Bandwidth caps are coming, in many cases they are already here. Streaming quality doesn't come close to what is available on disc. HD streaming content has even a more limited selection then the pathetic choices of "standard" quality streaming.
I think this announcement is a huge win for Blockbuster. Netflix and their spin off company will be dead in under 3 years.
-kpluck
People have been talking about "bandwidth caps" for many years. There are no such caps where I am, and I really doubt that they're coming any time soon. It would never fly here.
As for the quality issue, Blu-ray is of course great, but DVD is not that great and newer things that get added to Netflix streaming are often in HD, so more and more content will be in HD. A good example of what I mean is when I mentioned that Breaking Bad just got added recently. That's in HD and the quality is vastly superior to DVD. As long as somebody has a decent connection, then the quality of Netflix streaming is pretty darn good.
As for Blockbuster, it'll all depend on their content, and we'll see what they have when it comes out and is available to all. I read that it's only available to Direct TV subscribers to start, so that kind of limits the amount of people that will be getting it right away. If it's better than Netflix, then I'd check it out for sure, we shall see. I see that Blockbuster is getting Starz content, and that right there sounds like a big turnoff for me, especially if they're going to keep the same crappy quality that they had on Netflix.
Netflix streaming blows. I'd say realistically that 80% of their selection is just complete low-rated garbage.
Agreed. I find little of interest.
And the TV selection is strange - They have some seasons of the series, but not others. It is almost as if they are intentionally telling you that they are not a complete solution.
I think those complaining that Netflix is seperating their businesses, are just clinging to the past. Get over it. :-)
Yep. When Apple dumped the floppy drive and came out with the Cd-Rom only iMac, I'm sure there were a few people still living in the past, crying about their floppies. Time marches on, and people can either get with it, or be left behind.
This is So Stupid! Let's take an incredibly well known name, with incredible customer good will - and destroy it all in a matter of months! As someone said an a Washington Post article today, the only thing left of Netflix 2 years from now will be a Harvard Business School case study in what not to do when you have a successful company!
That will have to take second place to the HP way of destroying a company.
Other than for a very short period of time, DVD rentals by mail never made very much business sense. I'm sure Netflix wants to get out of it as quickly as they can.
Not sure what you mean? Netflix has been doing DVD rental by mail for over 10 years and made lots of money doing it. It seems like good business senses.
I do agree that the name Quikster is a lame name. When you think about it, streaming movies is "quicker". Lol.
Who really cares? DVDs are going the way of the dinosaur, and ANY name they come up with, no matter how cool OR goofy, is going to fade into memory anyway.
And whoever suggested "MailFlix"....it sounds like a gay movie company. Lol.
Personally? I would just call it NetflixDVD and leave it at that. Keep it associated with the netflix name, but just let it die a slow death. Heck, even the US post office may go out of business. At the very least go to a 5 day mail delivery week. Bottom line, is that snail mail is a thing of the past. Time to let it go....along with the mock anger towards Netflix of trying to grow with the technological flow.
Again, the only current big Netflix needs to address is increasing the catalouge of older films available to stream. If streaming is the future...and it is....they need to focus on improving that.
I am sure down the road, they will have different streaming packages. But for now, if all they got is one option....they need to make it better by adding more classic titles.
A non-tech person, buys a dvd player and notices Netflix installed. They then go to the website to sign up and realized for an additional fee, they can get the dvd's mailed too. Netflix doubles their income say 50% of the time at sign up?
I have to wonder if their long term plan is to kill the DVD part completely (hoping that most customers just switch to streaming), and this is their sneaky way of working up to that?
If they were to just kill it, there would be a big backlash and they'd lose a lot of customers, probably including some who would be amenable to being on a streaming only plan.
Maybe something like this:
1 Raise DVD prices
2 Split DVD to separate company
3 DVD "company" isn't doing well any more, oops we went out of business.
Quote:
Originally Posted by djames4242
You don't really expect a huge selection of newly released films for what they charge, do you?
Funny, with the DVD plan you do get a huge selection for that price. And I'd be happy to pay a bit more on the streaming side for a big improvement in selection.
But right now it's nowhere close to a "huge" selection, it's an absolutely pitiful one. Here's a fun test - sit and make a list of 100 movies you'd like to watch on your TV. Most likely, if you check on streaming, you'll be lucky to find 5 of those available. And that's not even listing all new releases, if you look for new stuff it's even less.
The current streaming selection is indefensibly bad. Sure, there's stuff to watch but you have to dig through their skimpy list of what's available - coming from the DVD side where they had almost anything, it pretty much rules out the possibility of thinking of a movie you want to see and being able to get it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pt123
Netflix started as DVD rental by mail service, then they added free streaming. Seems more like DVD was subsidizing streaming if anything. And people who want physical media isn't asked to pay more, just pay what they were paying originally before streaming came along and was free.
Actually that's not true, the $8 is for one disk at a time. The original plan was 3 and was around $16, now to get that it costs $24, so it has gone up quite a bit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chronster
Umm, streaming quality DOES come close. Maybe your connection is just too slow. An HD stream looks about as good as HD from my television provider.
And your TV provider probably sends a pretty bad HD signal, so he's right that it comes nowhere close to the same content on disc.
Actually that's not true, the $8 is for one disk at a time. The original plan was 3 and was around $16, now to get that it costs $24, so it has gone up quite a bit.
Ok, it has gone up quite a bit. But not too much complaining about that though. Sounds to me like DVD was really subsidizing streaming and the complainers are the streaming folks. I understand why they complain though because streaming has always been associated with free.
A non-tech person, buys a dvd player and notices Netflix installed. They then go to the website to sign up and realized for an additional fee, they can get the dvd's mailed too. Netflix doubles their income say 50% of the time at sign up?
They are giving this up?
Makes no sense what so ever.
Probably because you don't know anything about running a business nor have any information as to how much money Netflix made off their physical distribution anymore.
Actually, the more i think about it, the people who seem to be upset about the name change and service split, are most likely investors in Netflix stock, which has taken a beating because of this. Makes sense I guess.
As a customer tho, it doesn't affect me at all.
Netflix the company sees the writing on the wall. Streaming is the future, and it's happening fast.
It's only a matter of time before Apple comes out with their own subscription based service for movies, and Netflix is trying to switch gears thats all.
Perhaps they've done it in a clumsy way...but again, i am not an investor of Netflix stock, so i am not angry. As a customer of their streaming service tho, i am very happy. More movies need to be added IMHO....but $8 for unlimited streaming of movies is the best deal in town.
Enjoy it while you can, because i am sure between data caps and providers charging Netflix more for their content in the future....prices will go up for streaming subscriptions eventually.
The ironic thing is piracy is the concern/reason for not having that content available on the streaming side, and yet ripping a DVD is easier than ripping a live stream.
The really good movies are protected pretty well. Handbrake fails on the copy protected ones. Of course for Windows guys you probably have AnyDVD which always seems to work.
The really good movies are protected pretty well. Handbrake fails on the copy protected ones. Of course for Windows guys you probably have AnyDVD which always seems to work.
Irrelevant sidenote: handbrake replaced their own decryption with VLC libraries almost 3 years ago. I don't think it was ever the best mac decrypter. It was handy for converting a disc or two; I'm happy the Devs are focused on improving what handbrake does best.
??? Which ones are those? Never had a single disc unrippable with HandBrake.
Sorry I don't recall exactly but ones like Batman, X-men etc that appeal to the young hacker set are usually well protected. There are different levels like extra bogus directories which is pretty easy to spot but the hard ones require more advanced cracking tools.
Edit: I rip them because 1.) Netflix has nothing but crap on the live streaming side and 2.) I mostly watch movies when traveling in a foreign country, in a hotel or on the plane just to pass the time where there is no DVD. I rarely watch DVDs at home. I am not distributing them. I only watch a movie once and then delete it.
Not sure what you mean? Netflix has been doing DVD rental by mail for over 10 years and made lots of money doing it. It seems like good business senses.
There was a window of opportunity but it was closing as early as 2009 as by then their revenue per subscriber was steadily declining. With the switch to streaming they could reduce their per subscriber cost negating the impact of reduced per subscriber revenue. Most of their growth in the last couple of years has been through increased subscription driven by the streaming opton. That doesn't go on forever. They had to choose which business was sustatinable. IMHO I think they made the correct choice just executed it very very badly.
Comments
Bandwidth caps are coming, in many cases they are already here. Streaming quality doesn't come close to what is available on disc. HD streaming content has even a more limited selection then the pathetic choices of "standard" quality streaming.
I think this announcement is a huge win for Blockbuster. Netflix and their spin off company will be dead in under 3 years.
-kpluck
People have been talking about "bandwidth caps" for many years. There are no such caps where I am, and I really doubt that they're coming any time soon. It would never fly here.
As for the quality issue, Blu-ray is of course great, but DVD is not that great and newer things that get added to Netflix streaming are often in HD, so more and more content will be in HD. A good example of what I mean is when I mentioned that Breaking Bad just got added recently. That's in HD and the quality is vastly superior to DVD. As long as somebody has a decent connection, then the quality of Netflix streaming is pretty darn good.
As for Blockbuster, it'll all depend on their content, and we'll see what they have when it comes out and is available to all. I read that it's only available to Direct TV subscribers to start, so that kind of limits the amount of people that will be getting it right away. If it's better than Netflix, then I'd check it out for sure, we shall see. I see that Blockbuster is getting Starz content, and that right there sounds like a big turnoff for me, especially if they're going to keep the same crappy quality that they had on Netflix.
Netflix streaming blows. I'd say realistically that 80% of their selection is just complete low-rated garbage.
Agreed. I find little of interest.
And the TV selection is strange - They have some seasons of the series, but not others. It is almost as if they are intentionally telling you that they are not a complete solution.
I think those complaining that Netflix is seperating their businesses, are just clinging to the past. Get over it. :-)
Yep. When Apple dumped the floppy drive and came out with the Cd-Rom only iMac, I'm sure there were a few people still living in the past, crying about their floppies. Time marches on, and people can either get with it, or be left behind.
This is So Stupid! Let's take an incredibly well known name, with incredible customer good will - and destroy it all in a matter of months! As someone said an a Washington Post article today, the only thing left of Netflix 2 years from now will be a Harvard Business School case study in what not to do when you have a successful company!
That will have to take second place to the HP way of destroying a company.
Other than for a very short period of time, DVD rentals by mail never made very much business sense. I'm sure Netflix wants to get out of it as quickly as they can.
Not sure what you mean? Netflix has been doing DVD rental by mail for over 10 years and made lots of money doing it. It seems like good business senses.
Who really cares? DVDs are going the way of the dinosaur, and ANY name they come up with, no matter how cool OR goofy, is going to fade into memory anyway.
And whoever suggested "MailFlix"....it sounds like a gay movie company. Lol.
Personally? I would just call it NetflixDVD and leave it at that. Keep it associated with the netflix name, but just let it die a slow death. Heck, even the US post office may go out of business. At the very least go to a 5 day mail delivery week. Bottom line, is that snail mail is a thing of the past. Time to let it go....along with the mock anger towards Netflix of trying to grow with the technological flow.
Again, the only current big Netflix needs to address is increasing the catalouge of older films available to stream. If streaming is the future...and it is....they need to focus on improving that.
I am sure down the road, they will have different streaming packages. But for now, if all they got is one option....they need to make it better by adding more classic titles.
They are giving this up?
Makes no sense what so ever.
If they were to just kill it, there would be a big backlash and they'd lose a lot of customers, probably including some who would be amenable to being on a streaming only plan.
Maybe something like this:
1 Raise DVD prices
2 Split DVD to separate company
3 DVD "company" isn't doing well any more, oops we went out of business.
You don't really expect a huge selection of newly released films for what they charge, do you?
Funny, with the DVD plan you do get a huge selection for that price. And I'd be happy to pay a bit more on the streaming side for a big improvement in selection.
But right now it's nowhere close to a "huge" selection, it's an absolutely pitiful one. Here's a fun test - sit and make a list of 100 movies you'd like to watch on your TV. Most likely, if you check on streaming, you'll be lucky to find 5 of those available. And that's not even listing all new releases, if you look for new stuff it's even less.
The current streaming selection is indefensibly bad. Sure, there's stuff to watch but you have to dig through their skimpy list of what's available - coming from the DVD side where they had almost anything, it pretty much rules out the possibility of thinking of a movie you want to see and being able to get it.
Netflix started as DVD rental by mail service, then they added free streaming. Seems more like DVD was subsidizing streaming if anything. And people who want physical media isn't asked to pay more, just pay what they were paying originally before streaming came along and was free.
Actually that's not true, the $8 is for one disk at a time. The original plan was 3 and was around $16, now to get that it costs $24, so it has gone up quite a bit.
Umm, streaming quality DOES come close. Maybe your connection is just too slow. An HD stream looks about as good as HD from my television provider.
And your TV provider probably sends a pretty bad HD signal, so he's right that it comes nowhere close to the same content on disc.
Actually that's not true, the $8 is for one disk at a time. The original plan was 3 and was around $16, now to get that it costs $24, so it has gone up quite a bit.
Ok, it has gone up quite a bit. But not too much complaining about that though. Sounds to me like DVD was really subsidizing streaming and the complainers are the streaming folks. I understand why they complain though because streaming has always been associated with free.
A non-tech person, buys a dvd player and notices Netflix installed. They then go to the website to sign up and realized for an additional fee, they can get the dvd's mailed too. Netflix doubles their income say 50% of the time at sign up?
They are giving this up?
Makes no sense what so ever.
Probably because you don't know anything about running a business nor have any information as to how much money Netflix made off their physical distribution anymore.
As a customer tho, it doesn't affect me at all.
Netflix the company sees the writing on the wall. Streaming is the future, and it's happening fast.
It's only a matter of time before Apple comes out with their own subscription based service for movies, and Netflix is trying to switch gears thats all.
Perhaps they've done it in a clumsy way...but again, i am not an investor of Netflix stock, so i am not angry. As a customer of their streaming service tho, i am very happy. More movies need to be added IMHO....but $8 for unlimited streaming of movies is the best deal in town.
Enjoy it while you can, because i am sure between data caps and providers charging Netflix more for their content in the future....prices will go up for streaming subscriptions eventually.
The ironic thing is piracy is the concern/reason for not having that content available on the streaming side, and yet ripping a DVD is easier than ripping a live stream.
The really good movies are protected pretty well. Handbrake fails on the copy protected ones. Of course for Windows guys you probably have AnyDVD which always seems to work.
Quitster.
Great way to kill off a company: rename it to something illogical and forgettable.
The really good movies are protected pretty well. Handbrake fails on the copy protected ones.
??? Which ones are those? Never had a single disc unrippable with HandBrake.
The really good movies are protected pretty well. Handbrake fails on the copy protected ones. Of course for Windows guys you probably have AnyDVD which always seems to work.
Irrelevant sidenote: handbrake replaced their own decryption with VLC libraries almost 3 years ago. I don't think it was ever the best mac decrypter. It was handy for converting a disc or two; I'm happy the Devs are focused on improving what handbrake does best.
??? Which ones are those? Never had a single disc unrippable with HandBrake.
Sorry I don't recall exactly but ones like Batman, X-men etc that appeal to the young hacker set are usually well protected. There are different levels like extra bogus directories which is pretty easy to spot but the hard ones require more advanced cracking tools.
Edit: I rip them because 1.) Netflix has nothing but crap on the live streaming side and 2.) I mostly watch movies when traveling in a foreign country, in a hotel or on the plane just to pass the time where there is no DVD. I rarely watch DVDs at home. I am not distributing them. I only watch a movie once and then delete it.
Not sure what you mean? Netflix has been doing DVD rental by mail for over 10 years and made lots of money doing it. It seems like good business senses.
There was a window of opportunity but it was closing as early as 2009 as by then their revenue per subscriber was steadily declining. With the switch to streaming they could reduce their per subscriber cost negating the impact of reduced per subscriber revenue. Most of their growth in the last couple of years has been through increased subscription driven by the streaming opton. That doesn't go on forever. They had to choose which business was sustatinable. IMHO I think they made the correct choice just executed it very very badly.
Edit: Oh, and PS...no one cares about "humility." They don't want a 60% price increase during a major recession. Morons.