize content. There are a few solutions to this which I can think of:
1. Add government regulation that makes exclusive licensing of content to streaming services illegal. This feels heavy-handed to me. Streaming entertainment just isn't important enough to warrant the attention of government.
2. Companies self-regulate: this would be cool, but it's not gonna happen without some serious outside intervention.
3. Removal of copyrighting that allows companies to enforce their licenses. This is arguably bad for content producers, but in practice content producers aren't receiving the bulk of the profits--labels and studios are.
4. Go back to an ownership rather than a rent model of content distribution. DRM essentially breaks this, however, and again it's unlikely that content distributors will stop using this.
I favor 4, but at a personal level, 3 is the only one really available to me, de-facto.
In the end, the licence owners will lose. Spotify makes it useless to download music illegally because it's so much easier and pleasant to use spotify.
If they don't want to play fair game with Netflix, people will just keep / start again downloading the movies they want to watch, because it will be easier.
>Spotify makes it useless to download music illegally because it's so much easier and pleasant to use spotify.
Spotify has to pay for the content they're streaming. As of now, they're losing money with that model. You might like it as a customer, but content owners and creators don't seem to, and they hold the cards.
This is definitely not true. If you're looking for stuff that's popular here and now, you'll do fine (especially if you're a fan of Hollywood blockbusters). But as soon as you start looking for back catalogue stuff, you're in a mess of dead torrents and broken links.
Want to find a mostly-forgotten science fiction movie from the mid-90s (in my case, Strange Days)? Two hours of hunting for a way of downloading it led me to buying it through a VoD service instead.
Come on... I found your movie streaming in one super easy google search..it was the second link. Not to mention a 26 seed torrent in another simple google search. Just last night I watched a Polanski film streaming with basically no effort. Finding old movies streaming online is incredibly easy. I bet 100% of the IMDB top 250 can be easily found by searching "X streaming free" and having a good ad blocker.
I literally just opened The Pirate Bay, typed "Strange Days", and clicked the top result which has 20 seeds. Couldn't be easier... although maybe it is more difficult in your country, or with your ISP.
This is actually a great example. There is only one torrent with more than one seeder referring to the movie (it has 17 seeders). So I am forced to use a single format to view the movie in, can't easily use an app to show it on my TV (key word being "easily"), can't choose subtitles for my language of choice, etc, etc. By accident you are making other people's point.
Were a more distributed, anonymous storage system to exist instead of on prioritizing seeding and recently used, larger catalogs and quality options might exist.
I'm still amazed at the number of "mock busters" that are on torrent sites. The awful, low budget, garbage take offs...Like one called "Atlantic Rim." I think you can guess what it was a take off of.
Fired up Popcorn Time recently and the list was packed full of those types of movies.
Or you can pay a reasonable price to rent on iTunes and Amazon Prime. Stop pretending that you pirate because it's a "better experience". You pirate because it's cheaper to steal other people's hard work than to pay a fair price for it.
I may know a friend who torrented a film they had on DVD because their DVD player broke and it was faster and cheaper than ripping it themselves.
This is a tort again in the UK, it wasn't then.
Also, most people would be happy to pay the actors and crew a very healthy wage but baulk at paying to add DRM and several layers of executives whose function appears to be to make it as hard as possible to actually watch the content without paying again and again and who extract far more than their share of the revenue.
I actually looked for a download of that DVD (for my friend!) but none was available. The family in question used a hacked Wii to watch DVDs, but the DRM prevented half of them from working.
Meanwhile we watched a show on YouTube other day, we could have watched it on "watch again" but the content quality was immeasurably better. Of course that too was a tort akin to torrenting.
>Also, most people would be happy to pay the actors and crew a very healthy wage but baulk at paying to add DRM and several layers of executives whose function appears to be to make it as hard as possible to actually watch the content without paying again and again and who extract far more than their share of the revenue.
Sure, all of the people torrenting are really just protesting as the unjust profits made by studio executives. This is laughable.
>The family in question used a hacked Wii to watch DVDs, but the DRM prevented half of them from working.
And a perfectly functional DVD player is like $20.
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Rate-limited by HackerNews, but in response to the below:
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>What's your second point? That just because it only costs a week's groceries to buy a DVD player it was wrong to torrent a work that has been paid for and only can't be consumed due to DRM? Do you find that use immoral?
Copyright becomes unenforceable if you can just go buy a physical DVD with cash whenever you get sued or warned for pirating something.
What's your second point? That just because it only costs a week's groceries to buy a DVD player it was wrong to torrent a work that has been paid for and only can't be consumed due to DRM? Do you find that use immoral?
Sorry, you're just wrong here. If I publish a video online, it is a copyright violation for you to redistribute it without my permission. I don't need to put a license or even a copyright marking.
The point i feel you're missing is that if I'm making my work available for redistribution I must attach a license to it, that license -- for a limited example -- doesn't have to include no public performance (a common license term for movies, play manuscript, music) you can allow it and retain your copyright in full.
The context is you providing a video for me to redistribute. You don't have to, say, give me geographic limits.
I think you are completely misunderstanding each other. pbhjpbhj is not saying what you imply and merely pointed out that "downloading copyrighted material" is a misleading phrase since all non-public-domain material is copyrighted. The fact that it's under copyright isn't important, what's important is if it is under a license that allows copying or not.
Netflix still ships physical media, and has a much wider selection than streaming.
Unfortunately many of the discs you get from Netflix are made specifically for the rental market and have been purposely degraded by having features such as 7.1 DTS-MA audio removed.
How the 'legal' side could fight against 'piracy' sites? Seems that Netflix et others are losing the war again... I want to use Netflix model but for all the movies I want, not the ones they give me. Solutions?
Does anyone else find this a really bad metric? This list is relatively static if princess bride is still on there. What about the top 10 by year? Most people want to see the best and latest movie not the best older movie.
if it's netflix's intend to become another one of the networks (NBC, ABC, etc.. ) with their own shows and made for TV movies, then it's business plan made to fail.
Rather, it's a smart biz plan. By creating their own content they can provide exclusive access to it. By continuing as they have they risk becoming a commoditized service or even getting locked out of content as other distributors build their own subscription platforms (as they have already built).
I will agree with you however that as a consumer I'd rather have a commoditized subscription service for tv/movies. I suspect however that investors will disagree with us.
I find it interesting that Netflix is such a success, despite the availability of many great films.
As the presence of great films on the platform may suggest, it's a long shot to assume that they're more interested in creating their own -great- content than simply offering you great content. But given the unavailability of a single legal platform to rule them all, the bet on original ideas propelled with data and smart marketing was and is still the best one.
IMO, if Netflix had all the content in the world, they would probably stop creating their own.
Netflix is now basically an OTT TV channel. This puts to rest the content aggregation platform model for video which, unlike music, is highly differentiated with higher cost, which rules out commoditization.
This basically reduces online video to two categories: user-generated content platforms and commissioned, curated content platforms. In my view there is only room for one player in the former (YT), but in the latter category, it is basically business as usual for the traditional TV networks.
A tip for movie lovers: VidAngel has 100 of the IMDB Top 100. (I'm not sure about the top 250.)
VidAngel costs $1 or $2 per movie after sell-back. They filter the movies, but you choose your own filtering, so it's not censorship.
(No, I don't work for VidAngel, nor do I have any ties with them; I'm just a happy customer who wants to see them continue to grow and thrive. I'm aware they are being sued, but I think VidAngel will win due to the Family Home Movie Act of 2005.)
Netflix first, then Prime, then Usenet. Usually gets me what I want. Downside is that this already means paying half a dozen companies just to watch movies.
It seems good number to me. Was it really expected that a service at fractional cost of cable TV will have majority of top movies in any defined category?
TIL Netflix has a lot of great movies I'd like to see.
But my viewing time is already overfilled with all the Arrow, Flash, iZombie, and other shows I'm binge watching. And 80% of the time I'm more interested in seeing some "weird" Indian/Turkish/European movie than same Hollywood drivel.
Because of that, I feel that the value proposition of a video rental store next block is becoming quite good again. Cheaper than renting/buying from Prime or Play.
Too bad they're all dead now.
I am not sure the new video movie world is better now than it was 10 years ago for consumers.
So, if I want to re-watch old movies (IMDB's alltime top movies) I've already seen, I shouldn't go to Netflix. But for new stuff? They're adding content all the time. Not sure this statistic is meaningful to me.
Who is going to make an automated service that rents the DVD from dvds.netflix.com, loads the DVD up on their cloud rentable DVD players, and streams the result to your device?
I am subscribed to both Netflix and HBO. After reading this it strikes me that I always watch original Content / Network Series in Netflix and movies in HBO. No wonder why
I'm repeating this because this is something that seems to be escaping people here. You're paying $10 a month for access to a massive library of content. Having every popular movie available for instant streaming is worth WAY more than $10 a month. If you want to watch recent blockbusters and popular movies, you can rent them on Amazon or iTunes.
To the people using this to morally justify their pirating, give me a break. Renting/buying movies on Amazon or iTunes couldn't be easier. The only problem is that you would rather steal than pay.
It's time to cancel Netflix - it's been totally useless to me in the past 2+ years - I end up buying from Amazon, Google Play, or Vudu. I'm not into TV shows - I'm not sure why they think everybody's into that.
It should be noted that IMDB is owned by Amazon, but setting that aside it most definitely is unfortunate to see that so many great films are locked up behind licensing barriers.
We may never see them get released into public domain.
Former Netflix employee here--though I left in late 2013. I remember sitting at a company meeting and Reed Hastings explaining that AAA film content was never going to be the bread-and-butter for Netflix for several reasons. Most importantly: Between traditional, "linear" television and Netflix, the experience that Netflix brings with a combination of a low subscription cost, no commercials, and the ability to watch as many episodes of a show as you want to watch whenever you want to watch them is VASTLY superior.
Netflix survives and thrives on binge-watching--and people just don't do that with movies (they have a LOT of data to back up that statement). Combined with the realities of the costs associated with feature film licensing and there's very little incentive for Netflix to put any emphasis on films.
The only way they could do it is to tack on a pay-per-view service for films (because their subscription fee alone will absolutely NOT cover the cost of licensing more feature film content) and they are highly averse to such a service. The general feeling is that it's better for the average user if they can open up Netflix and watch whatever is there without ever thinking about whether it's an "included" title or a "PPV" title. When I was there, we regularly revisited this assumption and research always found that it continued to be the prudent move.