Netflix Goes For Broke
Netflix is pulling out all the stops anticipating Apple's announcement of it's move into movie rentals at MacWorld tomorrow. Although Netflix offers no Mac compatibility, it's a tempting proposition.
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13515_1-9...tag=nefd.pulse
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13515_1-9...tag=nefd.pulse
Comments
Anyway, this is good for Apple in the long run. It'll force them to develop a better experience if they want to take this market and run with it. As you can see, Apple's plans have already forced Netflix to sweeten their deal for customers. Isn't this how it's supposed to work?
in both the NetFlix and U-Verse cases, the video file has to be compressed significantly more than the H264 standard Apple uses, hence the lesser PQ. CATV of course uses the older MPEG2.
so why do all the write ups about Netflix fail to note the service is, at best, standard definition picture quality? maybe because they don't know beans ...
so of course NetFlix is offering the service real cheap, bundled in the regular subscription price. who would pay extra per movie for PQ that looks like analog cable?
the 2007 AppleTV offers 720p H264 video quality, if you can find content (so far, movie trailers and podcasts from iTunes or your own rips and HD DVR recordings), because it doesn't use streaming, caching downloads first instead to avoid bandwith constraints.
we will see tomorrow what the 2008 AppleTV will do, what quality the movie rentals will be at what price. i'd think they have to be less expensive than CATV on-demand in order to compete well. so like $3 for 720p hi-def, which matches CATV PQ. 1080p would beat it.
and then we will see "later this year" what Netflix/LG knock-off box can handle. don't hold your breath, it might be a little delayed ...
I'm glad they're making it better. I'm sure there are people that will like what the aTV offers. Not me, but I had a feeling that would be the case anyhow.
In addition, the selection of "download" movies is rather dreary. I never even bother watching my "allotment" of the movies.
I've also become irritated at the high rate of bad DVDs I've received. All I get is apologies... and that's rather inadequate.
All this says is that Netflix is lazy. They went with a vendor that has chosen not to support non-windows machines. And instead of creating their own DRM that works with all platforms they blame the makers of these non-windows machines for not doing their work for them. If they really meant what they said in that blog they would create their own DRM.
Lazy? No, it's expensive. Netflix is in the warehousing and distribution business, not the digital content delivery business. The ramp-up for such a transition will be lengthy for them. I think they still have a 5 to 8 year window to make this transition work.
Lazy? No, it's expensive. Netflix is in the warehousing and distribution business, not the digital content delivery business. The ramp-up for such a transition will be lengthy for them. I think they still have a 5 to 8 year window to make this transition work.
I still say lazy though disingenuous might have been better. While I agree that it would be expensive and time consuming for Netflix to create their own DRM, they choose a vendor that explicitly locks out specific platforms and blame the other platforms for the incompatibility. They could have found a better DRM vendor but didn't. That is being lazy.
My 'laziness' ire is not directed solely at Netflix. It is directed at all the vendors out there who say that the reason that something doesn't work on a general purpose computer is that the maker of that computer, or even someone else, didn't write the required software for them. Garmin comes to mind. At one time they said that the reason their GPS units didn't work on the Mac was because Apple didn't write their drivers for them. And someone else (Real?) said that the reason their DRM didn't work with the Mac was that Apple refused to open up the OS to them. Maybe they wanted deep root access. In both cases the vendors were being lazy. One wants to live off of the work of others and the second didn't think it was worth the effort. (As a Mac user I will always say it is worth the effort, but I can see how for Real and Netflix it may not be. If it is really not worth the effort, I say be honest and let me go on and find a solution that works for me.)