Oh, yeah! I just wonder if movie selection is the same, or if in some countries there are more titles. Anyone got information on that?
I pay for proxy service just to "pretend" to be in USA and than pay the Neflix regular price. I believe a lot of ppl will subscribe to Netflix once no additional tricks are required.
The selection is not the same. I just checked and a number of my favorite US TV shows are not available here in the UAE. Looks like I'll have to continue using a proxy.
The territoriality of copyright (and movie industry business models) prevents them from offering the same selection for anything but their self-produced content: Rights need to be cleared separately for every country, and global licenses are pretty much unheard of today.
"For one monthly price, members around the world will be able to enjoy Netflix original series including Marvel’s Daredevil and Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Narcos, Sense8, Grace and Frankie, and Marco Polo, as well as a catalog of licensed TV shows and movies. In 2016, the company plans to release 31 new and returning original series, two dozen original feature films and documentaries, a wide range of stand-up comedy specials and 30 original kids series -- available at the same time to members everywhere."
This implies to me that their original content is globally available, while licensed content will still be regionally restricted (and I don't see a way they could do anything else). Unless I'm missing something in the announcement?
The other interesting thing about your quote is what's notably absent. It makes you wonder whether they'll be holding back House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.
You're right! It does say "including..." which may mean that they're coming but they don't think they're as worth advertising as the ones listed (although I would disagree). And it does seem they're being purposefully ambiguous about whether the entire original content catalog is going global.
I'd guess they would have made a big deal about it if they were able to offer the full selection in every country. The fact that it's not mentioned suggests there are lots of per-country restrictions.
Unless something has changed with this announcement, the us version is crippled in the netherlands (which means shoving all my netflix traffic through an ec2 instance, but whatever)
Now if only BBC's iPlayer would become global and allow us non-brits to pay for it (effectively subsidizing the TV license maybe?), that would be heaven.
How much is the TV license in the UK? If it's reasonable I'd be tempted to pay it for iPlayer access. Honestly, I'd rather just torrent everything, but I do pay for Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and often cable access that I don't use (guilt is a powerful driver).
The BBC is discouraged from producing its own content, so a lot of the content is made by third parties and the BBC doesn't have the rights to broadcast them outside the UK. That's why you get BBC branded channels in different countries because those channels have to compete to buy the rights. There's lots of other things too, like music rights, sports rights etc. Means the content has to be redone.
Until recently I could watch it using my VPN from Hong Kong,
but recently they've been blocking access from VPNs.
I should set up my own VPN again, instead of using paid for services.
Edit: I can't decide if that's a good or bad thing,
given I've never paid for a UK TV licence, but for official purposes I still live at my parents' house, who do pay.
You could spin up a DigitalOcean droplet in the London region around once a week and use youtube-dl to download the bits you're interested in. Cost would be like $0.10 per month. You could even make a script that sets up an OpenVPN droplet and automatically tears it down, would still be very very cheap.
If you set it up manually each time, sure, that won't work very well. But you should be able to automate that - create the config (CA and everything) once and then just spin up a droplet via the API, install the packages, copy and unpack the config. I don't think you'd need to customize more than the sever's IP address in the config.
I built something similar with sshuttle (way easier than OpenVPN) two years ago, it's at https://github.com/lorenzhs/instavpn but it uses the old DO API and is rather hacky. sshuttle also isn't very good for streaming.
They did have the Global iPlayer going for a while, but it had a lot less current content, with some archive material. It also was only available on the iPad, and only available in certain markets (not the US, due to pressure from networks threatening to drop BBC America). It limped along as a public beta before being killed off half way through last year. Although apparently they're going to launch something else soon:
They say a BBC streaming subscription service is going to launch in the US this year.
Unfortunately I'm not sure the BBC have the entrepreneurial spirit to throw in their current international contracts, and try to launch themselves as a global network. I suspect they'll wait until the VoD market is much larger, which will mean that their competition will be very strong.
I think we'll get to see just how compelling the Netflix original catalog is when we see global customer numbers.
My understanding is that Netflix doesn't have streaming rights for most of the content that isn't theirs internationally, and that was the biggest barrier before.
My guess is that uptake will be slow, but the great thing is they just keep creating more content, so it'll be more compelling every year.
Netflix doesn't have the streaming rights for their own content in some countries because they have sold that to others in the past at least temporarily.
That's clearly not been updated. Hastings explicitly mentioned Azerbaijan and Vietnam in the keynote, and there's clearly nowhere near the 130 countries they've just added.
The linked full list of countries and territories where Netflix is now available https://help.netflix.com/en/node/14164 does not show all the 130 countries.
This is good news. Netflix is only remotely usable when you can hop between different territories after you've watched the three new titles that get added each couple of months.
Map shows very few countries - no Singapore as mentioned in the article
Also the article mentioned 190 countries at one point and 130 at other places. Moreover, Netflix claims it has 70M subscribers across 130 countries. How is that possible if they just launched it?
60 old countries, 130 new countries, total 190 countries.
The footer says 70M subscribers across 190 countries, and was probably updated today. In their last press release in November, that line said "Netflix is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 69 million members in over 60 countries..."
Does anyone have an idea of the total population of coverage added today? I'm wondering if the growth accelerates from here. Seems like it would, but then Netflix has likely already initiated service in the most lucrative markets.
In europe we just get netflix lite, with old and uninteresting stuff sparkled with some original content and random rares. I hope someday we'll get this netflix you all talk about.
Yeah, I tried their free month here in Portugal, and the selection was abysmal. And at least for now, they license their "exclusive" shows to our cable networks anyway.
To me it seems like they shot their own foot; now that I've wasted my free month on this, I'm not planning to pay in the future just to find out if their catalogue has improved.
Yup, I do use a VPN occasionally. I'm not sure if Netflix Germany / rights-holders get paid correctly if I login with my Australian account though, so I try not to do it often... if I knew everyone was getting paid I'd do it a lot more often!
Why would you dub? I mean, why would you either have to dub everything or not include it? Just have at set up a screen that asks which languages you speak, whether you prefer dubs or subs and whether you will accept subs for everything that doesn't have a dub if you previously selected dub.
Why is language so tied to location? Specially in Europe! (and I can imagine there is a pretty large market for shows in Spanish or Mandarin in the U.S. too, and why not have those in French, German, Japanese, Korean, etc too while we are at it...)
I think this announcement probably changes things in the direction I want in this respect. But it always seemed like the obvious choice to begin with.
I agree. I think they should give that choice. I think foreign media companies don't realize that even though many European countries dub movies, lots of people will watch an un-dubbed movie (with subtitles) if that is the only thing available at the time. Lots of people prefer the un-dubbed version (even without subtitles).
Most people in southern European countries like it dubbed. Doesn't mean that they shouldn't be given the option (specially if a dubbed version doesn't exist and is the only way to see the content at all).
From a technical point of view is a trivial fix. From a commercial point of view? Well, either selling content in a different language is profitable, in which case negotiating the licenses is worthwhile, or it isn't very profitable, in which case "license to distribute in Japanese with subtitles inside Italy" should not be a very expensive right to acquire.
One of many reasons to like Portugal, go on holiday, speak no Portuguese, can still go to the cinema (and have a proud usher tell you that no, they don't dub the films like the Spanish do, because Portuguese people can read).
Well, to Netflix' credit they offer everything with original audio track and never forced the local (german) audio track on me. A setting that Amazon still can't consistently provide for their paid video selection, which rules out half of their content for me.
I don't know if this problem still exists but at some point in the not too distant past not every title available on desktop was available if you signed up on say Apple TV. If anyone has the numbers I'd be curious how much of the catalog is restricted this way.
Netflix's catalog(ue) is a shadow of its former self. I'm a Netflix subscriber, and can pretty much guarantee that any movie I attempt to watch will NOT be available on Netflix streaming.
I have somewhat better luck with the previous episodes of American TV shows.
Well, they've certainly pivoted their focus from movies to TV shows. But most of their "good" movies were part of the Starz license, and that expired years ago now.
I haven't been a subscriber for years, and this was the main reason I left. But I remember the disc catalogue was still strong. Is that still the case? (I'm in the US.)
I don't approach Netflix as "I want to see this movie so I go here," so much as "I want to watch something, so I'll pick from here." I'm never lacking a choice to watch, even with fairly specific criteria in mind.
If I know exactly what I want to watch (and don't get lucky enough to find it on Amazon/Netflix/Hulu) I pay for PPV. I don't expect magic for <$10/mo, especially when the going rate for a one-off viewing is nearly half that.
I honestly don't remember a time when that was true, and I'm pretty sure I joined the service sometime near rollout.
They've had a handful of times where bigger-name movies burst in based on some deal or the other (Starz being the original big one, but there've been others since) but by and large Netflix has always been indie + back catalog as far as I've experienced it in the US.
I would agree. I've been on since day 1 of streaming and I'm skeptical the movie catalog has gotten significantly better or worse. Movies come and go, but overall my queue has consistently had hundreds of unwatched movies in it at any given time.
Are you comparing the DVD service to streaming? It's unfortunately apples and oranges; the licensing is completely different for DVD and streaming, and even different between unlimited streaming like Netflix vs. pay-per-view streaming you can get from multiple other sources.
No, I never had streaming. Maybe it's my shifting preferences, but I remember being able to say "I'll just wait for it to come out on netflix" for the majority of things I was interested in. Not everything, but still more often than not.
The DVD service is still that way. That's why I still keep up my DVD subscription. They have everything, in the way the streaming service can only dream of. You have to be patient, but most of the movies I saw in 2015 were at home from the Netflix DVD service.
Oh, OK. I (and almost everyone else here) was talking in terms of streaming only. As mentioned elsewhere, the DVD service still works like it always did, and has a wide range of movies.
Derp. I meant to say I never had the DVD service. I only ever had streaming! That screwed the entire meaning of my response and it's too late to edit! oops :-\",
I don't approach Netflix as "I want to see this movie so I go here," so much as "I want to watch something, so I'll pick from here." I'm never lacking a choice to watch, even with fairly specific criteria in mind.
Yeah. My main beef with Netflix is that I'd like to just sort content based on the 5-star rating. I'll rarely want to watch something that is less than a 2.0. And I'll consider just about anything that is 4.5 and above.
Same here. I also want Steam to let me see the average reviews of games that it shows me on the main screen. I only buy games that are "Mostly Positive" and above, and it's very grating to have to click every title to see that information.
My previous flatrate streaming plan had exactly that and just browsing the far end of "order by rating" was more interesting than watching the moderately dated mainstream movies that scored highest. "Might" be a matter of taste i guess ;)
At least they now let you view movies by basic category in the embedded clients, as opposed to whichever dynamic lists they decided to promote that day. Baby steps, I guess.
I'm with you that I'd like to sort/filter by rating, though I also recognize that tends to cause a snowball effect where you're either popular early or never watched at all.
But you can filter Netflix content by rating, at least on desktop. Just select a genre from the top left, and then select "HIGHEST RATED" from the "Sort by" dropdown on the right.
I can indeed get more information from the website. I just want more of that from the Android client, which is where I spend most of my time. I'd also like to read the text reviews sometimes, so it would be nice to at least have a website link from inside the app, even if they don't want to put that directly in the Android client.
I do have a Windows laptop, but I rarely consume content on that these days. Mostly I am watching from my tablet, sometimes from my phone, and just very occasionally from my Blueray player (because the UI is terrible, slow, and buggy).
So many apps seem to lack the basic: Filter by x and Sort by x for all of the obvious criteria. What bastardized yearning for simplicity has led to removing such a simple clear piece of functionality? It's familiar, doesn't add excessive clutter and scales well between power-users and lesser mortals. Why is it increasingly rare?
Only guess I have for Netflix specifically is the fact that they have built clients for every device under the sun. This was and still is part of their M.O. It is just time consuming and difficult to write a heavier feature set in to all of your clients when theyre on every smart tv ever, Xbox, probably toasters, God knows what else
Content filters are ridiculously easy to implement though. As long as you already have the browsing view, all you need to add is a picker that changes whatever DB query you are using to select the data.
Like in SQL all you would need to do is change this:
SELECT * FROM movies
to this:
SELECT * FROM movies ORDER BY rating ASC
When I built a web app for film management, that was by far the easiest thing to implement.
Right, I agree. I was referring to the parent mentioning "the Netflix you all talk about". That Netflix is changing every day.
I used to use Netflix to ship me DVDs, then I protested the Qwikster move by switching to streaming-only, which was great for movies (for awhile) but has been shifting to TV content.
To be honest, I don't use Netflix much, but the value I get is still worth the $8/mo. Some months I don't use it at all, other months I binge-watch The Man in the High Castle.
When I want to watch a movie, I first hit Netflix (hey, free streaming!) to search for it... then I check Amazon Prime on my Fire Stick, because some titles are free. If it's available for rental, I'll pay the $4. If available for purchase only (or unavailable), then I'll hop over to the iTunes store on the AppleTV and hope it's available for rental.
Or I just go to canistream.it, which was about my only original invention ever, until I found out someone had already done it.
> I'm never lacking a choice to watch, even with fairly specific criteria in mind.
Do you mean that you get that content on Netflix? Or where do you watch?
At this point I'm fairly certain that I won't be able to find any movie from the list of things I'm interested in on Netflix. On Amazon maybe a few, for separate payment, which would be fine but half of their films don't offer the original audio track and instead force my local language. I absolutely don't want to see a dubbed version though.
So, all things considered I think it's a mess if you have specific things to watch in mind.
I mean it's pretty rare I wander into Netflix with the intention of spending time on watching something (not a specific show/movie) and don't find anything I want to watch.
I agree that if you have something specific in mind and don't already know it's on Netflix, you more likely than not won't find it. But I knew that going in, and never expected that to be the case in the first place.
If only this were an option. I'd gladly pay a few bucks to stream a movie. But outside of the US and Canada I don't think PPV even exists at all.
Amazon prime isnt available in my country. I dont know of any other online PPV sites (anyone?)
If I can't stream it from one of these netflix-type sites (and as everyone else has pointed out, the selection is crap) my only options are drive to a DVD rental shop or visit thepiratebay.
My theory is we, as subscribers, have hit rock bottom or close to rock bottom in terms of content on Netflix that is not produced by Netflix. This is okay with me. I like Netflix content. But I think Netflix original content is a stick that is useful. It proves Netflix itself can survive without licensing content, that globally available content is useful (see all the people trying to use VPNs to get content available in some markets), and that Netflix original content may become high quality enough that it competes with other networks. So my theory is Netflix original content is useful both in the short term to weather the content draught (due to high licensing costs) and the long term (as outlined earlier).
My fingers are crossed that this gamble is fruitful in bringing the cost to license content back down again to levels that are sustainable for Netflix. I also wonder if we'll ever see Netflix license Netflix original content to another network.
This is all conjecture purely as an enthusiast of Netflix.
It's not included for free on prime, but you can get House of Cards and some other Netflix produced shows on Amazon video if you're willing to pay for it.
I've basically given up on Netflix for movies I want to watch and will rent one-offs from Amazon (digital) for older movies, or Redbox (physical) for current releases. The kids are our biggest users, though. It was a pleasant surprise for Netflix to pickup the HtTYD TV series and produce a new "season."
Their real catalog is on discs, not online. Many great movies aren't online even years after release. I'm on 3-at-a-time sub, can't deplete my disc queue in years.
In my experience, on the other hand, I've found that Netflix has a pretty good selection of movies that I otherwise wouldn't have known I wanted to watch. So yes, if I expected to find tons of hit movies and classics, I'd be pretty disappointed most of the time, but I do feel I get my money's worth of a good selection of left-field films, and my list of favorite movies is a lot longer because of it.
I think this is a move to address that. By making themselves gargantuan, they'll be forcing the studios to come to the negotiating table and grudgingly offer streaming licenses.
I think that was perhaps the reason they gutted our their cool queue system that was so popular. After they obliterated most of their catalog to cut the cost, people would have been horrified by number of things thatwould have dissapeared from their list. The current UX on Netflix is absolutely horrible. It's even hard to find your own list on tablet devices and do basic functions like prioritize it. The recommendations are same-old same-old stuff that never gets refreshed.
You can actually use a VPN and view shows from other countries without changing any settings. Just connect your preferred VPN provider to the country of choice and go to netflix.com
hah, that's actually interesting: i've been switching to netflix ireland for the past weeks because it has some unique stuff (like the last season of Archer).
Movie-wise, the most upto date content seems to be in Canada, where they get movies that were in the cinema around 6-8 months. Not sure how much longer that'll last as the licensing deal runs out in middle of this year some time.
I doubt it will change. Content producers don't want to give away content to an all-you-can-eat service. It's expensive to produce the material, so they need to milk it at every level.
In terms of content quality, Netflix (and their competitors) are the equivalent of a free-to-air TV channel with occasional big ticket titles that they likely blow their budget on.
This is a humorous complaint. I was using a VPN into England and had checked out Netflix and I thought the selection was great (finally, I can stream Battlestar Galactica. Archer's season 6 is finally out, etc.)...but I'm sure if I were using VPN regularly, and then checking Netflix...I'd have the same feeling of "it's the same ol shit on the front page"
Personally, I prefer this. I hate waiting for the next season of a show to come out, so Netflix works for me. I can see why it doesn't work for others though
Same, I mostly just use it for the original shows, and occasionally I'll go on there when I want to watch a random movie. For normal TV shows I'll usually watch them when they air through "other methods", since it's usually many months before a new show/season gets on Netflix.
There's consistently been a new season of a Netflix show that I've wanted to watch every month for a while now, so it doesn't seem like bad value. It helps that I share the account with a friend though, and I'm surprised they still let people do that.
It's not even that good here. Most series that ended within the last 10 years are not available. They don't have 9 out of 10 TV series that I want to watch. To make things even worse, they've raised prices from €8 to €10 even though it feels like they're removing more TV series (such as Lost) than they're adding back.
That's usually because some local player bought the (online) distribution rights for your country for content from major studios before Netflix moved in. Where I live, Netflix has some children's shows and some local stuff. If I want the same choice as Netflix in the US, I'd have to get subscriptions to half a dozen local online video stores. I expect most of those to go out of business in the next few years, and things to consolidate to just one or two players, one of them being Netflix.
Not a single African country is listed. If was to be available worldwide the least that could be done is at least one country could be added from the entire continent.
As an American, I can guarantee you, demand means nothing to monopoly ISPs. If you have competition you might have better luck -- but should have had better luck already.
I hope things will be different in our case. We always get everything last. Funny enough, South Africa has the best internet infrastructure compared to the other Southern African Countries. I have been to Zimbabwe and Botswana. The speeds are decent but it costs an arm and a leg to get a gig of data there. :/
I'm surprised someone considers Crimea a country. I thought it was part of Ukraine, and now is part of Russia. Or if you dispute that, it is still a part of Ukraine.
First another country takes control over the place you live, then the US government bans everyone from letting you participate in global trade. I guess the same thing happened in Cuba.
What is missing in a lot of these comments is acknowledging that Netflix may become the largest global "television" network in the world as adoption increases. They have original content lined up and control those rights, and they will continue to expand their reach with that content. Whether they add the "same" streaming content as they have purchased from other providers in the US is not the point here - the big impact is the expansion of their original content to such a massive global audience. Interesting to see this finally come to fruition now that they have enough content to justify a subscription on its own.
It will also be interesting to see how other content providers (Amazon, but also CNN, HBO, and more conventional TV Providers) follow suit in the pursuit of eyeballs and expanding global markets.
Netflix is based on subscription, but it would be interesting to know if there is a company or network of companies equipped to sell digital advertising localized, at global scale to support a "free" model often seen on US network applications.
Essentially NetFlix is paying their producer partners for worldwide rights, while conventional US networks only pay for US rights, and the producers sell the other country rights separately.
But I'm not sure any of the partners in the conventional setup have a reason to change. US networks don't care about worldwide rights. Producers don't care who is paying them for the rights. Other country networks like having content to license.
Having spent the last 8 years of my life building a streaming film company that has from day one streamed globally and dealt with this patchwork of rights issue, I can tell you one reason:
Other than China and India, no other market is as big or insular as the US. In Europe people travel across borders and speak multiple languages all the time, and yet it's like pulling teeth to put together multiple regional subtitle rights for use in a country where it is not the native language. For someone to subscribe to Netflix and be able to use it in multiple countries with the subtitles of their choice consistently available is a huge benefit to a huge number of affluent users. This is something which the existing film industry is incapable of doing structurally, and therefore is a huge advantage that can only be replicated by the biggest producers (ie. major studios). And those big companies do not have product development and UX in their DNA, so they will struggle to compete with Netflix in this regard (to date only HBO shows promise). But meanwhile the Netflix experience will be so much better that they will undermine the foundations of industry.
I'm reminded of how in 2007 no corporate IT department would allow employees to use iPhones, and even though Apple never explicitly addressed the enterprise market, and Microsoft bent over backwards to give corporate buyers what they wanted, at the end of the day companies which didn't allow their employees to use their iPhones for work suffered a competitive disadvantage.
Well, to be fair, Netflix STILL switches subtitle language when I cross the border making me stuck with german subtitles on everything even though I'd prefer english :/
Do you mean they literally don't make the English subs available? Even for the stuff they produced? A clunky UX is one thing, but if they legitimately restrict the sub availability where the rights are available then I'm a bit shocked.
I'm not the one you asked the question but yes, that's what they do and it is a really dumb decision. I'm German and for perfecting my passive(i.e. understanding while listening) English language skills, I really like to view movies in English _and with English subtitles_. But in Germany, Netflix only offers German subtitles when the audio is set to English. Anyone got a contact at Netflix whom to approach with this?
Edit: typo
I am bothered by this too and from two friends I got these tipps (not tried it yet): One is using full VPN solution (US-based I think) and the other is just using a Canada-based DNS server.
BTW the problem extends beyond subtitles. International movies typically are just available in their original language + local translation (German). Then sometimes the video stream also differs from the English version (e.g. when there is a sign in German language).
If I remember correctly, it was the same in Mexico and Scandinavia and some other countries. While there are ways to disable the subtitles through unofficial means, I doubt that they still work.
Maybe a stupid questions but what if they disrupted not just TV but also cinema?
I assume that the distribution of films around the world is more limited than we think. At some point when Netflix has a much larger subscriber base, it may make more sense for films to be released directly to Netflix for global consumption. They could even be clever about it and have it only open for "live showings" at specific hours or something like that. What do you think?
At some point I assume they will also become the channel that VR content could be sent through as well, maybe in partnership with Facebook?
>Maybe a stupid questions but what if they disrupted not just TV but also cinema?
They are trying. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2 is being released simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix. Some chains complained and are refusing to show it.
But honestly, I don't see it. Cinema is $10-15/person/visit, and Netflix is $10/mo for an entire library of content. Profit margins for Hollywood aren't that great - so how do you bridge that price gap? How do you justify spending $200 million on Force Awakens and hope to recoup that from Netflix fees? You can't.
That's the model that I think would actually be acceptable to all parties in the short to medium turn. I'd be happy to fork over $5-$10 ppv for a cinema release over the $23 I'd pay at the cinema. I'd still go to the cinema for bigger movies that I wanted to watch for the experience/sound/screen.
Here's an idea your comment made me think of: I wonder when are we going to see DLCs for movies?
Imagine - you buy the base Force Awakens for $10, and then they offer you extra movie parts - $1 for one in which Chewbacca does something silly, $2 for one which features an additional 10-minutes-long scene of starships shooting at each other, etc.
They've been doing this for years with deluxe editions on DVD and Blu-ray, providing things like deleted scenes, extended versions, and commentary tracks. You can pay one fee (or get a rental) for a bare-bones experience or pay more for a better one.
I could see it being more like the DVD/BluRay Extras model - $5 for a pack of commentary tracks, $2 for deleted scenes, another $2-4 for the behind-the-scenes featurette, etc. It would be similar to the more successful DLC implementations, where a handful of enthusiastic users would make up a significant amount of the revenue.
It would be interesting to see how this would/could be applied to both rentals and purchases - rent the bonus features for $0.50-2 each, purchase them for $2-5 each or something like that.
I sincerely hope not. If you bought a book but were told you could get an extra chapter of storyline added in for extra money, you'd wonder "Does it contribute to the story in any way?"
Ultimately, no.
Or "will the story make sense if I do not buy this extra chapter?". Hopefully yes; hopefully the story makes sense without this extra chapter.
I wouldn't want to watch a film with extra fluff that added nothing to the story, just for a cash-grab by the maker of the film.
Extra add-on features are always pointless: look at the Dreamcast and the add-on packs you could put into the controller. As it was entirely optional, none of the games could depend on it being there so had to cater for controllers without it, so this little LCD on your controller just ended up showing Rayman walking or dancing, and contributed nothing to the game.
The same is happening with Macbooks and iPhones, where developers cannot rely on the user having a "force touch" touchpad or iPhone 6nnnn (whatever it is), so cannot rely on that hardware feature being available; because of this, they cannot say "feature X is done by using force touch" because if you have a Macbook without that hardware, you can't use that feature. So it must get ignored to cater to everyone.
In the case of stories and films, the story must still make sense without the extra scenes. This makes the extra scenes pointless.
I hope not either. But this is a popular model in videogames, and it somehow both pissess off players and earns the studios tons of money.
You obviously can't apply it to every movie, but you could appply it to quite a few. For instance, there's little point in extra content for Inception, because the movie world is defined by the start and the end of that very movie, and as you said, it has to make sense in its basic version. But consider things with already established franchises. I Disney would start publishing DLC sub-stories to the Force Awakens, I'm betting that every hardcore Star Wars fan would feel obliged to see them. The world portrayed in the movie is much bigger than the movie itself, and is has communities formed around it. To participate in the fandom, you need to be up to date with the canon. I'm pretty sure it could work with Marvel Cinematic Universe as well.
Then there are movies for which such a move would be a gamble. LotR and Hunger Games are franchises too, but I don't think they're strong enough to support DLC money-grab.
Anyway, enough suggesting ideas to them :). I absolutely hate DLCs. I just couldn't resist discussing the concept in the abstract.
The Animatrix seems like a real example of something along those lines. A DVD of 6 short episodes that expanded on the Matrix story universe. They were done by different directors/writers/makers, like authorised fanfic or something. In my opinion it was a great addition, better than the full-blown sequels, and certainly not a distasteful cash-grab.
I think this could totally work for something like Inception too. The film has a backstory suggests at a wider context beyond what's shown in the scenes. Most stories do. That's why fanfiction exists.
Force Awakens is probably not a great example though. Maybe we'll see smaller budget moves jump on Netflix, while traditional big-budget blockbusters scramble to find an alternative release method?
Also: > Profit margins for Hollywood aren't that great.
>maybe we'll see smaller budget moves jump on Netflix,
Absolutely, but that's nothing new. We had direct-to-video or direct-to-tv movies for decades. Direct-to-streaming isn't really that disruptive. What we don't have is big budget movies bypassing theaters, because why would they? Why wouldn't they have theatre run, and then a streaming/video/TV run?
> Absolutely, but that's nothing new. We had direct-to-video or direct-to-tv movies for decades. Direct-to-streaming isn't really that disruptive. What we don't have is big budget movies bypassing theaters, because why would they? Why wouldn't they have theatre run, and then a streaming/video/TV run?
If they can keep selling in theatres then they will. But if Netflix can deliver high enough production values (coupled with higher quality home equipment) then it may put theatres out of business. Since I got a $500 projector I've hardly ever gone to the cinema, and regretted it when I did.
>If they can keep selling in theatres then they will.
I think that's what it comes down to.
>Since I got a $500 projector I've hardly ever gone to the cinema, and regretted it when I did.
But that's been a trend for a long time. There is some evidence that high-quality AV equipment with digital content did impact ticket sales. But I don't know if it's going to kill it. The one thing that cinema has going for it is it's a destination when you want to get out of the house.
And we do have a good thing going. If you want to see a new release RIGHT NOW, you pay $15/person/view. If you don't, you wait a few months to rent it for $5 or wait a little longer and watch it for 'free' on Netflix or TV. That's eco101 price discrimination.
$10/mo. is incredible value for Netflix as far as I'm concerned.
I'd be perfectly fine with additional fees or different payment tiers for more expensive content. I pay $130/mo. for a cable package that provides almost no content that I enjoy and includes a DVR that frequently craps out when recording the few shows that I do watch. I'd rather pay Netflix an extra $30/mo. (or more, depending on what they can offer) for that premium content and ditch my cable package altogether.
I think it would be interesting to see rise of actors' fees over that period of time. Sure cable companies make money but most money seems to be going to TV networks and in turn TV actors.
I would not be surprised if they did that to move money into the "costs" column for the movie, while still funneling value into advertising companies owned by the parent.
Let's see what the price is when they are entrenched as a global monopoly with a vast catalog of culturally relevant content that you can't get anywhere else. It may very well act as Hollywood on steroids.
Of course it will. If there isn't adequate competition, every company will do this. If you have an executive in place who refuses to do it, the shareholders will fire and replace him. This is exactly why free markets that stimulate competition are extremely important. Our current copyright laws make competition very difficult, especially if you're not starting with a multi-billion dollar war chest.
$10 sounds unsustainable for this catalog (heck, €8 in France for single-watchers). The expectable price is rather $30. That's just an initial promotion, the customer lifecycle value they are ready to extract should be much, much higher.
Crunchbase tells us that the only investment was $36m. The rest is regular debt, $1.7bn! It just shows how much banks trust their business model.
Maybe it'll force Hollywood to pay actors far far less. Harrison Ford was paid somewhere between 10 and 25 million (probably towards the lower end of that scale). Flipping the question a little bit, how do you justify paying actors 40 million for a movie if they're being streamed online for $5 a pop? I'm of the belief that the better actors are paid far too much and that releasing cinema to streaming services will correctly adjust the price of new release films.
For context I watched the force awakens last night at iMax (premium recliner chairs which was nice!) for $43. But you can't see a movie in Australia for less than about $23 these days. We're directly funding hollywood's lifestyle.
> Flipping the question a little bit, how do you justify paying actors 40 million for a movie if they're being streamed online for $5 a pop?
This is basic supply and demand. Harrison Ford has a monopoly on Harrison Ford, so if you want Harrison Ford, you have to pay what Harrison Ford wants for it.
There are 2 sides to the transaction and it comes down to margins. If the margins don't exist to pay Harrison Ford $40M then either he takes less $ or another actor is found.
If the industry shifts to paying its top stars smaller but still large sums of money then maybe Harrison Ford won't accept that, but the best actors in the next generation who weren't used to getting paid todays rates will.
Exactly, supply and demand. He demanded what the studio could afford to pay. If the movie is no longer generating so much revenue (because streaming) then actors will no longer be able to (successfully) demand 8 figure payments.
I think some of the low to medium budget movies will make the transition to simultaneous streaming releases where it may be easier to recoup money early on. This may or may not force a similar thing to happen with big budget films, but too many lifestyles would be affected for this to happen in any short to medium term.
If the movie is no longer generating so much revenue (because streaming) then actors will no longer be able to (successfully) demand 8 figure payments.
Were publishing companies hiring authors for millions of dollars?
I know authors usually use publishers for review / editing / publication, but I'm not aware of a time where the relationship was not "publisher gets X% cut of revenue". When was it "author gets X million dollars"?
The same applies to music. Pretty much every creative industry outside film is paying the performers or creators a percentage of sales. Its just harder for that to scale to endeavors that take thousands of people like modern blockbusters.
> The same applies to music. Pretty much every creative industry outside film is paying the performers or creators a percentage of sales. Its just harder for that to scale to endeavors that take thousands of people like modern blockbusters.
For performers, actors in plays, members of an orchestra, backup dancers behind a pop star... most are getting paid per performance or per period of time, not royalties. Royalties are more common for people who can take a majority responsibility for the end product, e.g. a solo artist or an author.
I am not sure why you are presenting reducing actors revenues as a desirable goal. Movie studios can afford to spend that much because there is enough demand for movies of that budget. What's wrong with that?
Maybe this will give all the not-Harrison Fords a better chance. A lot of the A list is about hiring tried and true great actors... but you can get 80% of Harrison Ford for much less than 80% of his current asking price.
Much like making music, filming technology is already commoditized at the entry level... it's distribution costs that remain high (hard to reach a large audience without massive ad $$, known actors, and an established publisher). Netflix would seriously disrupt that, boosting "indie" film making in the same way that Spotify / youtube / myspace / etc seriously boosted non-mainstream music. We still have A-list musicians but the long tail is seeing far more success than before.
>> filming technology is already commoditized at the entry level
But Indie music is better in the personal preference category and usually no worse in production values. And on the other hand what we see in regular tv: we see increasing abundance of content , and most people flocking more and more to the highly rated content which usually has high production values and often some measure of high brand.
That's probably because they don't want to risk an hour of their time. On the other hand , listening to a new song ? who cares if it's bad - it's only a minute to switch to something else , and it's a social custom too.
What you're saying is true, but it's also interesting to me that studios could potentially get by with less.
Young Harrison Ford in the late 1970s might have been willing to trade away the use of his likeness in future Star Wars films for a relatively small consideration.
In the future, if a studio can find a relatively unknown actor who wants the work, it's possible they could do with a digitally-produced likeness, in case the original actor doesn't want the job. (Sort of an augmented version of the SNL contract)
> Maybe it'll force Hollywood to pay actors far far less. Harrison Ford was paid somewhere between 10 and 25 million
Probably a bad example, because the studio's investment in Harrison Ford in SW:TFA will surely be repaid many times over, and isn't really threatened by netflix.
Of course it will, because of really high ticket prices and they're providing a product that many people want. If ticket prices were lower though, Ford wouldn't be able to ask for that kind of money. Not many films can generate this kind of demand though, yet we're all stuck with high ticket prices for lower quality films.
I'm of the belief that the better actors are paid far too much
The market decides these things.
It's difficult to argue that there isn't enough profit on a movie that has grossed over 1.5 billion dollars in three weeks to pay A-list actors A-list salaries.
A-list actors don't make that kind of money because movie studios are generous. They make it because their presence puts butts in seats.
Sure, the "Star Wars" name would be enough to put butts in seats but without Ford, Fisher and Hamil, this movie would have made less money.
If I'm not being forced to pay it, I don't care what someone else makes.
Would the movie have lost more than the amount they paid him, though? I'm pretty sure they could have released a blank tape on the screen, called it Star Wars 7, and made several hundred million dollars. Its hard to approximate the amount of sales exclusively to the presence of a specific actor, versus the reviews, ratings, and social response to good acting.
Obviously, no one knows for sure but let's say that 1% of the people who went to see it would have opted out if the original stars hadn't returned...
In three weeks, that is over 15 million dollars just where it's been released so far. Think about China and the rest of Asia. Think about on demand viewing and DVD/Blu-Ray.
As I said, we don't know for sure but it's a pretty safe bet that Ford, Fisher and Hamil being a part of this movie will pay for itself in increased revenue.
Right, and I think the market is unfairly inflated at the moment, and has been for a long time. Movie ticket prices have more than doubled in the last ~ 10 years. The presence of streaming new blockbuster movies is likely to disrupt the traditional cinema if it is allowed to get off the ground.
And that's basically the point I'm trying to make. If movies were to transition into the Steam model where the cost is brought down but has higher reach, the gross is going to go down, and so should the marketing and actor budgets of such films.
> If I'm not being forced to pay it, I don't care what someone else makes.
Yes, going to the cinema is optional, no one is forcing you to go. But if you want to see a movie within 3-6 months of release you have to pay the cinema ticket price. There is no other option. I don't care how much the actors make, I care how much I pay at the ticket box, which appears to be viciously increasing cycle of actor demands more -> prices go up -> more gross is made -> actor demands more. To account for this, studios are spending more and more on advertising to get people to actually go to the cinema, further driving ticket prices up.
And it's the non blockbuster movies that are going to fail. Ticket price is $x regardless of the quality of the movie. The blockbuster budgets are going to price the smaller movies out. No one is going to pay $25 to see something they might enjoy but doesn't have the kind of budget to warrant a cinema viewing. Streaming services that offer these kinds of movies at release date I think will bring the whole scam crashing down.
If movies were to transition into the Steam model where the cost is brought down but has higher reach, the gross is going to go down, and so should the marketing and actor budgets of such films.
Why would they? Why would a studio decide to reduce their gross and therefore their net by going with a less profitable model?
Streaming services that offer these kinds of movies at release date I think will bring the whole scam crashing down.
No more than Honda and Toyota put an end to the "scam" of American automakers.
One party providing a service or product at a specific price and other parties choosing to purchase or not purchase it is not a scam.
> Why would they? Why would a studio decide to reduce their gross and therefore their net by going with a less profitable model?
I don't think the bigger ones will in the short to medium term. But if the gross is lower, then they're also paying less to actors and marketers (streaming services will "freely" market what they think will be popular titles), reducing the overall budget, and reducing the risk profile. The studios themselves may end up making more profits. In any case, that's why I mentioned the smaller budget films transitioning to such a streaming model may force the bigger ones to follow suit.
> No more than Honda and Toyota put an end to the "scam" of American automakers.
Scam was the wrong choice of word here, but do you understand the point I'm trying to make? A similar analogy that works in my favour is Steam as a distribution channel, undercutting physical disk distributors. Games became a lot cheaper, but the AAA titles still ask for and receive quite a high price comparatively.
I don't think the bigger ones will in the short to medium term.
At some point, in the distant future, it's likely that movie distribution will be radically changed. PPV and streaming from day 1 but that's highly unlikely.
For that to happen, alternate means of distribution would need to be more profitable for the studios than the status quo. If movie attendance drops enough that it will bring in more money to partner with Netflix, Hulu or some as of yet uninvented streaming service; then and only then will it happen.
We already have the straight to video model for small budget films and Mockbusters. For those, it makes sense. They are made on limited budgets because the producers know that there's never going to be a theatrical release and the target market is very narrow.
There's also the wrinkle that digital projectors have lowered the cost of releasing a film. There are no longer film prints to produce, quality control, deliver, track and pickup.
It might happen one day but no time soon.
A similar analogy that works in my favour is Steam as a distribution channel, undercutting physical disk distributors. Games became a lot cheaper, but the AAA titles still ask for and receive quite a high price comparatively.
I can't help but notice that GOG came along and started selling classic games at even lower prices than Steam and ever since, I have seen some excellent Steam sales.
> viciously increasing cycle of actor demands more -> prices go up -> more gross is made -> actor demands more.
That's not exactly how movie economics works. The script calls for a male character, 30-40 years old, good-looking as he's the subject of romantic story. The casting operation calls a few agents and comes back with data that Tom Cruise will want $3m, Ryan Philippe will want $2m, some known actor who's currently in a TV series wants $500k, or a no-name actor showing promise will do it for $80k.
It's up to the studio heads and producers to circle down on an option they consider reasonable. They are aware that a portion of movie revenues is generated by having a brand-name actor, i.e., there will be 200,000 extra tickets sold if Tom Cruise's name is on it. Tom Cruise is also aware of this dynamics, which explains the premium.
But it's also not that simple. Actors like to pretend they're in this industry for the sake of "art", not "money", which means that if you have an interesting script and an "artistic" director with a potential of making to Sundance or Cannes, you might then get a brand-name actor for essentially free (you'll have to pay some union-mandated salary). Every big name actor has this "artistic" no-budget movie in his belt, to showcase their "range" and to signal to public that it ain't about the money, which leads to more public attention and larger check for the next franchise movie, as the actor is still "hot".
I'm not worried about actor salaries. Big budget epics cost lots of money to make outside of actor salaries because hundreds of professionals work on them for years, usually on location.
I guess I like a world where a $300 million Lord of the Rings trilogy exists. It's not necessary but I like it.
Yeah you can. I was in a cinema last week in Maloolaba for $9. Brisbane has 3 low cost cinemas around the same price, one in Southbank in the city. Just avoid event cinemas and support your local indies.
You're directly funding the lifestyles of everybody involved in everything you buy. I don't see this as a negative.
That said, the studio will probably get at least half of each of those $5, and I've known people who think absolutely nothing of renting movies for $5 multiple times per day, literally no cognitive difference between picking some $5 movie on iTunes and choosing another one on Netflix. Multiply that, e.g. 1% * $global, and pretty soon you're talking about real money for everybody.
$10-25million is nothing to pay an actor with a main part in a movie that may make $5 billion dollars for the studio.
Wow, $43 (or even $23) is crazy. I just checked, in my city (in Germany) Star Wars costs 13€ (AU$20), and that's the English version in 3D with shutter glasses. "Normal" movies (no 3D, no excess length) are 7-8€ (AU$11-12.50). That's like... half of what you pay. Is Australia generally that expensive? :O
$43 is for a VIP type experience - smaller number of big reclining arm chairs, food and drinks delivered to your seat throughout the movie, etc. Similar to the difference between an economy and business class seat on an airline.
At the big-chain theatre that I saw Star Wars, the "standard" price for a non-3D movie is $19.50. However it's very easy to get discounted prices for any movie. I paid $12.50 for my ticket, booked it online a few minutes before I left home.
I'm quite sure that the extra dollars paid for the $43 movie ticket was going to the movie theatre, not Hollywood.
Someone has already mentioned Hollywood Accounting.
Also Netflix gets $10 a month from me. $120 for a year. Double what I spend at the cinema.
And I don't watch big budget movies all the time. I can see them getting customers to keep paying the monthly subscription for the cheaper to make content and then they have enough money left over to film a few huge movies every year. Especially if they use relatively unknown talent that won't get paid tens of millions a film.
>Also Netflix gets $10 a month from me. $120 for a year. Double what I spend at the cinema.
Which means you're spending $180 on movies per year. $120 for a legacy catalogue of hundreds of movies, and $60 for six new releases. So why would they give up that extra $60?
Well, you originally questioned how they would recoup the cost of making a big movie. And I replied thinking it was entirely possible.
As for your next question, maybe making their own movies does not exclude theatrical releases and getting another $60 from me.
I think their bigger concern is not having to deal with expiring streaming rights and regional distribution rights. They want their own library of quality content.
The margins in Hollywood are actually really great. It's the accounting that makes them seem like a break even business. Less 'profit' means fewer points that have to be paid out from net.
A $200 million film that grosses a billion worldwide.. Those margins aren't bad.
Margins on the Force Awakens aren't bad. Margins on Waterworld, probably not nice. On average? Haven't looked it up by I'm thinking they are OK but nothing to get really excited by.
Don't you think that the humongous scale of Netflix customers combined with the ease of access will compensate for that?
For ex:
(10 million movie-goers * $10 tkt price =$100 m rev)
(100 million Netflix users * $1(considering that Force Awakens title in Netflix library is being accessed by 1/10th of total library and N'flix is paying Star Wars accordingly) =$100 m)
I don't understand your example. Force Awakens grossed over a billion. In a few months it'll get a DVD run and make more money and then it'll end up on Netflix (maybe) and make more money there. ... So why would the studios ever bypass the cinema money for streaming when they can have both?
Maybe the calculus works if they make movies with indie budgets? It could work and we can get to know some very good non-famous actors. Also, they could unveil some kind of 'Netflix Theater' service where, if you pay a one-time fee, you get to watch the movie the minute it's online or alternatively you could just wait a month and it will be made available to every netflix user. That one could prompt some internet fury though...
91% of Avatar's total revenue was pure profit... practically unheard of in most industries.
Sure, Avatar is a unicorn, and sure studios often produce strike-out movies... but the occasional home-run more than makes up for them.
> How do you justify spending $200 million on Force Awakens and hope to recoup that from Netflix fees?
Perhaps the $200 million production cost is unreasonable. We've all seen how many people and companies are involved in producing a single movie. The actor assistants have assistants that have assistants who have paid interns. One company will do a single character model while another goes a different character.
There's so much waste in the movie industry... it's ripe for the typical "SV" disruption (come in cheaper, and same or similar quality, and make it more easily accessible to the masses).
If "disrupting cinema" in this context means abandoning cinema altogether and switching the big screen with a regular HD TV, then I as a consumer hope this future won't happen.
"Live showings" with restricted hours doesn't make sense to me either. This sounds like artificially replicating the limitiations of cinema but throwing away all its advantages.
What are all these advantages of cinema, pray tell?
You do not really talk to the rest of the audience other than those you went to the cinema with, and that can perfectly be replicated at home. The surround sound is indeed better, but that can be replicated with headphones or, if you're dedicated, with speakers around the room.
>What are all these advantages of cinema, pray tell?
A 10+ meter screen plus great sound.
A chance to get out of the fucking couch/house.
Getting to see a movie along with lots of other people (the mere fact of sharing the experience with a whole audience is important to a lot of people and a frequently written about part of the cinema experience, even though some people --introverts, touchy etc-- can't stand others next to them).
I'm sure there were people who insisted on using horse driven carriages, long after automobiles took over. "It's just the proper, cultured thing to do. And you can tip your hat to other passing carriages! The shared feeling!"
Although note that sentimental items can have a value of their own. Cinemas could perhaps even increase the ticket price dramatically in that world, making it a "luxury item" on purpose. "Tell her the depth of your feelings with a real cinema ticket". Remember diamonds?
Part of the appeal for some people is just to get out of the house. You get to go somewhere and do something. Don't discount that.
I'm not big into movies and I don't care for the cinema "experience" at all but I do like to get out of the house once in a [great] while to see a movie with friends. The actual movie we go see isn't too important to me as long as it isn't terrible.
> You [... only talk to] those you went to the cinema with, and that can perfectly be replicated at home. The surround sound is indeed better, but that can be replicated with headphones [...]
Where the headphones would make the talking-to-others impossible again.
> or, if you're dedicated, with speakers around the room.
Not to mention the HD projector/4K television, dedicated windowless room, comfy chairs, etc...
The point being that, yes, with enough time, money and effort you can of course build yourself a miniature cinema inside your home. But the idea of cinemas is that you don't need any of that to enjoy a movie in exceptional quality.
I live in a city apartment and have neither the physical space nor the dedication to get myself a professional-grade entertainment system. Does this mean I don't care about image details or sound quality? Of course not.
The social components of going to a cinema shouldn't be underestimated either. Watching a film in a crowd is a different experience than watching it with close friends at home - visit any midnight premiere of a movie with a decent fanbase if you need proof.
Depending on who you go there with, it can also be more than just the movie and be a part of going out in the evening.
The disruption seems like a loss of quality to me, where everyone except the rich or very dedicated would have to do with a significantly reduced experience tgan what is available today.
And as someone who doesn't live anywhere a big city but has lots of space, a good projector and better audio system, I can't wait for cinema to be available on demand. Just to deliver a different perspective.
Fact is, I haven't been to a cinema screening in more than a decade, for several reasons:
- it requires me to drive at least 50 km (one way)
- I want to see the film in its original language, which is impossible in local cinemas - the german versions (in my case) are simply horrible compared to the original.
- many obscure indie films or documentaries are hard to find even if you're willing to drive those 50 km to the next big city
To me, cinema as a location doesn't come with any advantages and if the industry sticks to their content delivery restrictions, I'll lose interest in the medium - a process that has already started. Currently it takes months (often more than 12) from learning about a film and actually being able to see/buy it, mostly on Bluray or if that doesn't work, it's less legal sources. It's tiresome and naturally, I won't keep track of every movie I was interested in at some point.
Abrams 'mystery box' will probably keep Cinemas alive for a while. Even with an unlimited access card I'm still not jaded enough to watch movies home. It's not the same experience (a crowd, the room, the size of things, the room).
Oh yes, please. The current state of cinema for me means that I have to put the name of a film on a list and check back in a year or two to see if it's actually available to me by then. Particularly for more obscure releases or documentations: When I see a movie website and the screening section shows ca. 5 cinemas in New York and L.A. I have to wonder who the hell are you trying to reach? Just offer a digital download for a fair price and let me watch the movie.
Why would they be in better position to disrupt cinema as compared to iTunes, Google Play or YouTube? All of those players have worldwide name recognition and require no immediate upfront membership.
"The Interview" went online directly, and from what I recall the box office results were kinda meh. Of course, we have no access to a parallel Universe where it would've been released through traditional channels, so it could had been a relative success fwiw.
Amazon has a long way to go. As far as I can tell prime or Amazon Fire TV is only available in a few countries.
I think they needs to go global quick, or they will not survive against netflix.
As it is now, the internet is a rather segregated place. Many media sites are only available in the US. "This is not available in your country".
I wonder if a big reason why netflix decided to make original content in the first place, is that its a huge pain to go global with content with regional rights.
Considering I can't even watch it on my Chromecast without having my laptop stream it I barely use the service at all. The integrated "smart TV" Amazon app I have is a total pain to use.
The purpose of Amazon Prime Video is to get you to sign up for Prime and then order stuff on Amazon. It only makes sense for them to be where Amazon actually delivers stuff quickly via Prime.
The purpose of Netflix is to provide entertainment. It makes sense for them to be everywhere.
I doubt we'll see Amazon PV around the world anytime soon -- it doesn't make sense for them to spend on the global licensing costs since it won't boost Prime subscriptions.
I don't know about that. Retail margins are pretty thin. Video seems like it would be much more profitable, and they'd prefer to have people sign up for Prime just to watch videos and never buy anything that requires shipping.
Of course, Amazon's cash cow right now is AWS. It's mind-blowing how much money companies will spend on that just because they resent maintaining their own hardware.
You're correct that prime is mostly about getting people to buy more stuff. But the purpose of prime video (and music) is ALSO to replace Amazons dying (dead?) revenue streams of selling DVDs (and CDs). That was a huge chunk of Amazons business at one point and they correctly recognized that streaming would eventually replace physical media.
I'd use Amazon Prime Video much more often if they gave up their crusade against the Chromecast. I know they're trying to move their own hardware (Fire Stick), but they're really misguided to completely exclude Chromecast support. They even shut down a third-party app that added it. Don't they think having to download a separate app is enough hassle to encourage sales of the Fire Stick to someone who cares?
I believe this is exactly right. And all the things that gave networks monopoly power (like spectrum ownership) will become irrelevant. You can mark the day this happens when NetFlix starts offering a daily 'news' update type program.
Of course most people see this already, and the extreme tactics around last mile broadband are exactly around this problem. Netflix can't work if their packets can't get to you, and the person who controls that last mile can hold their packets hostage (and has). If you want to poke a dragon some time, start advocating for equal access to broadband in your municipality :-).
They should just start picking up the conventional news channels; an custom one would instantly make them enemies who thought it was either too conservative or too liberal.
At some point the channels will realize that cable carriers are a dead end and start selling to online companies like Netflix. Why should Netflix replace cable when it could become cable (less the exorbitant pricing and punch-a-hole-in-the-wall customer service)?
Could that fit with Netflix's current culture? They're big on content that's curated, high-quality, high-definition (with graceful degredation). Live news' editorial agility and responsiveness would require a department with a substantially different attitude and expertise.
They're capable of expanding and pivoting though, more than most companies, so if they decide it's a priority, it's possible. It seems like a pretty big commitment though.
I could certainly imagine them doing a much better job of news coverage where all the "Stories" would be available independently and when things changed you got an indication of new data so you could, if you wanted to, watch from the change forward, or the whole piece. Sort of like the NY Times pushing and re-pushing an article as the available information gathers texture.
Since most of the news channels consist of rehashing things with the assumption that this is the "first" version you are seeing, they could provide a much better viewing experience that would certainly feel more curated and much more efficiently inform.
Before doing a cable news type thing they would probably be better off starting with a PBS / 60 minutes type program. Long form journalism that still has value the next day.
Like their current original content, they would just sub it out to another organization, which would provide them the content. I could see them going to an existing organization that may not be entirely linked to a network (at least not in as competitive a way) and using their new. The BBC for example, or NPR if they had a video cast equivalent to their audio one.
I like that. I could see them having NPR and BBC news report 'channels' with each article being a different program. That would be a serious hit agains cable and satellite TV. Sure, it's wouldn't be live streaming, but I imagine that live streaming is just another evolutionary step they could approach after they master the short new reports.
You could imagine a kind of curated UGC for Netflix, where they take News personalities that are already well developed on YouTube and give them a platform to really go global. I for one cannot wait until this happens. The programming they've been putting out lately has been amazing for me.
Just like the airlines auctioning off business upgrades at the gate I read about today, this idea and the news idea are two ideas that are not obvious until you hear them. Cool!
"Passengers who bid see where they stand on a leaderboard, and just before boarding begins, the airline awards one upgrade to Main Cabin Select and one to first. The auction, with people bidding against each other in the gate area, can add some excitement—and some potential added frustration—to the boredom of waiting for a flight."
It's a money loser in itself, but perhaps it improves the overall product.
One thing I miss, since giving up cable, is instant content. I could turn the TV on and start watching something, before choosing to watch something else.
Now I turn on the TV and I'm immediately faced with the paradox of choice. If the news was just there, playing in the background while I browsed my other options, I would love this. It's something that would differentiate Netflix and keep me paying for their service.
Content and programming are still quite limited. There are a few good original shows. Also, they keep adding a lot of movies with poor ratings (rotten tomatoes). There's definitely potential for some disruption in this space. Also, some more competition from others would be nice.
While I'm a Netflix fan and subscriber I find them terrifying. They're clearly the monopoly power in streaming TV and whatever you call the competition that comes from Hulu or traditional cable companies is a joke in comparison. I predict in the future we'll have to break up the Netflix monopoly and require that they sublicense out the content they have license to stream to smaller suppliers much like the way it works for some utilities.
> They're clearly the monopoly power in streaming TV and whatever you call the competition that comes from Hulu or traditional cable companies is a joke in comparison
In some countries Netflix is the only choice. Your right to be at least a little terrified. A few years ago Google was in the same position. Everyone loved them. Google could do no wrong. Now we're in a situation where search has been monopolized by an advertising company.
Everyone is upset about the cable company monopolies, while at the same time happily handing Netflix a new monopoly.
Netflix wont become a lucrative monopoly because they own/control neither the content that they distribute (except for the few shows they produce) nor the distribution channel (the Internet). Moreso they have no pricing power; they faced a huge backlash the first time they tried to increase their subscription fees and only just managed to raise it by $1. Unless they can convince their customers to pay much more so they can sponsor and buy much more content, Netflix will be at best the largest among a group of streaming services you have to subscribe to to get all the content you want.
I think that works until the cable companies essentially become defunct. Once that happens Netflix, being the 500lb gorilla in the room, will be the highest bidder for your content even if Netflix is the lowest bidder per view because Netflix will have all the eyes. Showtime is now available as an add-on to Hulu. It will be interesting to see how this model works out for them as opposed to the HBO self-streaming model. I suspect the end game will kill off both of those models because, again, I speculate even if the per-view revenue via Netflix are lower your over-all revenue would be higher.
Meh. In some small markets this might be the case, but in every major western market you already have Amazon Video (similar price, and with Prime delivery and music streaming), and Google and Apple will offer a competitor within the next two years and will have deep enough pockets to be competitive.
How can I access HBO globally? I see at the bottom of their website "HBO NOW is only accessible in the U.S. and certain U.S. territories where a high-speed broadband connection is available."
I agree with what a lot of people have mentioned, though not focused on: Netflix needs to add sports if they want to really dominate at a global level.
As an example, consider Africa (I'm Kenyan): the Barclays Premiere League is watched in virtually every country, but provided by one company, known as MultiChoice. Because almost everyone wants to watch football, and there is only one option, if they can afford it, they pay.
If Netflix (or some other company) was to obtain the rights to airing the BPL, all the middle-to-upper-class families in Kenya with decent internet connections would immediately consider switching.
Counterpoint: nobody really cares that much about footy around here. Furthermore sports are quite useless as on-demand content. Netflix isn't synonymous with live TV.
Why waste a lot of money on very expensive content that does not scale and does not fit the Netflix profile?
Are a large number of people actually interested in sports, or is it a large number of people within your filtered and biased social group that are interested? If I look at what my friends watch I'd get the impression no one watches sports or soaps and everyone would like the TV schedules to be filled with documentaries and satire. That doesn't make it true - it's just that's the sort of people I socialise with.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just questioning whether you've done enough actual research to know if this is really the case.
I'm not really debating the popularity of football. Here in the UK it's popular - I'd guess that about 30% to 50% of adults watch it regularly (in a pub or going to a game), with maybe 1/4 of those being interested enough to pay for a TV service to watch it at home. It definitely isn't even close to "all middle to upper class families" as thegenius2000 suggested might be the case in Kenya though.
An interesting related statistic: Almost twice as many people go to the theatre in London as go to all the major Premiership football games[1]. I doubt many people would guess that if they were asked.
No sports is huge in Africa, Specially the Premier League. Most people only have a subscription to Multichoice because of the sport package that's included with the subscription. Having said that, it is possible to stream the Premier league - if you already have a Multichoice subscription.- South African.
Football (Soccer) is so much bigger globally than American football, it's not even close. The Super Bowl attracts 100 million viewers, a Real Madrid vs Barca game attracts 400 million viewers (a regular season game, not even champions league).
There's no doubt that sport (particularly football and cricket) are a sure way to quickly gain market share in certain countries. The problem is, this fact is very well understood in the industry, and therefore the content rights are priced accordingly. I'm in the UK, where it costs a lot of money to acquire Premier League rights, and I doubt it's exactly cheap anywhere in the world.
The question for Netflix — and any content distributor — is whether the benefits justify the price. This calculation will be different for every organisation, based on their financial resources, expansion plans, existing market share, customer base, target customer base, etc. I suspect that, at the moment, the potential benefits from expanding into sport aren't justified for Netflix. They have a strong brand based on access to high-quality, episodic "TV-style" content, that is driving good growth already. Moving into showing live sports would be an expensive risk.
I suspect we'll see Netflix expand into streaming live events eventually, but probably not mainstream sports and news to begin with. It makes more sense for them to identify emerging sectors, such as esports, which have the potential for strong growth, but for which the rights are still relatively cheap.
I see the point you're trying to make, but there are still "traditional" laws that need to change for the global internet to support all kinds of media. To be fair, Netflix are trying to drive the change that will lead to this idealistic global internet, no?
Netflix is transforming into an on-demand cable channel.
I want to pay a monthly fee and get a Spotify for movies. I don't want to pay 10 Euro a month for netflix originals plus a handful of old movies.
Notice how cord cutting has accelerated as people realize a) cable is far more expensive than the value they get out of it and b) the experience with Netflix, Amazon, etc has improved and new players have arrived (MLB, HBO Go).
Music is something a ton of people passively listen to. It's background noise, and for the passive (and primary) music audience, familiar is good.
When people go out of their way to download or stream a show, it's not usually background. Providers know that, that's why they insist on shoving 20 minutes of commercials in front of you for a 40 minute show. You're captive.
I truly believe there are a lot of people out there like me, who are willing to pay existing cable prices for completely on-demand content. They just don't know it/think about it because they aren't navel-gazers like we are.
In my experience, Netflix is horrid outside the US - a much more limited catalogue and a lot of mismatched foreign language content.
I live in Jamaica and had subscribed to the version that was legitimately available to us w/o using a VPN or proxy or similar service.
The result was twofold:
- less content than on the US version (but the same price)
- a whole lot of content available in overdubbed Spanish only or with baked-on subtitles.
Guess they don't realize that south of the border there are countries that speak English (as well as French, Dutch and Portuguese).
Our cable companies have the same problem trying to legitimately license content from US broadcast and cable networks - they want to dump the "Latin American" feed on us...
> Guess they don't realize that south of the border there are countries that speak English (as well as French, Dutch and Portuguese).
I was working in Italy for a bit although they had audio in English for most programs I wanted to watch, subtitles were only available in Italian. Again, it's all because of licensing...
it is about two things - licensing as well as market size.
in the case of the latter, big media companies just don't care about small markets, as the cost of operating them is greater than the potential profits realized.
in the case of the former, i work in media and you are absolutely right - media licensing is stuck in a 1985 model, which only serves to sustain a few middlemen kind of players, but in the bigger picture sucks for both consumers and the companies that own the content.
one particular result of this is that many people who can't legitimately get what the want (in terms of downloads, streams, etc.) will just pirate it, having tried unsuccessfully to do things the right way and been frustrated.
I have always wondered why couldn't YouTube dominate over Netflix's territory? Mostly what NFLX has is content which makes the barrier to entry not that hard but YouTube has more publishers/creators and with a wider reach it can easily reign over this market but quite surprisingly it doesn't.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 305 ms ] threadI pay for proxy service just to "pretend" to be in USA and than pay the Neflix regular price. I believe a lot of ppl will subscribe to Netflix once no additional tricks are required.
This implies to me that their original content is globally available, while licensed content will still be regionally restricted (and I don't see a way they could do anything else). Unless I'm missing something in the announcement?
Now if only BBC's iPlayer would become global and allow us non-brits to pay for it (effectively subsidizing the TV license maybe?), that would be heaven.
I should set up my own VPN again, instead of using paid for services.
Edit: I can't decide if that's a good or bad thing, given I've never paid for a UK TV licence, but for official purposes I still live at my parents' house, who do pay.
But then I wanted one in the UK sometimes, and in the US sometimes.
And then I tried to watch HKTV from Taiwan, so needed one in HK.
So I ended up with ExpressVPN.
But... let's see what happens this year. Especially with netflix!
I built something similar with sshuttle (way easier than OpenVPN) two years ago, it's at https://github.com/lorenzhs/instavpn but it uses the old DO API and is rather hacky. sshuttle also isn't very good for streaming.
http://www.rethinkresearch.biz/articles/bbc-reawakens-plans-...
They say a BBC streaming subscription service is going to launch in the US this year.
Unfortunately I'm not sure the BBC have the entrepreneurial spirit to throw in their current international contracts, and try to launch themselves as a global network. I suspect they'll wait until the VoD market is much larger, which will mean that their competition will be very strong.
My understanding is that Netflix doesn't have streaming rights for most of the content that isn't theirs internationally, and that was the biggest barrier before.
My guess is that uptake will be slow, but the great thing is they just keep creating more content, so it'll be more compelling every year.
starting at $7.5/month (500 INR) with a first month free trial.
From the announcement, it sounds like basically the whole map should now be red with a few exceptions.
Yeey, Serbia available!
(from the article)
Map shows very few countries - no Singapore as mentioned in the article
Also the article mentioned 190 countries at one point and 130 at other places. Moreover, Netflix claims it has 70M subscribers across 130 countries. How is that possible if they just launched it?
The footer says 70M subscribers across 190 countries, and was probably updated today. In their last press release in November, that line said "Netflix is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 69 million members in over 60 countries..."
http://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-o...
Does anyone have an idea of the total population of coverage added today? I'm wondering if the growth accelerates from here. Seems like it would, but then Netflix has likely already initiated service in the most lucrative markets.
To me it seems like they shot their own foot; now that I've wasted my free month on this, I'm not planning to pay in the future just to find out if their catalogue has improved.
http://netflixportugal.netflixable.com/
USA: 7004
UK: 3589
Finland: 3380 (So high because they don't dub?)
Sweden: 2542 (But Sweden does not dub either ...)
Germany: 2415 (But Germany does)
France: 2254
Spain: 1482
Italy: 1393
Portugal: 924
(Europe really seems to get netflix light)
Example:
http://usa.netflixable.com/2016/01/complete-alphabetical-lis...
The total number of movies/shows/episodes is 7004.
(I hope that was what you where asking about)
[Though I really wish I could access some of the German language library directly from my Australian subscription.]
Why would you dub? I mean, why would you either have to dub everything or not include it? Just have at set up a screen that asks which languages you speak, whether you prefer dubs or subs and whether you will accept subs for everything that doesn't have a dub if you previously selected dub.
Why is language so tied to location? Specially in Europe! (and I can imagine there is a pretty large market for shows in Spanish or Mandarin in the U.S. too, and why not have those in French, German, Japanese, Korean, etc too while we are at it...)
I think this announcement probably changes things in the direction I want in this respect. But it always seemed like the obvious choice to begin with.
From a technical point of view is a trivial fix. From a commercial point of view? Well, either selling content in a different language is profitable, in which case negotiating the licenses is worthwhile, or it isn't very profitable, in which case "license to distribute in Japanese with subtitles inside Italy" should not be a very expensive right to acquire.
I have somewhat better luck with the previous episodes of American TV shows.
If I know exactly what I want to watch (and don't get lucky enough to find it on Amazon/Netflix/Hulu) I pay for PPV. I don't expect magic for <$10/mo, especially when the going rate for a one-off viewing is nearly half that.
They've had a handful of times where bigger-name movies burst in based on some deal or the other (Starz being the original big one, but there've been others since) but by and large Netflix has always been indie + back catalog as far as I've experienced it in the US.
Yeah. My main beef with Netflix is that I'd like to just sort content based on the 5-star rating. I'll rarely want to watch something that is less than a 2.0. And I'll consider just about anything that is 4.5 and above.
I'm with you that I'd like to sort/filter by rating, though I also recognize that tends to cause a snowball effect where you're either popular early or never watched at all.
Or is that not what you are looking for?
I do have a Windows laptop, but I rarely consume content on that these days. Mostly I am watching from my tablet, sometimes from my phone, and just very occasionally from my Blueray player (because the UI is terrible, slow, and buggy).
Like in SQL all you would need to do is change this:
to this: When I built a web app for film management, that was by far the easiest thing to implement.I used to use Netflix to ship me DVDs, then I protested the Qwikster move by switching to streaming-only, which was great for movies (for awhile) but has been shifting to TV content.
To be honest, I don't use Netflix much, but the value I get is still worth the $8/mo. Some months I don't use it at all, other months I binge-watch The Man in the High Castle.
When I want to watch a movie, I first hit Netflix (hey, free streaming!) to search for it... then I check Amazon Prime on my Fire Stick, because some titles are free. If it's available for rental, I'll pay the $4. If available for purchase only (or unavailable), then I'll hop over to the iTunes store on the AppleTV and hope it's available for rental.
Or I just go to canistream.it, which was about my only original invention ever, until I found out someone had already done it.
I do use that site quite a bit. It's very useful.
Do you mean that you get that content on Netflix? Or where do you watch?
At this point I'm fairly certain that I won't be able to find any movie from the list of things I'm interested in on Netflix. On Amazon maybe a few, for separate payment, which would be fine but half of their films don't offer the original audio track and instead force my local language. I absolutely don't want to see a dubbed version though. So, all things considered I think it's a mess if you have specific things to watch in mind.
I agree that if you have something specific in mind and don't already know it's on Netflix, you more likely than not won't find it. But I knew that going in, and never expected that to be the case in the first place.
If only this were an option. I'd gladly pay a few bucks to stream a movie. But outside of the US and Canada I don't think PPV even exists at all.
Amazon prime isnt available in my country. I dont know of any other online PPV sites (anyone?)
If I can't stream it from one of these netflix-type sites (and as everyone else has pointed out, the selection is crap) my only options are drive to a DVD rental shop or visit thepiratebay.
And they wonder why piracy is rampant.
That's ludicrously expensive if you just want to watch it once.
My fingers are crossed that this gamble is fruitful in bringing the cost to license content back down again to levels that are sustainable for Netflix. I also wonder if we'll ever see Netflix license Netflix original content to another network.
This is all conjecture purely as an enthusiast of Netflix.
Hopefully.
Also, to confirm what you said, we are supposed to get Star Wars: the force awakens first
https://www.yahoo.com/movies/s/netflix-stream-star-wars-forc...
I saw somewhere that we would get it in about six months.
In terms of content quality, Netflix (and their competitors) are the equivalent of a free-to-air TV channel with occasional big ticket titles that they likely blow their budget on.
Edit: I am also in one of the grey countries, and I can see the "Start your free month" page on netflix.com, instead of "unavailable in your country."
It works for me in Romania
There's consistently been a new season of a Netflix show that I've wanted to watch every month for a while now, so it doesn't seem like bad value. It helps that I share the account with a friend though, and I'm surprised they still let people do that.
If you read the press release it is available in every country in the world except Syria, Crimea, North Korea and China.
...ok, I am kidding.
It will also be interesting to see how other content providers (Amazon, but also CNN, HBO, and more conventional TV Providers) follow suit in the pursuit of eyeballs and expanding global markets.
Netflix is based on subscription, but it would be interesting to know if there is a company or network of companies equipped to sell digital advertising localized, at global scale to support a "free" model often seen on US network applications.
But I'm not sure any of the partners in the conventional setup have a reason to change. US networks don't care about worldwide rights. Producers don't care who is paying them for the rights. Other country networks like having content to license.
Other than China and India, no other market is as big or insular as the US. In Europe people travel across borders and speak multiple languages all the time, and yet it's like pulling teeth to put together multiple regional subtitle rights for use in a country where it is not the native language. For someone to subscribe to Netflix and be able to use it in multiple countries with the subtitles of their choice consistently available is a huge benefit to a huge number of affluent users. This is something which the existing film industry is incapable of doing structurally, and therefore is a huge advantage that can only be replicated by the biggest producers (ie. major studios). And those big companies do not have product development and UX in their DNA, so they will struggle to compete with Netflix in this regard (to date only HBO shows promise). But meanwhile the Netflix experience will be so much better that they will undermine the foundations of industry.
I'm reminded of how in 2007 no corporate IT department would allow employees to use iPhones, and even though Apple never explicitly addressed the enterprise market, and Microsoft bent over backwards to give corporate buyers what they wanted, at the end of the day companies which didn't allow their employees to use their iPhones for work suffered a competitive disadvantage.
BTW the problem extends beyond subtitles. International movies typically are just available in their original language + local translation (German). Then sometimes the video stream also differs from the English version (e.g. when there is a sign in German language).
It is quite possible that this is due to licensing issues. This link here https://mrgnome.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/no-option-to-turn-o... might or might not help you, given its age.
In some sense it is still better than Amazon Prime in Germany with only German audio being available when I was using it last.
Do you know whether the same thing happens with Netflix original content as well?
I assume that the distribution of films around the world is more limited than we think. At some point when Netflix has a much larger subscriber base, it may make more sense for films to be released directly to Netflix for global consumption. They could even be clever about it and have it only open for "live showings" at specific hours or something like that. What do you think?
At some point I assume they will also become the channel that VR content could be sent through as well, maybe in partnership with Facebook?
They are trying. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2 is being released simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix. Some chains complained and are refusing to show it.
But honestly, I don't see it. Cinema is $10-15/person/visit, and Netflix is $10/mo for an entire library of content. Profit margins for Hollywood aren't that great - so how do you bridge that price gap? How do you justify spending $200 million on Force Awakens and hope to recoup that from Netflix fees? You can't.
Imagine - you buy the base Force Awakens for $10, and then they offer you extra movie parts - $1 for one in which Chewbacca does something silly, $2 for one which features an additional 10-minutes-long scene of starships shooting at each other, etc.
It would be interesting to see how this would/could be applied to both rentals and purchases - rent the bonus features for $0.50-2 each, purchase them for $2-5 each or something like that.
I wouldn't want to watch a film with extra fluff that added nothing to the story, just for a cash-grab by the maker of the film.
Extra add-on features are always pointless: look at the Dreamcast and the add-on packs you could put into the controller. As it was entirely optional, none of the games could depend on it being there so had to cater for controllers without it, so this little LCD on your controller just ended up showing Rayman walking or dancing, and contributed nothing to the game.
The same is happening with Macbooks and iPhones, where developers cannot rely on the user having a "force touch" touchpad or iPhone 6nnnn (whatever it is), so cannot rely on that hardware feature being available; because of this, they cannot say "feature X is done by using force touch" because if you have a Macbook without that hardware, you can't use that feature. So it must get ignored to cater to everyone.
In the case of stories and films, the story must still make sense without the extra scenes. This makes the extra scenes pointless.
You obviously can't apply it to every movie, but you could appply it to quite a few. For instance, there's little point in extra content for Inception, because the movie world is defined by the start and the end of that very movie, and as you said, it has to make sense in its basic version. But consider things with already established franchises. I Disney would start publishing DLC sub-stories to the Force Awakens, I'm betting that every hardcore Star Wars fan would feel obliged to see them. The world portrayed in the movie is much bigger than the movie itself, and is has communities formed around it. To participate in the fandom, you need to be up to date with the canon. I'm pretty sure it could work with Marvel Cinematic Universe as well.
Then there are movies for which such a move would be a gamble. LotR and Hunger Games are franchises too, but I don't think they're strong enough to support DLC money-grab.
Anyway, enough suggesting ideas to them :). I absolutely hate DLCs. I just couldn't resist discussing the concept in the abstract.
I think this could totally work for something like Inception too. The film has a backstory suggests at a wider context beyond what's shown in the scenes. Most stories do. That's why fanfiction exists.
Also: > Profit margins for Hollywood aren't that great.
From what I hear, that's not true, but it's all hidden through magical "Hollywood accounting" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting)
Absolutely, but that's nothing new. We had direct-to-video or direct-to-tv movies for decades. Direct-to-streaming isn't really that disruptive. What we don't have is big budget movies bypassing theaters, because why would they? Why wouldn't they have theatre run, and then a streaming/video/TV run?
If they can keep selling in theatres then they will. But if Netflix can deliver high enough production values (coupled with higher quality home equipment) then it may put theatres out of business. Since I got a $500 projector I've hardly ever gone to the cinema, and regretted it when I did.
I think that's what it comes down to.
>Since I got a $500 projector I've hardly ever gone to the cinema, and regretted it when I did.
But that's been a trend for a long time. There is some evidence that high-quality AV equipment with digital content did impact ticket sales. But I don't know if it's going to kill it. The one thing that cinema has going for it is it's a destination when you want to get out of the house.
And we do have a good thing going. If you want to see a new release RIGHT NOW, you pay $15/person/view. If you don't, you wait a few months to rent it for $5 or wait a little longer and watch it for 'free' on Netflix or TV. That's eco101 price discrimination.
I'd be perfectly fine with additional fees or different payment tiers for more expensive content. I pay $130/mo. for a cable package that provides almost no content that I enjoy and includes a DVR that frequently craps out when recording the few shows that I do watch. I'd rather pay Netflix an extra $30/mo. (or more, depending on what they can offer) for that premium content and ditch my cable package altogether.
Precisely the things I don't watch :P
> Hollywood continues to wrestle with rising marketing costs, particularly overseas, which can make up 70 percent of a film's gross.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/200-million-rising-hol...
Let's see what the price is when they are entrenched as a global monopoly with a vast catalog of culturally relevant content that you can't get anywhere else. It may very well act as Hollywood on steroids.
Crunchbase tells us that the only investment was $36m. The rest is regular debt, $1.7bn! It just shows how much banks trust their business model.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/netflix#/entity
For context I watched the force awakens last night at iMax (premium recliner chairs which was nice!) for $43. But you can't see a movie in Australia for less than about $23 these days. We're directly funding hollywood's lifestyle.
This is basic supply and demand. Harrison Ford has a monopoly on Harrison Ford, so if you want Harrison Ford, you have to pay what Harrison Ford wants for it.
Hard to imagine how that would be possible...
I think some of the low to medium budget movies will make the transition to simultaneous streaming releases where it may be easier to recoup money early on. This may or may not force a similar thing to happen with big budget films, but too many lifestyles would be affected for this to happen in any short to medium term.
Pretty much what happened to authors of novels.
I know authors usually use publishers for review / editing / publication, but I'm not aware of a time where the relationship was not "publisher gets X% cut of revenue". When was it "author gets X million dollars"?
The same applies to music. Pretty much every creative industry outside film is paying the performers or creators a percentage of sales. Its just harder for that to scale to endeavors that take thousands of people like modern blockbusters.
(Royalties aren't rare either, but a lump sum agreement isn't eyebrow raising in the least)
For performers, actors in plays, members of an orchestra, backup dancers behind a pop star... most are getting paid per performance or per period of time, not royalties. Royalties are more common for people who can take a majority responsibility for the end product, e.g. a solo artist or an author.
Much like making music, filming technology is already commoditized at the entry level... it's distribution costs that remain high (hard to reach a large audience without massive ad $$, known actors, and an established publisher). Netflix would seriously disrupt that, boosting "indie" film making in the same way that Spotify / youtube / myspace / etc seriously boosted non-mainstream music. We still have A-list musicians but the long tail is seeing far more success than before.
But Indie music is better in the personal preference category and usually no worse in production values. And on the other hand what we see in regular tv: we see increasing abundance of content , and most people flocking more and more to the highly rated content which usually has high production values and often some measure of high brand.
That's probably because they don't want to risk an hour of their time. On the other hand , listening to a new song ? who cares if it's bad - it's only a minute to switch to something else , and it's a social custom too.
Young Harrison Ford in the late 1970s might have been willing to trade away the use of his likeness in future Star Wars films for a relatively small consideration.
In the future, if a studio can find a relatively unknown actor who wants the work, it's possible they could do with a digitally-produced likeness, in case the original actor doesn't want the job. (Sort of an augmented version of the SNL contract)
Variety claims 10 - 20 million http://variety.com/2015/film/news/harrison-ford-star-wars-pa...
Sydney Morning Herald had an article says that it would be $34 million if it breaks $1 billion gross earnings (which is likely). http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/star-wars-the-for...
Probably a bad example, because the studio's investment in Harrison Ford in SW:TFA will surely be repaid many times over, and isn't really threatened by netflix.
The market decides these things.
It's difficult to argue that there isn't enough profit on a movie that has grossed over 1.5 billion dollars in three weeks to pay A-list actors A-list salaries.
A-list actors don't make that kind of money because movie studios are generous. They make it because their presence puts butts in seats.
Sure, the "Star Wars" name would be enough to put butts in seats but without Ford, Fisher and Hamil, this movie would have made less money.
If I'm not being forced to pay it, I don't care what someone else makes.
In three weeks, that is over 15 million dollars just where it's been released so far. Think about China and the rest of Asia. Think about on demand viewing and DVD/Blu-Ray.
As I said, we don't know for sure but it's a pretty safe bet that Ford, Fisher and Hamil being a part of this movie will pay for itself in increased revenue.
Right, and I think the market is unfairly inflated at the moment, and has been for a long time. Movie ticket prices have more than doubled in the last ~ 10 years. The presence of streaming new blockbuster movies is likely to disrupt the traditional cinema if it is allowed to get off the ground.
And that's basically the point I'm trying to make. If movies were to transition into the Steam model where the cost is brought down but has higher reach, the gross is going to go down, and so should the marketing and actor budgets of such films.
> If I'm not being forced to pay it, I don't care what someone else makes.
Yes, going to the cinema is optional, no one is forcing you to go. But if you want to see a movie within 3-6 months of release you have to pay the cinema ticket price. There is no other option. I don't care how much the actors make, I care how much I pay at the ticket box, which appears to be viciously increasing cycle of actor demands more -> prices go up -> more gross is made -> actor demands more. To account for this, studios are spending more and more on advertising to get people to actually go to the cinema, further driving ticket prices up.
And it's the non blockbuster movies that are going to fail. Ticket price is $x regardless of the quality of the movie. The blockbuster budgets are going to price the smaller movies out. No one is going to pay $25 to see something they might enjoy but doesn't have the kind of budget to warrant a cinema viewing. Streaming services that offer these kinds of movies at release date I think will bring the whole scam crashing down.
Why would they? Why would a studio decide to reduce their gross and therefore their net by going with a less profitable model?
Streaming services that offer these kinds of movies at release date I think will bring the whole scam crashing down.
No more than Honda and Toyota put an end to the "scam" of American automakers.
One party providing a service or product at a specific price and other parties choosing to purchase or not purchase it is not a scam.
I don't think the bigger ones will in the short to medium term. But if the gross is lower, then they're also paying less to actors and marketers (streaming services will "freely" market what they think will be popular titles), reducing the overall budget, and reducing the risk profile. The studios themselves may end up making more profits. In any case, that's why I mentioned the smaller budget films transitioning to such a streaming model may force the bigger ones to follow suit.
> No more than Honda and Toyota put an end to the "scam" of American automakers.
Scam was the wrong choice of word here, but do you understand the point I'm trying to make? A similar analogy that works in my favour is Steam as a distribution channel, undercutting physical disk distributors. Games became a lot cheaper, but the AAA titles still ask for and receive quite a high price comparatively.
At some point, in the distant future, it's likely that movie distribution will be radically changed. PPV and streaming from day 1 but that's highly unlikely.
For that to happen, alternate means of distribution would need to be more profitable for the studios than the status quo. If movie attendance drops enough that it will bring in more money to partner with Netflix, Hulu or some as of yet uninvented streaming service; then and only then will it happen.
We already have the straight to video model for small budget films and Mockbusters. For those, it makes sense. They are made on limited budgets because the producers know that there's never going to be a theatrical release and the target market is very narrow.
There's also the wrinkle that digital projectors have lowered the cost of releasing a film. There are no longer film prints to produce, quality control, deliver, track and pickup.
It might happen one day but no time soon.
A similar analogy that works in my favour is Steam as a distribution channel, undercutting physical disk distributors. Games became a lot cheaper, but the AAA titles still ask for and receive quite a high price comparatively.
I can't help but notice that GOG came along and started selling classic games at even lower prices than Steam and ever since, I have seen some excellent Steam sales.
That's not exactly how movie economics works. The script calls for a male character, 30-40 years old, good-looking as he's the subject of romantic story. The casting operation calls a few agents and comes back with data that Tom Cruise will want $3m, Ryan Philippe will want $2m, some known actor who's currently in a TV series wants $500k, or a no-name actor showing promise will do it for $80k.
It's up to the studio heads and producers to circle down on an option they consider reasonable. They are aware that a portion of movie revenues is generated by having a brand-name actor, i.e., there will be 200,000 extra tickets sold if Tom Cruise's name is on it. Tom Cruise is also aware of this dynamics, which explains the premium.
But it's also not that simple. Actors like to pretend they're in this industry for the sake of "art", not "money", which means that if you have an interesting script and an "artistic" director with a potential of making to Sundance or Cannes, you might then get a brand-name actor for essentially free (you'll have to pay some union-mandated salary). Every big name actor has this "artistic" no-budget movie in his belt, to showcase their "range" and to signal to public that it ain't about the money, which leads to more public attention and larger check for the next franchise movie, as the actor is still "hot".
I guess I like a world where a $300 million Lord of the Rings trilogy exists. It's not necessary but I like it.
That said, the studio will probably get at least half of each of those $5, and I've known people who think absolutely nothing of renting movies for $5 multiple times per day, literally no cognitive difference between picking some $5 movie on iTunes and choosing another one on Netflix. Multiply that, e.g. 1% * $global, and pretty soon you're talking about real money for everybody.
$10-25million is nothing to pay an actor with a main part in a movie that may make $5 billion dollars for the studio.
At the big-chain theatre that I saw Star Wars, the "standard" price for a non-3D movie is $19.50. However it's very easy to get discounted prices for any movie. I paid $12.50 for my ticket, booked it online a few minutes before I left home.
I'm quite sure that the extra dollars paid for the $43 movie ticket was going to the movie theatre, not Hollywood.
Also Netflix gets $10 a month from me. $120 for a year. Double what I spend at the cinema.
And I don't watch big budget movies all the time. I can see them getting customers to keep paying the monthly subscription for the cheaper to make content and then they have enough money left over to film a few huge movies every year. Especially if they use relatively unknown talent that won't get paid tens of millions a film.
Which means you're spending $180 on movies per year. $120 for a legacy catalogue of hundreds of movies, and $60 for six new releases. So why would they give up that extra $60?
As for your next question, maybe making their own movies does not exclude theatrical releases and getting another $60 from me.
I think their bigger concern is not having to deal with expiring streaming rights and regional distribution rights. They want their own library of quality content.
A $200 million film that grosses a billion worldwide.. Those margins aren't bad.
For ex: (10 million movie-goers * $10 tkt price =$100 m rev)
(100 million Netflix users * $1(considering that Force Awakens title in Netflix library is being accessed by 1/10th of total library and N'flix is paying Star Wars accordingly) =$100 m)
-- there will be 100-200 m Netflix subscribers who can access all the content anywhere in the world
-- there won't be any physical media drive in existence in which you can slot your DVD.
-- economies of scale for Netflix with dirt cheap internet will force people to consume content cheaply and easily.
-- there will be so much advancement in Televisions and Home theater systems that it would make cinema screen inferior.
Won't these reasons be good enough?
It did happen to me when my daughter was born, I couldn't go to cinema but still wants to see new movies.
Avatar production cost: $237,000,000 USD
Avatar global revenue : $2,787,965,087 USD
91% of Avatar's total revenue was pure profit... practically unheard of in most industries.
Sure, Avatar is a unicorn, and sure studios often produce strike-out movies... but the occasional home-run more than makes up for them.
> How do you justify spending $200 million on Force Awakens and hope to recoup that from Netflix fees?
Perhaps the $200 million production cost is unreasonable. We've all seen how many people and companies are involved in producing a single movie. The actor assistants have assistants that have assistants who have paid interns. One company will do a single character model while another goes a different character.
There's so much waste in the movie industry... it's ripe for the typical "SV" disruption (come in cheaper, and same or similar quality, and make it more easily accessible to the masses).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...
"Live showings" with restricted hours doesn't make sense to me either. This sounds like artificially replicating the limitiations of cinema but throwing away all its advantages.
A 10+ meter screen plus great sound.
A chance to get out of the fucking couch/house.
Getting to see a movie along with lots of other people (the mere fact of sharing the experience with a whole audience is important to a lot of people and a frequently written about part of the cinema experience, even though some people --introverts, touchy etc-- can't stand others next to them).
I'm sure there were people who insisted on using horse driven carriages, long after automobiles took over. "It's just the proper, cultured thing to do. And you can tip your hat to other passing carriages! The shared feeling!"
Although note that sentimental items can have a value of their own. Cinemas could perhaps even increase the ticket price dramatically in that world, making it a "luxury item" on purpose. "Tell her the depth of your feelings with a real cinema ticket". Remember diamonds?
I'm not big into movies and I don't care for the cinema "experience" at all but I do like to get out of the house once in a [great] while to see a movie with friends. The actual movie we go see isn't too important to me as long as it isn't terrible.
Where the headphones would make the talking-to-others impossible again.
> or, if you're dedicated, with speakers around the room.
Not to mention the HD projector/4K television, dedicated windowless room, comfy chairs, etc...
The point being that, yes, with enough time, money and effort you can of course build yourself a miniature cinema inside your home. But the idea of cinemas is that you don't need any of that to enjoy a movie in exceptional quality.
I live in a city apartment and have neither the physical space nor the dedication to get myself a professional-grade entertainment system. Does this mean I don't care about image details or sound quality? Of course not.
The social components of going to a cinema shouldn't be underestimated either. Watching a film in a crowd is a different experience than watching it with close friends at home - visit any midnight premiere of a movie with a decent fanbase if you need proof.
Depending on who you go there with, it can also be more than just the movie and be a part of going out in the evening.
The disruption seems like a loss of quality to me, where everyone except the rich or very dedicated would have to do with a significantly reduced experience tgan what is available today.
Fact is, I haven't been to a cinema screening in more than a decade, for several reasons:
- it requires me to drive at least 50 km (one way) - I want to see the film in its original language, which is impossible in local cinemas - the german versions (in my case) are simply horrible compared to the original. - many obscure indie films or documentaries are hard to find even if you're willing to drive those 50 km to the next big city
To me, cinema as a location doesn't come with any advantages and if the industry sticks to their content delivery restrictions, I'll lose interest in the medium - a process that has already started. Currently it takes months (often more than 12) from learning about a film and actually being able to see/buy it, mostly on Bluray or if that doesn't work, it's less legal sources. It's tiresome and naturally, I won't keep track of every movie I was interested in at some point.
"The Interview" went online directly, and from what I recall the box office results were kinda meh. Of course, we have no access to a parallel Universe where it would've been released through traditional channels, so it could had been a relative success fwiw.
I think they needs to go global quick, or they will not survive against netflix.
As it is now, the internet is a rather segregated place. Many media sites are only available in the US. "This is not available in your country".
I wonder if a big reason why netflix decided to make original content in the first place, is that its a huge pain to go global with content with regional rights.
Indeed. Its OK at the moment given that its piggy-backing off the Prime subscription. Without that I doubt I'd subscribe.
Seems fine on my Sony. No better/worse than the netflix one anyway
The purpose of Netflix is to provide entertainment. It makes sense for them to be everywhere.
I doubt we'll see Amazon PV around the world anytime soon -- it doesn't make sense for them to spend on the global licensing costs since it won't boost Prime subscriptions.
Of course, Amazon's cash cow right now is AWS. It's mind-blowing how much money companies will spend on that just because they resent maintaining their own hardware.
Of course most people see this already, and the extreme tactics around last mile broadband are exactly around this problem. Netflix can't work if their packets can't get to you, and the person who controls that last mile can hold their packets hostage (and has). If you want to poke a dragon some time, start advocating for equal access to broadband in your municipality :-).
At some point the channels will realize that cable carriers are a dead end and start selling to online companies like Netflix. Why should Netflix replace cable when it could become cable (less the exorbitant pricing and punch-a-hole-in-the-wall customer service)?
They're capable of expanding and pivoting though, more than most companies, so if they decide it's a priority, it's possible. It seems like a pretty big commitment though.
Since most of the news channels consist of rehashing things with the assumption that this is the "first" version you are seeing, they could provide a much better viewing experience that would certainly feel more curated and much more efficiently inform.
Making a Murderer is already in this direction.
"Passengers who bid see where they stand on a leaderboard, and just before boarding begins, the airline awards one upgrade to Main Cabin Select and one to first. The auction, with people bidding against each other in the gate area, can add some excitement—and some potential added frustration—to the boredom of waiting for a flight."
One thing I miss, since giving up cable, is instant content. I could turn the TV on and start watching something, before choosing to watch something else.
Now I turn on the TV and I'm immediately faced with the paradox of choice. If the news was just there, playing in the background while I browsed my other options, I would love this. It's something that would differentiate Netflix and keep me paying for their service.
In some countries Netflix is the only choice. Your right to be at least a little terrified. A few years ago Google was in the same position. Everyone loved them. Google could do no wrong. Now we're in a situation where search has been monopolized by an advertising company.
Everyone is upset about the cable company monopolies, while at the same time happily handing Netflix a new monopoly.
They did original content for as long as they existed, and HBO Now has been available globally for a while now.
Grandparent comment is right, Netflix is the trailblazer.
As an example, consider Africa (I'm Kenyan): the Barclays Premiere League is watched in virtually every country, but provided by one company, known as MultiChoice. Because almost everyone wants to watch football, and there is only one option, if they can afford it, they pay.
If Netflix (or some other company) was to obtain the rights to airing the BPL, all the middle-to-upper-class families in Kenya with decent internet connections would immediately consider switching.
Why waste a lot of money on very expensive content that does not scale and does not fit the Netflix profile?
I'm not saying you're wrong, just questioning whether you've done enough actual research to know if this is really the case.
An interesting related statistic: Almost twice as many people go to the theatre in London as go to all the major Premiership football games[1]. I doubt many people would guess that if they were asked.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/11001177/Almost-t...
The question for Netflix — and any content distributor — is whether the benefits justify the price. This calculation will be different for every organisation, based on their financial resources, expansion plans, existing market share, customer base, target customer base, etc. I suspect that, at the moment, the potential benefits from expanding into sport aren't justified for Netflix. They have a strong brand based on access to high-quality, episodic "TV-style" content, that is driving good growth already. Moving into showing live sports would be an expensive risk.
I suspect we'll see Netflix expand into streaming live events eventually, but probably not mainstream sports and news to begin with. It makes more sense for them to identify emerging sectors, such as esports, which have the potential for strong growth, but for which the rights are still relatively cheap.
Did we forget how all of this works ?
Netflix is a web site. Currently, there is only one global Internet. Therefore netflix is available everywhere there is Internet connectivity.
Anything other than that simple scenario is an embarrassing (and epic) fail.
It could have been different.
Unfortunately that would cost you about the same as a cable subscription due to the licensing costs.
Lots of content = its all worth a whole lot less to people.
Notice how cord cutting has accelerated as people realize a) cable is far more expensive than the value they get out of it and b) the experience with Netflix, Amazon, etc has improved and new players have arrived (MLB, HBO Go).
When people go out of their way to download or stream a show, it's not usually background. Providers know that, that's why they insist on shoving 20 minutes of commercials in front of you for a 40 minute show. You're captive.
I truly believe there are a lot of people out there like me, who are willing to pay existing cable prices for completely on-demand content. They just don't know it/think about it because they aren't navel-gazers like we are.
Netflix already seams cheap at $8/month, especially with their laissez-faire approach to families sharing accounts.
I live in Jamaica and had subscribed to the version that was legitimately available to us w/o using a VPN or proxy or similar service.
The result was twofold:
- less content than on the US version (but the same price)
- a whole lot of content available in overdubbed Spanish only or with baked-on subtitles.
Guess they don't realize that south of the border there are countries that speak English (as well as French, Dutch and Portuguese).
Our cable companies have the same problem trying to legitimately license content from US broadcast and cable networks - they want to dump the "Latin American" feed on us...
I was working in Italy for a bit although they had audio in English for most programs I wanted to watch, subtitles were only available in Italian. Again, it's all because of licensing...
in the case of the latter, big media companies just don't care about small markets, as the cost of operating them is greater than the potential profits realized.
in the case of the former, i work in media and you are absolutely right - media licensing is stuck in a 1985 model, which only serves to sustain a few middlemen kind of players, but in the bigger picture sucks for both consumers and the companies that own the content.
one particular result of this is that many people who can't legitimately get what the want (in terms of downloads, streams, etc.) will just pirate it, having tried unsuccessfully to do things the right way and been frustrated.