How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film • Hacker News Board

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#31

Post by spiraldancing » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #15

Whoah, it's awesome to see this posted here in my native habitat! I've spent the last 8 years of my life building MUBI as Co-Founder and CTO (even longer than I've been on HN!). Please AMA.

Hi. I just now learned about MUBI, through this HN post. First and foremost, it looks great, and I will almost definitely be signing up tonight when I get home.

Here's my gripe ... am I doing something wrong, or do I have to create an account just to find out the subscription prices? If it's not just my user-stupidity, don't make me register just to see the prices.

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#32

Post by wfn » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

6502nerdface wrote: post #30

wfn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your second point, I really understand this position - fair enough (re. zeitgeist and personal point in life of someone looking for films and rating films, etc.) I just wonder if it wouldn't be interesting to spend some time looking at recommendation systems which are not just simply about intersecting users' votes and presenting something "just what you've recently liked." But this would be more of a playf…

What, so like, "as an early thirty-something who just found out you're about to become a father, you may enjoy films X, Y, Z"? To really get people's life chapters and such you'd have to have massive metadata about them beyond the scope of a video service. Google/FB could do it, though.

It was more a comment about how considerations such as this make collaborative recommendation systems precisely less useful. Regarding rec.systems that move beyond naive rating/like intersections between users (such as e.g. Jaccard similarity index), I think there could be interesting algorithms developed that make use of assigned/curated item tags together with collaborative filtering/recommendations (e.g. something that last.fm has considered (or has been considering) - there's an entire field of research for just music recommendation systems.)

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#33

Post by fatboy » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

spiraldancing wrote: post #31

dasil003 wrote: post #15

Whoah, it's awesome to see this posted here in my native habitat! I've spent the last 8 years of my life building MUBI as Co-Founder and CTO (even longer than I've been on HN!). Please AMA.

Hi. I just now learned about MUBI, through this HN post. First and foremost, it looks great, and I will almost definitely be signing up tonight when I get home. Here's my gripe ... am I doing something wrong, or do I have to create an account just to find out the subscription prices? If it's not just my user-stupidity, don't make me register just to see the prices.

I see the price at the bottom on this page: https://mubi.com/films/showing €4,99 per month where I am.

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#34

Post by gjkood » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 5:12 PM UTC

What is that line in the Pink Floyd song? "I got thirteen channels of shit on the tv to choose from..".

Netflix is beginning to resemble that. I mean I love Netflix but its becoming a little hit-or-miss. The alternatives (proprietary content from HBO Now) are becoming more alluring.

Anyway I just signed up a year's subscription with MUBI. I haven't had a chance to see "Junun" yet, but I just recently watched "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mira Nair. I was blown away by the quality of the Music/Soundtrack in that.

I don't know the precise style of music in the movie (Qawwali/Hindustani???) but I have never heard anything so amazing.

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#35

Post by davidovitch » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 5:12 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #15

Whoah, it's awesome to see this posted here in my native habitat! I've spent the last 8 years of my life building MUBI as Co-Founder and CTO (even longer than I've been on HN!). Please AMA.

Only discovered MUBI today via HN. Looks great! There is one annoyance (which I also have with Netflix): I live in Denmark, but I am not fluent in Danish. Not all your movies have English subtitles though, so how can I watch anything else except the three languages I master (English, French and Dutch)? Are licensing issues preventing you from offering English subtitles on all your movies as a default?

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#36

Post by pmontra » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #17

pmontra wrote: post #14

"This film is not currently playing on MUBI but 30 other great films are. See what's NOW SHOWING" Why? That was for a movie that I could pay to watch but they don't let me watch it. I wonder how they could be in business. Still they are so it's probably a sensible choice that I fail to understand.

We recognize the confusion this causes in the UI, but indeed there is a valid reason for it. Since the beginning we have streamed globally, but a different selection in each country. Since we have editorial and social features on the site as well, we can't just have pages appear and disappear from the site like Netflix does. All these pages exist as connective tissue between users in different countries (which become…

Thanks for answering.

So the movie I wanted to see is currently available in another country or has been available in mine but not now. The UI could be tweaked to explain that and not (negatively) surprise customers but it seems that you already know that. Probably you have plans to improve it.

Your approach is similar to TV, a list of programs to choose from but not the full catalog. Given these terms I'm not sure I'll ever be a customer but this business model seems to be serving you well so I can hardly criticize it.

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#37

Post by arebop » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #13

wfn wrote: post #5

MUBI's curatorial approach stands in sharp contrast to major streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, which have amassed large libraries and deliver personalized recommendations based on algorithms. MUBI's human-curated selection takes a lot of that choice away, and Cakarel thinks viewers are better off for it. "Think about your own Netflix experience and how frustrating it is — how long it takes you to fin…

> "Think about your own Netflix experience and how frustrating it is — how long it takes you to find a film that you want to watch," says Cakarel. "It doesn't work. It categorically doesn't work." I don't really think this describes my Netflix experience well enough to be "categorically" true.

The www.netflixprize.com data from 2009 is quantitative evidence about whether the recommender works (it is much better than random). I'm open to the idea that a curated collection might delight more people, but in my experience and based on this data, I can't agree that Netflix's algorithm is useless. Personally I find it's the unavailability of streaming content that makes Netflix frustrating.

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#38

Post by gjkood » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #15

Whoah, it's awesome to see this posted here in my native habitat! I've spent the last 8 years of my life building MUBI as Co-Founder and CTO (even longer than I've been on HN!). Please AMA.

I have to say, your sign up process (including payments) was one of the simplest/smoothest I have ever experienced.

And I especially loved the welcome email that felt so personal (I know this is an automated form letter. I specialize in CRM systems).

This is a fine example of great customer service.

I am sure the content will be as discerning.

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#39

Post by spiraldancing » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 5:36 PM UTC

fatboy wrote: post #33

spiraldancing wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi. I just now learned about MUBI, through this HN post. First and foremost, it looks great, and I will almost definitely be signing up tonight when I get home. Here's my gripe ... am I doing something wrong, or do I have to create an account just to find out the subscription prices? If it's not just my user-stupidity, don't make me register just to see the prices.

I see the price at the bottom on this page: https://mubi.com/films/showing €4,99 per month where I am.

PEBCAK ... Nevermind

Re: How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

#40

Post by hyperion2010 » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 5:39 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #15

Whoah, it's awesome to see this posted here in my native habitat! I've spent the last 8 years of my life building MUBI as Co-Founder and CTO (even longer than I've been on HN!). Please AMA.

It seems that the major focus of MUBI is rapid and ongoing curation. Do you guys have a defined process for how you do this so that you achieve a desired distribution of films or is it more down the the individual curators?

One other thing I wonder about curation of media in general is whether you think your customer base is willing to try new things because they trust you rather than simply trying to find something that is known to be similar to what they liked in the past? Do you think trust based recommendation system overcome the bubble effect that similarity based systems fall in to?

Thanks!