Success is independent of the quality of the product, but if the quality of the product is any indication, I'd say it's unlikely. After being a Netflix subscriber for over a decade, I finally pulled the plug. Their "original" series include some great shows but also include a lot of crap. Almost everything else is garbage. They got rid of the star rating system which was the only thing sort of making discovery of the few non-garbage items possible. Even when they had the star rating system, you couldn't sort by stars because they didn't want you to see all the garbage in the system. They cannot produce or license, it seems, new shows fast enough to justify the $10 or so a month anymore. Licenses expire and good content goes away. The list of problems is almost never ending and instead of improving the platform, they're making it worse. Even "House of Cards" was rather disappointing this season. I don't see them turning this around with one or two good shows every year.
maybe they should partner with IMDB to see what content that isn't available that their customers want, or even make Netflix free (with only the option to watch pilot shows or old classic movies) and additional option to put shows and movies into a wishlist whether it's part of the catalogue or not.
In a story posted a few weeks ago a user pointed out that Netflix doesn't need to show customers the best recommendations, but good enough ones too keep them paying. Ideally they could phase out pricey licenses and keep them at bay with Netflix originals. Which is a good recommendation system, but for Netflix' business model.
This weekend I spent about twenty minutes using their terrible "discovery" interface then finally resorting to a third party web site to determine if any of the twenty to thirty year old movies I wanted to watch were available. All them were on Netflix, but only available outside the USA. Amazon Prime Video was just as bad.
First, the movie library in my country is very weak.
Second, the TV library is becoming filled so fast with so much crap that I don't even know what to watch.
Selecting the right show has become such a massive chore that I don't even try anymore. There is no way to "preview" a show (as I would on regular TV if I was just browsing around). I truly feel paralysis by analysis when I open my Netflix app.
Part of me wants to go back to old cable days. It was just so much more convenient to watch TV. Switch on, flip channels, catch something you like. Follow-up if you loved it, otherwise forget it.
With Netflix, the fact that I have to make a choice from its unending supply of mediocre shows makes watching anything harder.
Netflix seriously needs some sort of a radio-like, "always on" option that I can just put on my TV when I feel like watching something
It would have to be better than random, though. With "channel surfing" of the old days you would cross channels with themes but obviously Netflix has algorithms that would make this better.
The biggest UX issue, IMO, is getting the channel surfing UX perfect. It must not show buffering or loading but an instant change between shows as I flip through. That's so much harder with digital I can't think of the last time I felt something pull off something as good as the analog.
But yes this would be a HUGE help with my show selection as well.
A good fraction of netflix use is on underpowered devices attached to tv's.
Only the cable company can support channel-surfing on such underpowered set-top-boxes, because only the cable company gets the bandwidth to continually stream a whole lineup of shows independent of who is watching them.
I think it's difficult. That 100mb of cache has to be streaming in for X amount of shows / channels at once. If you start flipping through it has to cache your current show + some amount of the shows you're flipping though.
It's not always easy to transition an analog UX over to digital and not have it appear slower or worse.
I will admit I found it hard not to read this comment and wonder about your sense of entitlement in the face of the vastly privileged situation we live in now in terms of media consumption. You pay $10 per month to watch high quality TV from the last few decades as much as you want, whenever you want (and, goodness me, if you have children, Netflix is an absolute godsend - fire up Paw Patrol and off you go...); to watch a large and moderately decent selection of films, often including relatively new releases, whenever you want, as many as you want; and as if that weren't enough, they even produce their own content, some of which is actually good.
I remember when, if you wanted to watch a film, you would drive to Blockbuster and rent it, and you had a couple of nights to watch it or the fees would start racking up - and their selection was never all that great, and the availability was limited to how many DVDs or videos they physically had. If you wanted to watch a TV series, you'd buy the boxset - and before DVDs, Friends took up about four feet of your bookshelf.
Sure, I've seen a bit of a movement lately from Netflix to Amazon Prime, but seriously, what we have right now in 2017 is so miraculously much better than what we had ten years ago (when I had a LoveFilm account and had to rely on films being sent through the post - which seems oddly even more antiquated now than Blockbuster does, frankly), that to describe it as "crap" and "garbage" just seems crazy to me.
You drove to Blockbuster? Luxury. I built a treestand behind the drive in theater and sat in it with a AM radio and can of mosquito spray. And they only had one film.
What's bothering me more than price (per service, I won't buy all of them at once), is the division of content across platforms.
With piracy it's still to this day more usable in the sense that you can back up all downloads to a private kodi-server (or similar), and have a single access-point.
Question: Does anyone on HN know about any ways to consolidate either music or video-content across multiple providers?
I think we're starting to see existing providers offering that.
YouView in the UK was the first I saw.
Now Fire TVs from Amazon display titles from apps (e.g. Netflix and a bunch of others I don't use) as clearly as first-party items. There'll be a square for House of Cards right next to American Gods.
Yeah. I have a Fire TV Stick and half the time I'm not even sure what service I'm watching something on - encouraged in part by the search function bringing up all results from different providers at once.
Piracy is not a bad deal actually - currently if I want all the movies and music I'd have to sign up for multiple streaming services, totalling about 50$ a month. And even then, there's no guarantee I will actually get all the music and movies I want - there's always that one artist/producer that doesn't want their stuff on streaming services for some awful reason. Not to mention region locking, etc.
I can't see myself giving up piracy just yet, but I would love it if streaming services cut the crap and improve their service.
If Netflix could provide all my movie watching needs then yes I'll consider them. As a consumer I couldn't care less about their debt, I just want a solution that allows me watch movies without stealing them, but until then I'll happily steal - it's a problem this industry created for themselves so it's up to them to fix it.
Crappy service doesn't give a license to steal. While the entertainment industry has done a lot of harm like all the DRMs etc. the ethical way is to boycott and not steal. For ex. if you believe in free software use GNU software - don't steal closed source software.
Stealing might not have been the right word here. Stealing means you take something away from someone and that someone no longer has the thing you took. In this case however I'm not taking anything away, I am merely denying them of revenue they wouldn't have had in the first place because I am not going to pay 50$/month for streaming services.
Personally I do not like the loss of the star system because it gave more granularity to ratings than I can detect now. One issue I think many have with Netflix is that if you are into superhero/comic books you are all set, if not, well not so much as it seems to occupy way to much space in their catalog.
It will be interesting to see the shakeout in the industry because I doubt it can sustain all these new costs. People bemoaned to cost of cable but its quickly becoming obvious that you can exceed it by having to hit so many subscription services.
One alternative is to use a service like HBOGo, record the seasons of the show you want and unsubscribe all in one month. While this might not be good for some who want to be current right now it can save substantial money when you only want one show.
You don't have to resort to piracy to get high quality content, just get some rabbit ears and pull in OTA TV, especially if you connect it to a DVR.
And the parent post mentioned kids and Paw Patrol. You don't have to pay for that: youtube.com/tvokids has Paw Patrol plus my 2 kids' favorite shows: Dino Dana & Odd Squad. (Seriously, Odd Squad is awesome, I enjoy it too).
We're lucky enough to live in Ontario Canada where TVO comes over the air, but I think PBS also has a great selection. TVO runs kids programming continuously until 7PM (and then it's kids friendly nature shows until bedtime).
"The suggestion that Netflix get rid of scale rating is pure conspiracy, without any evidence to back it up."
This has already happened, BTW, and a quick search would have shown you that, but I'm sure you were much too busy writing up your personal insults above to do any research.
Why don't you mention the $0 alternative - piracy?
I switched from Torrents to Netflix simply because it was worth it as a product. With the current state of the library I seriously consider switching back full-time.
Like it or not, most real people - that actually spend their money, or not, and affect the course of the industry - don't either. If you want to have a meaningful discussion about industry-wide events, you can't pretend that majority of people care about violating copyright law.
A lot of very popular products these days have bad UI. I often find myself using Google to figure out how to do the simplest things. Managers just make random decisions.
Having debt is structurally completely different from having (equity) investors. The entire financial incentive, risk, and payout structure behind taking on debt is unlike that of selling off equity. In this case, Netflix is much worse off having taken on large amounts of debt. I hope this response isn't too brusque, but I strongly suggest you read an introductory finance textbook.
Debt usually comes with strict repayment schedule. If you don't have enough cash flow to meet the repayment schedule you go into default. The debt holders force you into bankruptcy. You lose the entire company.
Well, does a creditor have to push you into bankruptcy? They seldomly do, because then they can't squeeze more money or control out of you.
And at the same time an investor could also push you into bankruptcy by suggesting, supporting or blocking certain decisions.
It's like knight and bishop in chess. True, they work differently, but they are all just pieces on the same board, used in the same game to achieve the same goal.
Debt can cause a liquidity problem, equity can't. Lack of liquidity (i.e. of available cash) can be a huge problem even for profitable companies, potencially causing a bankruptcy.
You have to pay back debts which can be a problem if you don't have adequate liquid assets. If you can't pay it back your company will go into liquidation where all its assets will be sold to the highest bidders and proceeds will first pay back creditors and then preference share holders, you'll be lucky if there's anything left for you after that as a founder.
Yes it is structurally different. However, it is also a much cheaper source of funding, especially in the current low interest rate climate.
I have no clue on the metrics of Netflix, but if spending $50 or $100m on a show gets you an added $3m in MRR then it's clearly worth it for them, since they're trading at a p/e ratio of 225.
Either they become so profitable they can repay the debt, or their market cap increases significantly + can raise additional capital from share sales at some point (at obscene valuations, I might add, but then again they seem to have been performing) and repay the debt.
Then again, I have no clue how much each show adds in MRR. It could very well be much less than $3m MRR.
But there's pretty much no alternative to developing your own content -- without it Netflix wouldn't be where it is today. Requires a ton of capital though.
I strongly suggest you read an introductory finance textbook.
To save people some time, here's a 23 second long explanation of why having debt is bad. In short, it takes priority over other obligations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48
I should have said as last line: A creditor gives debt for guaranteed interest and may get something to say, but usually not as long as you pay on time.
Does anyone know about Netflix's publishing of its own content outside of US ?
The trick for me is that at least this could be available to everyone..but for some reason it was not so when I was looking at netflix few months ago.
Part of it is that a lot of Netflix's "original" content is actually just Netflix acting as the US distributor for stuff someone else has produced- other countries may get distributed through other platforms.
The same happens the other way round elsewhere. For example, Orphan Black is a BBC America production, but is a Netflix Original in the UK and Ireland. There's a bunch of anime that is branded a Netflix Original too, which just feels weird.
All Netflix original content is available in France AFAIK. The only exception was House of Cards at first because they sold the rights to Canal +, a local TV, when they were not present in France yet. However it is available on time now.
The same can not be said for non-Netflix content : large chunks are missing
Not necessarily true. For example Lilyhammer is not. Its streaming rights seem to be split between Canal+ and Orange. I think Arte did the original TV diffusion before Netflix arrived in France.
Also, Netflix conflates its worldwide streaming exclusives, its exclusive shows from other studios, as well as the shows it produces in its own studios under the same, Originals brand.
$20B looks so innocent, but that is a staggering amount of money. From merely grazing NH, I feel like Netflix seems to "Secure 2 billion investment" every couple of months.
I had the impression the company was essentially working as a street sweeper with a 20 million pound credit card limit.
They're trying to fill the vacuum left by shows they once licensed cheaply and easily. It's all fanning out to other services on better terms. If they don't do this, their library keeps shrinking and dropping in quality.
Enough people like Netflix's originals to keep them from losing paying customers as licensed content flees, so it seems like a wise investment.
Because of progress of technology, in a few years everybody (with a few millions to spare) can start a film-streaming business. And then there are the big guys such as Amazon and Google.
This fragmentation goes in the wrong direction. You don't want to have to go to a specific music streaming service if you want to listen to artist A and then have to switch to another service for the next item in your playlist. Same for movies and TV shows. Convenience is a major factor in reducing movie piracy.
No but you can dissociate content creators and providers. Like Universal Studios wouldn't care whether people are viewing their movies on netflix, HBO, amazon, apple, as long as they get the royalties.
And that creates less vendor lockin, more competition on content.
This is what I find so heartbreaking with the surge of news site paywalls. I'm all for paying journalists and understand the need for quality articles, but lately I've seen subscriptions on the order of $40/month for a single tech site! Good luck getting a nuanced, broad worldview covering all your interests with that. :( I can't spend $100+/month for a few news sites that aren't even distributed in print. The only way out of this for me is to simply keep using the free news sites.
By then, the old guard will have a large back catalog of owned content that no upstart could ever dream of competing with. Crosslicensing (and lack thereof) as an oligopolistic moat. Even a perfectly made "House of Thrones" would utterly fail in the market if it was launched as an effectively isolated subscription.
Off topic. Was browsing on mobile Firefox. I've revoked permissions to access the camera. This site asked for permissions to access it. Not entirely sure why but it might be useful for others to know
I didn't get this, but the site is pulling tons of ads from all kinds of places, so god knows where that was coming from. Enable tracking protection or use uBlock Origin.
Did you mean you revoked and it still asked, or it asked, and you revoked?
maybe it's just me but I really hate being tracked by what TV shows and movies I watch.
I also hate the suggestions and that I can't edit them and ban them. I don't know why it bothers me less on the computer with say YouTube. possibly because I can open YouTube links in an incognito window when I don't want it to be part of my profile.
Let's say some show that stars some actor I detest for whatever reason , or some show I detest because of what it's preaching. It will be the first thing I see on my large TV every time I turn it on.
Imagine if every time you turned on your TV you were present with a picture of your ex with whom you had a bad breakup and no way to take it off the TV except to wait for Netflix to stop recommending it. I get that type feeling from almost no where else.
>I also hate the suggestions and that I can't edit them and ban them. I don't know why it bothers me less on the computer with say YouTube.
This bothers me way more on YouTube because all the thumbnails are just people pulling "The YouTube Face" because its a form of clickbait that works well with kids.
Watch one video about PCs and YT will spam your recommendations with Linus Tech Tips pulling childish faces till the end of time. Same goes for Videogames and PewDiePie, Minecrafters or whatever.
Blocking the users has no effect on the algorithm.
"I also hate the suggestions and that I can't edit them and ban them."
If you thumb down a suggestion it will usually disappear from the suggestions list. Also, if you keep getting suggestions based on something watched that you didn't like, you can edit you viewing history and remove it.
In other words, I'm not the only person who thinks others shouldn't be able to know your video watching history.
I'd personally like to see it outlawed that sharing a profile of your video watching history also be outlawed. In other words, while the law above is about the actual movies I don't want Netflix (or any other company) to be able to share even the type of movie. It's one thing for Netflix to use that data to recommend movies. It's another for Netflix to be able to sell a profile of me (likes action movies) or likes (likes sexploitation movies) or (likes movies with LGBT themes).
That last one I think really makes the point clear. Netflix should not be able to out you to other companies and that means it should be illegal for them to share your profile even if it doesn't include your actual watching history.
I'd argue the same should be true for Google. They should probably be allowed to profile you and then let advertises say "I would like to target my ads to people who fit profiles X, Y, and Z" but Google should not be allowed to share that profile outside of Google.
I wonder where the $20B figure came from, Google finance says that they only have about $3 billion in debt. https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ANFLX&fstype=ii&ei=...
$3B looks sustainable given their net annual income of $200 million but $20B does not - Especially with interest rates going up again.
Whenever I read about a software company needing that kind of money though, I often wonder why... Especially when I also hear stories about companies like Whatsapp and Instagram being able to scale their businesses to hundreds of millions of users using very small engineering teams and advertising budgets.
I've had a recurring thoughts that maybe big tech companies are conspiring together to hire as many software engineers as possible to make sure that those engineers don't have any time to build competing products. Software engineering talent is thus an artificially created scarcity. If that's the case then I don't think that is sustainable.
That would be gross income, net income is income after all costs have been deducted. That would indicate that their annual costs are ~$7B, most of which probably goes towards producing new shows and licensing existing ones.
8.8B in revenue in 2016, up from 6.7B in 2015. Also in 2016, 3.3B in long term debt, offset by nearly 2.8B in cash, equivalents and capital. All of this on top of 11.0B worth of content.
> Whenever I read about a software company needing that kind of money though, I often wonder why
Netflix is a software company just as much as Tesla is a software company. You realise Netflix pays billions each year in licensing fees and production costs for originals?
Also, whenever Netflix spends money to produce content they are creating IP assets that are much closer to fungibility than any IP most software companies ever create. A bank will be much more willing to consider the rights to the House of Cards remake as a collateral than your awesome build configurations, an in-house web framework or even the entirety of the Oracle RDBMS sources.
> Especially when I also hear stories about companies like Whatsapp and Instagram being able to scale their businesses to hundreds of millions of users using very small engineering teams
very diferent business models Netflix is probably spending Billions on creating original content.
> I've had a recurring thoughts that maybe big tech companies are conspiring together to hire as many software engineers as possible to make sure that those engineers don't have any time to build competing products.
I think if you ask most employed software engineers if they'd quit their jobs because of an opportunity to develop their own ideas, you'd hear a resounding "yes". Considering most developers I know are crafty people who don't care about "career ranks", if big companies did this they'd just hurt themselves by giving developers the funds to pursue their ideas in the future.
A product like Netflix cannot actually monopolise its marketplace because at the end of the day, they are selling a very well understood, easily replicated goods - namely content. Unless we went back to the big studio era when talent was locked up with multi year contracts, nothing can stop a Hulu from poaching a great show runner from NFLX.
Under such a scenario, I don't quite see why N belongs with the other big kids of F-A-A-N-G.
Its long term success is suspect to me, debt or not.
"they are selling a very well understood, easily replicated goods - namely content"
No, they're not. They're selling a service that allows you to rent content and have it stream to you instantly. The content library is what attracts people, of course, but their core business is selling the service.
"Unless we went back to the big studio era when talent was locked up with multi year contracts"
Erm, they already produce Netflix Originals, which are exclusively locked up on there (and their competitors all do the same thing). How does that differ from your suggestion?
"nothing can stop a Hulu from poaching a great show runner from NFLX"
...and nothing can stop Netflix from getting the licence to a show that used to be on Hulu. Also nothing to stop them both licencing the same show at the same time.
"Its long term success is suspect to me, debt or not."
Just Netflix, or do you also think that Hulu, Mubi, Filmstruck, etc. are all doomed as well? (I left Amazon out because obviously Prime streaming obviously isn't their core market) If just Netflix, what differs in your view that makes them more vulnerable to their competition?
Apart from your point about Netflix selling access to content rather than content itself (which I'll get to), I feel you are making exactly the same point as I am without your realizing it.
Netflix is trafficking in a commodity over which it cannot have monopolistic control. Take, for example, your own instance - licensing shows which used to be on Hulu.
Producing originals isn't something only NFLX has the expertise to do. AMC was home to some of the best shows of this century. No monopoly for NFLX there.
For NFLX to be spoken of at the same level as FB, Goog, and Amazon, I'd have thought they had an insurmountable moat - Social in the case of FB, search relevance for GOOG, and 2-day fulfillment for AMZN. When I don't see a monopoly, I start to wonder why NFLX is so loved by Wall Street and not treated as a commodity like any other content channel is.
I suspect NFLX will end up being just another dividend paying stock like a utility. That's not a failure at all but it isn't ever going to justify being gushed about along with the other companies in FAANG.
Back to your point about a service which lets me rent content - that would be true if they were truly a content aggregator which lets anyone including Hulu serve content to renters and kept a haircut for themselves. Amazon's Marketplace is a great example of service which is designed purely to act as a platform for 1st and 3rd party vendors. Obviously, right now, NFLX isn't interested in this.
No, Netflix are interested in providing a streaming service where you rent movies instantly from their catalogue for a fixed monthly fee. Nothing you said changes this.
You also didn't answer my point - if Netflix's model is doomed, why only them? You seem to avoid the idea that the entire sector runs on the same models, so what is Netflix not doing to protect themselves that Hulu, etc. are doing?
I can't speak for Wall Street as I really don't care about that side of things. You do seem to have a massive crush for them over their competitors, though, I'm just curious why that is.
"Netflix is trafficking in a commodity over which it cannot have monopolistic control"
So are a lot of businesses, online and offline. Especially service providers that run using someone else's content/platform. So what?
I did initially question their path to success but I later made it clear that I saw them becoming dividend paying, slow moving utility type companies. I said that same thing in multiple ways in my reply to you.
The competitors like HBO or Hulu are privately held and are therefore less susceptible to market sentiment turning against them.
(Also, I may be wrong about this but your tone sound antagonistic to me. Please don't impute motives like "crush for them over their competitors." Not only do I not know what you mean by it, I really don't feel like engaging with anyone who talks like this.)
So, assuming Netflix goes belly up at some point, I am MUCH happier they spent $20B making shed-loads of new content (i.e. paying out to creative and production people) that will live on than e.g. putting it in a pile and burning it like the Facebook / Whatsapp $16B "valuation". That value just disappears IMHO.
Im sure most of the $9 a month I used to spend went to paying for licensed content but I watched probably 80% original content. I left because of DRM. I don't know if it would be a money making venture for them but, for $5 a month, I would subscribe to a Netflix Original content only, DRM free service if they offered it. Seems like it'd be easy for them to do a trial run of such a thing.
You won't get DRM free, because Netflix don't sell you the content, they rent it. Or, more specifically, they sell you access to the platform to stream the rented content.
I'm all for DRM-free purchases, but you're never going to get DRM-free rentals.
Their stuff, and everyone elses, is easily available for download, DRM free, without a fee of any kind. DRM has never stopped that. Netflix knows that. I have no doubt DRM is required for every contract they have with other studios, but they could show they're not fools by allowing me to stream their original content without having to allow closed, proprietary binaries to run on my machine to do it. I have no interest in maintaining terabytes of video and manually managing distribution to multiple device. I don't think many people would. I'd rather pay the $5 a month. I won't enable DRM in my browser, ever.
Very misleading article - per the company's latest 10-Q, they only have $4.8 billion in debt. On a net leverage basis, they are currently around 3.2x net debt / EBITDA which is down the fairway for most high yield public companies.
The remainder of their "debt" as the article lays it out is in Streaming Content Obligations and is not debt as you and I would think about it. Yes, it is contractually committed; however, unlike debt, they likely can default on their obligations and the only recourse would be a lawsuit for either damages or specific performance. (There is also no interest payment - as interest expense on $15.7 billion would be significant relative to their current debt burden.)
Compared to true debt instruments, which carry covenants that allow the debtholders to push the company into bankruptcy, the streaming content obligations very likely do not have any such ability to do so. (From what I can tell, the cross-default clauses in their debt instruments do not trigger in the event that they do not fulfill their streaming content obligations.)
1. If I subscribe to Netflix for a year for 10$/month and pay in advance at the beginning of ther period, does this result in 120$ of streaming obligations?
2. Or do the record the costs needed to fulfill the order?
Tesla's line of credit isn't due to "status" it's due to past performance.
They have consistently doubled sales and production every 18 months or so since they began selling cars, and have orders on the books showing at least as much growth for the next several years.
What "status" do you think Tesla has that makes them a target for creditors? You think Deutsche Bank just thinks Elon Musk is cool and hip?
Performance/status is more then just black numbers down at the end of the balance.
The status of super popular by huge volumes of people. So in essence yes because he is so cool, hip, and also because he creates/thinks of things that appeal to the mass, and people cannot stop talking about it on birthday parties and events alike.
disclaimer, i drive a 20 yo toyota and own nothing of tesla.
Netflix can do whatever they want. They are growing at such a crazy rate, they will Amazon their way to a profitable company (burn billions to make billions)
I have an odd thought - Netflix is going about its new commissioning process all wrong. lokking at Netflix from the POV of "innovators dilemma" they are the low end upstart coming to steal the studio / broadcasters lunch
But having the broadcasters lunch on its lips it is now trying to copy the studios at their own game - creating high quality must watch content.
I think that's the wrong game.
One of my favourite discoveries on Netflix was "chaos on the bridge" where Shatner narrated a documentary on the first few years of Star Trek NG. It was fun, had almost zero cost apart from some talking heads and the researcher time.
A similar one on Atari, and the rise of Compaq all made me think that documentaries would be the new magazines - something for everyone's interest and dirt cheap to make - and with not much skill will eat up 50 mins of my time as easily as a GoT episode
Just wondering if they are not getting above themselves?
115 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadFirst, the movie library in my country is very weak.
Second, the TV library is becoming filled so fast with so much crap that I don't even know what to watch.
Selecting the right show has become such a massive chore that I don't even try anymore. There is no way to "preview" a show (as I would on regular TV if I was just browsing around). I truly feel paralysis by analysis when I open my Netflix app.
Part of me wants to go back to old cable days. It was just so much more convenient to watch TV. Switch on, flip channels, catch something you like. Follow-up if you loved it, otherwise forget it.
With Netflix, the fact that I have to make a choice from its unending supply of mediocre shows makes watching anything harder.
Netflix seriously needs some sort of a radio-like, "always on" option that I can just put on my TV when I feel like watching something
The biggest UX issue, IMO, is getting the channel surfing UX perfect. It must not show buffering or loading but an instant change between shows as I flip through. That's so much harder with digital I can't think of the last time I felt something pull off something as good as the analog.
But yes this would be a HUGE help with my show selection as well.
Keep 100mb of cache, perhaps 10 shows, 10mb each, potentially overcompressed, as audio is the key. All starting at interesting place, not at intro.
Only the cable company can support channel-surfing on such underpowered set-top-boxes, because only the cable company gets the bandwidth to continually stream a whole lineup of shows independent of who is watching them.
It's not always easy to transition an analog UX over to digital and not have it appear slower or worse.
That said a few years back I would watch way more and exhausted what appealed to me in Netflix's catalog, as it sounds you have.
I think the idea is you just gotta compare what else costs $10 bucks. Um lunch, maybe.
So if you have realistic expectations for what you get for $10 bucks and don't watch "too much" TV, it's perfect.
I remember when, if you wanted to watch a film, you would drive to Blockbuster and rent it, and you had a couple of nights to watch it or the fees would start racking up - and their selection was never all that great, and the availability was limited to how many DVDs or videos they physically had. If you wanted to watch a TV series, you'd buy the boxset - and before DVDs, Friends took up about four feet of your bookshelf.
Sure, I've seen a bit of a movement lately from Netflix to Amazon Prime, but seriously, what we have right now in 2017 is so miraculously much better than what we had ten years ago (when I had a LoveFilm account and had to rely on films being sent through the post - which seems oddly even more antiquated now than Blockbuster does, frankly), that to describe it as "crap" and "garbage" just seems crazy to me.
I think he's debating this part. Frankly, most of TV is mind-rotting crap.
Nothing can please me because I am intelligent advanced than the rest of the crowd.
Instead acting like whiny baby. The suggestion that Netflix get rid of scale rating is pure conspiracy, without any evidence to back it up.
Reminders:
1. Youtube Red: 10 dollars
2. HBO Now: 15 dollars
3. Amazon Prime: 9 dollars
4. Youtube TV: 35 dollars
5. Watch a movie: 10 dollars on average.
Maybe the OP is suggesting piracy? That is the only way I could bring out of my mind for cheaper price for any (relatively) well produced content.
With piracy it's still to this day more usable in the sense that you can back up all downloads to a private kodi-server (or similar), and have a single access-point.
Question: Does anyone on HN know about any ways to consolidate either music or video-content across multiple providers?
YouView in the UK was the first I saw.
Now Fire TVs from Amazon display titles from apps (e.g. Netflix and a bunch of others I don't use) as clearly as first-party items. There'll be a square for House of Cards right next to American Gods.
I can't see myself giving up piracy just yet, but I would love it if streaming services cut the crap and improve their service.
It will be interesting to see the shakeout in the industry because I doubt it can sustain all these new costs. People bemoaned to cost of cable but its quickly becoming obvious that you can exceed it by having to hit so many subscription services.
One alternative is to use a service like HBOGo, record the seasons of the show you want and unsubscribe all in one month. While this might not be good for some who want to be current right now it can save substantial money when you only want one show.
And the parent post mentioned kids and Paw Patrol. You don't have to pay for that: youtube.com/tvokids has Paw Patrol plus my 2 kids' favorite shows: Dino Dana & Odd Squad. (Seriously, Odd Squad is awesome, I enjoy it too).
We're lucky enough to live in Ontario Canada where TVO comes over the air, but I think PBS also has a great selection. TVO runs kids programming continuously until 7PM (and then it's kids friendly nature shows until bedtime).
This has already happened, BTW, and a quick search would have shown you that, but I'm sure you were much too busy writing up your personal insults above to do any research.
https://deadline.com/2017/04/netflix-discontinues-star-ratin... http://ew.com/tv/2017/03/16/netflix-star-ratings/ http://www.businessinsider.com/why-netflix-replaced-its-5-st...
I switched from Torrents to Netflix simply because it was worth it as a product. With the current state of the library I seriously consider switching back full-time.
I see. I can't criticize a service in a way you dislike without having a sense of entitlement. I'll keep that in mind.
It's quite interesting given that they organized a huge machine learning competition just for that.
Investor gives you money for guaranteed say in your business strategy. He may get some interest on his investment or not, no guarantee.
Banker gives debt for guaranteed interest and may get something to say in your company but usually not.
I'm curious, it seems counterintuitive, with debt you don't have to give up a part of your company or lose any control.
And at the same time an investor could also push you into bankruptcy by suggesting, supporting or blocking certain decisions.
It's like knight and bishop in chess. True, they work differently, but they are all just pieces on the same board, used in the same game to achieve the same goal.
I have no clue on the metrics of Netflix, but if spending $50 or $100m on a show gets you an added $3m in MRR then it's clearly worth it for them, since they're trading at a p/e ratio of 225.
Either they become so profitable they can repay the debt, or their market cap increases significantly + can raise additional capital from share sales at some point (at obscene valuations, I might add, but then again they seem to have been performing) and repay the debt.
Then again, I have no clue how much each show adds in MRR. It could very well be much less than $3m MRR.
But there's pretty much no alternative to developing your own content -- without it Netflix wouldn't be where it is today. Requires a ton of capital though.
To save people some time, here's a 23 second long explanation of why having debt is bad. In short, it takes priority over other obligations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48
The same can not be said for non-Netflix content : large chunks are missing
Also, Netflix conflates its worldwide streaming exclusives, its exclusive shows from other studios, as well as the shows it produces in its own studios under the same, Originals brand.
I had the impression the company was essentially working as a street sweeper with a 20 million pound credit card limit.
These documents https://ir.netflix.com/results.cfm show it is picking up 2.5 billion a quarter.
I am pretty speechless.
Enough people like Netflix's originals to keep them from losing paying customers as licensed content flees, so it seems like a wise investment.
So the solution is that the internet figures out how to do (micro) payments easily.
And that creates less vendor lockin, more competition on content.
Nah, but they can get a bigger payment by negotiating exclusivity.
Did you mean you revoked and it still asked, or it asked, and you revoked?
I also hate the suggestions and that I can't edit them and ban them. I don't know why it bothers me less on the computer with say YouTube. possibly because I can open YouTube links in an incognito window when I don't want it to be part of my profile.
Let's say some show that stars some actor I detest for whatever reason , or some show I detest because of what it's preaching. It will be the first thing I see on my large TV every time I turn it on.
Imagine if every time you turned on your TV you were present with a picture of your ex with whom you had a bad breakup and no way to take it off the TV except to wait for Netflix to stop recommending it. I get that type feeling from almost no where else.
Needless to say I canceled my account.
This bothers me way more on YouTube because all the thumbnails are just people pulling "The YouTube Face" because its a form of clickbait that works well with kids.
Watch one video about PCs and YT will spam your recommendations with Linus Tech Tips pulling childish faces till the end of time. Same goes for Videogames and PewDiePie, Minecrafters or whatever.
Blocking the users has no effect on the algorithm.
If you thumb down a suggestion it will usually disappear from the suggestions list. Also, if you keep getting suggestions based on something watched that you didn't like, you can edit you viewing history and remove it.
Let me point out that a video store telling someone what videos you rented was outlawed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
In other words, I'm not the only person who thinks others shouldn't be able to know your video watching history.
I'd personally like to see it outlawed that sharing a profile of your video watching history also be outlawed. In other words, while the law above is about the actual movies I don't want Netflix (or any other company) to be able to share even the type of movie. It's one thing for Netflix to use that data to recommend movies. It's another for Netflix to be able to sell a profile of me (likes action movies) or likes (likes sexploitation movies) or (likes movies with LGBT themes).
That last one I think really makes the point clear. Netflix should not be able to out you to other companies and that means it should be illegal for them to share your profile even if it doesn't include your actual watching history.
I'd argue the same should be true for Google. They should probably be allowed to profile you and then let advertises say "I would like to target my ads to people who fit profiles X, Y, and Z" but Google should not be allowed to share that profile outside of Google.
Whenever I read about a software company needing that kind of money though, I often wonder why... Especially when I also hear stories about companies like Whatsapp and Instagram being able to scale their businesses to hundreds of millions of users using very small engineering teams and advertising budgets.
I've had a recurring thoughts that maybe big tech companies are conspiring together to hire as many software engineers as possible to make sure that those engineers don't have any time to build competing products. Software engineering talent is thus an artificially created scarcity. If that's the case then I don't think that is sustainable.
Gross Income is Revenue minus Direct Costs, while Net income is Revenue minus All Costs
Source, most recent NFLX 10-K, page 16.
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/4903229026x0xS16...
Netflix is a software company just as much as Tesla is a software company. You realise Netflix pays billions each year in licensing fees and production costs for originals?
very diferent business models Netflix is probably spending Billions on creating original content.
The numbers are from Netflix's QE reports [1].
I don't know exactly where Google Finance gets the information, but IMO it's always better to get the data close to the source :)
[1] - https://ir.netflix.com/results.cfm
If you want to see their debt, look at the balance sheet and see "Total Liabilities".
I think if you ask most employed software engineers if they'd quit their jobs because of an opportunity to develop their own ideas, you'd hear a resounding "yes". Considering most developers I know are crafty people who don't care about "career ranks", if big companies did this they'd just hurt themselves by giving developers the funds to pursue their ideas in the future.
Under such a scenario, I don't quite see why N belongs with the other big kids of F-A-A-N-G.
Its long term success is suspect to me, debt or not.
No, they're not. They're selling a service that allows you to rent content and have it stream to you instantly. The content library is what attracts people, of course, but their core business is selling the service.
"Unless we went back to the big studio era when talent was locked up with multi year contracts"
Erm, they already produce Netflix Originals, which are exclusively locked up on there (and their competitors all do the same thing). How does that differ from your suggestion?
"nothing can stop a Hulu from poaching a great show runner from NFLX"
...and nothing can stop Netflix from getting the licence to a show that used to be on Hulu. Also nothing to stop them both licencing the same show at the same time.
"Its long term success is suspect to me, debt or not."
Just Netflix, or do you also think that Hulu, Mubi, Filmstruck, etc. are all doomed as well? (I left Amazon out because obviously Prime streaming obviously isn't their core market) If just Netflix, what differs in your view that makes them more vulnerable to their competition?
Netflix is trafficking in a commodity over which it cannot have monopolistic control. Take, for example, your own instance - licensing shows which used to be on Hulu.
Producing originals isn't something only NFLX has the expertise to do. AMC was home to some of the best shows of this century. No monopoly for NFLX there.
For NFLX to be spoken of at the same level as FB, Goog, and Amazon, I'd have thought they had an insurmountable moat - Social in the case of FB, search relevance for GOOG, and 2-day fulfillment for AMZN. When I don't see a monopoly, I start to wonder why NFLX is so loved by Wall Street and not treated as a commodity like any other content channel is.
I suspect NFLX will end up being just another dividend paying stock like a utility. That's not a failure at all but it isn't ever going to justify being gushed about along with the other companies in FAANG.
Back to your point about a service which lets me rent content - that would be true if they were truly a content aggregator which lets anyone including Hulu serve content to renters and kept a haircut for themselves. Amazon's Marketplace is a great example of service which is designed purely to act as a platform for 1st and 3rd party vendors. Obviously, right now, NFLX isn't interested in this.
You also didn't answer my point - if Netflix's model is doomed, why only them? You seem to avoid the idea that the entire sector runs on the same models, so what is Netflix not doing to protect themselves that Hulu, etc. are doing?
I can't speak for Wall Street as I really don't care about that side of things. You do seem to have a massive crush for them over their competitors, though, I'm just curious why that is.
"Netflix is trafficking in a commodity over which it cannot have monopolistic control"
So are a lot of businesses, online and offline. Especially service providers that run using someone else's content/platform. So what?
I did initially question their path to success but I later made it clear that I saw them becoming dividend paying, slow moving utility type companies. I said that same thing in multiple ways in my reply to you.
The competitors like HBO or Hulu are privately held and are therefore less susceptible to market sentiment turning against them.
(Also, I may be wrong about this but your tone sound antagonistic to me. Please don't impute motives like "crush for them over their competitors." Not only do I not know what you mean by it, I really don't feel like engaging with anyone who talks like this.)
Personally I hate the restrictions such as "4K only on Kaby Lake with Edge etc" and I downgraded my subscription because of it.
I'm all for DRM-free purchases, but you're never going to get DRM-free rentals.
The remainder of their "debt" as the article lays it out is in Streaming Content Obligations and is not debt as you and I would think about it. Yes, it is contractually committed; however, unlike debt, they likely can default on their obligations and the only recourse would be a lawsuit for either damages or specific performance. (There is also no interest payment - as interest expense on $15.7 billion would be significant relative to their current debt burden.)
Compared to true debt instruments, which carry covenants that allow the debtholders to push the company into bankruptcy, the streaming content obligations very likely do not have any such ability to do so. (From what I can tell, the cross-default clauses in their debt instruments do not trigger in the event that they do not fulfill their streaming content obligations.)
1. If I subscribe to Netflix for a year for 10$/month and pay in advance at the beginning of ther period, does this result in 120$ of streaming obligations?
2. Or do the record the costs needed to fulfill the order?
Though god knows where that 20 billion debt in the article actually comes from...
They have consistently doubled sales and production every 18 months or so since they began selling cars, and have orders on the books showing at least as much growth for the next several years.
What "status" do you think Tesla has that makes them a target for creditors? You think Deutsche Bank just thinks Elon Musk is cool and hip?
The status of super popular by huge volumes of people. So in essence yes because he is so cool, hip, and also because he creates/thinks of things that appeal to the mass, and people cannot stop talking about it on birthday parties and events alike.
disclaimer, i drive a 20 yo toyota and own nothing of tesla.
But having the broadcasters lunch on its lips it is now trying to copy the studios at their own game - creating high quality must watch content.
I think that's the wrong game.
One of my favourite discoveries on Netflix was "chaos on the bridge" where Shatner narrated a documentary on the first few years of Star Trek NG. It was fun, had almost zero cost apart from some talking heads and the researcher time.
A similar one on Atari, and the rise of Compaq all made me think that documentaries would be the new magazines - something for everyone's interest and dirt cheap to make - and with not much skill will eat up 50 mins of my time as easily as a GoT episode
Just wondering if they are not getting above themselves?