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How a small streaming site became the Netflix for indie film

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

#81

Post by MichaelGG »

dasil003 wrote: post #23
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…

Little known fact, but we did start out with the goal of amassing a large library, and we even put significant effort with some former Netflix-prize winners in building a recommendation engine. The first big problem, which you see on Netflix as well, is that a recommendation engine really falls off in efficiency when your selection is thin, and the original dream of streaming every film is never going to happen becau…

I would pay $10 a month for a recommendation engine only. I'm able to find the actual video files easily enough. (And I often do so, even with Netflix has it, as Netflix's player sucks, quality is iffy, subtitles are spotty, etc.)

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

#82

Post by MichaelGG »

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.

Neat site. I might consider signing up for it as I'm rather sick of Netflix and don't use it much anymore. Having a short list would certainly help the endless flicking through crap on Netflix. OTOH, it's still competing with every other film out there, as they're one click away off a Torrent site.

One complaint on the homepage that'd usually have me close right away, if this wasn't on HN:

Why do you ignore the user's language presence and send them a language based on a guess from their IP? My OS is English, my browser is in English and only ends en-US and en in the Accept-Language field. Yet because I'm traveling in Central America, I get content in a language I'm not keen on. With no obvious way to change back to the correct language.

Changing back to my US IP, it still continues to show stuff in Spanish. I've gotta clear history for it to reset.

This is a really annoying thing to do. Did this actually test well? That is, do users often send the wrong Accept-Language header and appreciate the site second guessing them? And those users, do they not like having a quick option to change the language back to the one they requested?

Otherwise, really interesting looking service. Kudos.

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

#83

Post by MichaelGG »

rocky1138 wrote: post #22
reubenmorais wrote: post #4

Sounds like Netflix needs to take a lesson from Valve and let its customers do the curation for them.

I've been really impressed with Netflix's automatic suggestion algorithm. It frequently guesses my rating correctly and shows me movies that I do actually find interesting.

Wow. They routinely recommend bad for me. I even tried going along with a lot of their suggestions. Spent a day trying that out. It sucked. Now they show up in my "Continue Watching" list which requires going into preferences to remove.

Now, Netflix doesn't even pretend to recommend good stuff. The "Recommended For You" sort gives me items that Netflix itself suggests I will rate 1-star. I must sort by rating to see the better stuff. And even then, most of the top items I've already seen. I cancelled.

I used to pay Netflix (before streaming) while not receiving any DVDs. The recommendations were good enough for me to decide what to download. Not so much now.

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

#84

Post by rocky1138 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #83
rocky1138 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been really impressed with Netflix's automatic suggestion algorithm. It frequently guesses my rating correctly and shows me movies that I do actually find interesting.

Wow. They routinely recommend bad for me. I even tried going along with a lot of their suggestions. Spent a day trying that out. It sucked. Now they show up in my "Continue Watching" list which requires going into preferences to remove. Now, Netflix doesn't even pretend to recommend good stuff. The "Recommended For You" sort gives me items that Netflix itself suggests I will rate 1-star. I must sort by rating to see…

Maybe the algorithm is different here in Canada? I wonder why we're getting so different of results.

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

#85

Post by crucialfelix »

NolF wrote: post #80
crucialfelix wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also our major issue with MUBI. We love the film selection, but we live in Germany. When we want to watch a French film, its overdubbed in German. Netflix is also odd about this but usually we can get German subtitles for any film and choose the audio with original language. Ideally we should be able to select any language that there are available subtitles for. Why restrict it by region ?

The producers likely have distribution agreements on a by-country basis. So, for example WB cannot distribute in Germany because GEMA has the rights. But GEMA didn't buy the rights for the English subtitles. I imagine technically WB could then sell subtitles rights for in Germany but it would be a pain because maybe those subtitles were done by for licence in America and Oceania... etc.

GEMA is a collection society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights. Equivalent to BMI / ASCAP. They have nothing to do with films.

They certainly do not buy rights for anything at all. They represent copyright holders and collect fees and distribute them.

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

#86

Post by wfn »

Arnt wrote: post #63
wfn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, I'd like to * index every piece of data properly, for easy reference to (a) films, (b) user ratings (per user per film) and (c) users (seeing the latter as simply sets of ratings on films) * then run a few collaborative recommendation algorithms on the indexed dataset - basically taking things from the scikit-learn python package and running them * then see (naively and heuristically) whether any recomm…

What you want isn't an API, it's a data dump... thank you though. Definitely helpful to hear.

Hm, I suppose you're right, yes.

Could probably come up with interesting things to use API endpoints for, too. :) but my initial thoughts were about something else, I agree.

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

#87

Post by reubenmorais »

2xlbuds wrote: post #66
reubenmorais wrote: post #4

Sounds like Netflix needs to take a lesson from Valve and let its customers do the curation for them.

Greenlight has widely been seen as a failure in the gaming community though. Steam users have been sold on hype and greenlit games only to get unfinished buggy messes all too often.

Greenlight is not what I was referring to. http://store.steampowered.com/curators/

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

#88

Post by theflork »

dasil003 wrote: post #24
ohbleek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the site and found it through filmspotting. Any plans for adding support for kodi? (there's an addon already but it isn't updated regularly)

We've put a hold on new platform development for most of this year in order to move towards a standardized API and tighten up our QA process, so no plans for this year. I can share that the top two platforms which we are seeing interest in are Roku and the new Apple TV.

+1 on roku!
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