Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 126 posts

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#31

Post by reitzensteinm »

Vivtek wrote: post #24

Argh, a truly good article marred by one thing: the assertion that BitTorrent is a competitor for NetFlix. This notion just won't die - I use BitTorrent, sure - to get stuff I can't pay for, because nobody is interested in selling it to me. But I'd much, much, much rather toss NetFlix their $9 every month to deliver what I want without the hassle of BitTorrent, and that's the canard that the entertainment industry ju…

You might have morals and/or value your time, but actually I think the article is dead on that they're competitors. A large segment of the population chooses to pirate instead of pay. If BitTorrent ceased to exist (as a technology - not the company), NetFlix would almost certainly gain some customers.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#32

Post by cowboyhero »

Vivtek wrote: post #24

Argh, a truly good article marred by one thing: the assertion that BitTorrent is a competitor for NetFlix. This notion just won't die - I use BitTorrent, sure - to get stuff I can't pay for, because nobody is interested in selling it to me. But I'd much, much, much rather toss NetFlix their $9 every month to deliver what I want without the hassle of BitTorrent, and that's the canard that the entertainment industry ju…

It's a valid assertion.

Not to start a whole thing about piracy -- but what always surprises me in conversations about Bittorrent is that most people speak as if it has no effect on anything, anywhere, ever. Somehow, it also seems to exist outside any real purchasing decisions.

I'm not attacking you personally, but honestly that kind of thinking (as I've stated it, not you) is delusional.

The existence of unlimited free copies of your product is going to effect your business and your ability to profit. No question.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#33

Post by loire280 »

Herring wrote: post #26
Vivtek wrote: post #24

Argh, a truly good article marred by one thing: the assertion that BitTorrent is a competitor for NetFlix. This notion just won't die - I use BitTorrent, sure - to get stuff I can't pay for, because nobody is interested in selling it to me. But I'd much, much, much rather toss NetFlix their $9 every month to deliver what I want without the hassle of BitTorrent, and that's the canard that the entertainment industry ju…

>hassle of BitTorrent What do you mean? I hadn't noticed.

In my experience these are the shortcomings of using bittorrent:

1. It can take several minutes to find a decent release for titles that are older (>5 years) or less popular. 2. Older/Less popular items are poorly seeded, meaning I potentially have to wait overnight for the download to finish. (A new episode of a current series, however, usually comes in as fast as my broadband connection can handle). 3. Unless you know all of the release groups by heart, you have to spend a minute or two sifting through search results to find a release in a usable format in good-enough quality. Often I have to settle for something that plays fine in mplayer/vlc instead of something I can stream to my PS3 connected to my TV. 4. Maybe about 1/20 times I finish a download only to realize that it's A) not in the right language or burned-in with foreign subtitles B) terrible quality C) incomplete.

Sure, I get to keep the files, and often I can find stuff that streams on all my devices without hassle, but I watch stuff infrequently enough that the effort and possibility of failure is bothersome. I'd gladly pay to be able to choose a show and watch it immediately, assuming that the library of available content was large enough.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#34

Post by Teese »

amirmc wrote: post #17
kiba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A database that list all pundits' specific prediction and give them a rating based on if they succeeded or not?

I've seen such a website somewhere but can't find it. It was in relation to an apple prediction but there were plenty of others there too (inc political).

your probably thinking of http://wrongtomorrow.com/ which no longer seems to be up - and it never seemed to get much traction anyways.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#35

Post by danilocampos »

blizkreeg wrote: post #27

This is a tangential pricing-related question: Why does Netflix, which is solving some hard and interesting problems both on the technical (delivery/algorithms) as well as business side (licenses etc) only charge $9-$15 a month whereas online services like dating sites and project collaboration SaaS tools that are arguably much easier to build get away with charging anywhere from $30 to $60 a month? If pricing is abo…

Perhaps it's a volume thing?

I suspect that "I want to be entertained" is a bit more universal than "I want to find a mate" or "I want to manage my project."

So maybe they're finding some kind of sweet spot there?

The thing is, I use Watch Instantly sporadically. Sometimes hardcore, every night, for a week when I just need a break from everything, and other times not more than once or twice a month. $9 is such a fair amount of money to ask, I just let them bill away regardless, because I want to have it immediately if and when I want it.

So it could also be that <$10 is just the right amount of auto-pilot billing to maximize their revenue for spotty users.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#37

Post by epe »

papa wrote: post #3

It's too bad there's no way to assign a universal "reputation" score to the various pundits out there so that readers can better assess the value of their published predictions. Michael Pachter, for instance, has been wrong on a number of occasions (he predicted Sony would dominate the current console generation and Nintendo would languish and MSFT would be #2 -- at least he got the last part right). Like the iPad wh…

It appears to be down at the moment, but there's a site called Wrong Tomorrow (http://wrongtomorrow.com/) that seems to me like a good start in this direction. Here's the blog post announcing it:

http://www.idlewords.com/2009/04/wrong_tomorrow.htm

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#38

Post by [deleted] »

minouye wrote: post #29
blizkreeg wrote: post #27

This is a tangential pricing-related question: Why does Netflix, which is solving some hard and interesting problems both on the technical (delivery/algorithms) as well as business side (licenses etc) only charge $9-$15 a month whereas online services like dating sites and project collaboration SaaS tools that are arguably much easier to build get away with charging anywhere from $30 to $60 a month? If pricing is abo…

I don't think I would pay $30 a month for Netflix. From my perspective the demand for their services is fairly elastic, especially considering the substitutes. However, I do expect that prices will be recalibrated once video streaming makes up more substantial portion of their business. I'd imagine the economics of streaming vs. sending a DVD are quite different.

[deleted]

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#39

Post by [deleted] »

blizkreeg wrote: post #27

This is a tangential pricing-related question: Why does Netflix, which is solving some hard and interesting problems both on the technical (delivery/algorithms) as well as business side (licenses etc) only charge $9-$15 a month whereas online services like dating sites and project collaboration SaaS tools that are arguably much easier to build get away with charging anywhere from $30 to $60 a month? If pricing is abo…

[deleted]

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#40

Post by cowboyhero »

blizkreeg wrote: post #27

This is a tangential pricing-related question: Why does Netflix, which is solving some hard and interesting problems both on the technical (delivery/algorithms) as well as business side (licenses etc) only charge $9-$15 a month whereas online services like dating sites and project collaboration SaaS tools that are arguably much easier to build get away with charging anywhere from $30 to $60 a month? If pricing is abo…

Remember that Netflix came around in a consumer culture that was renting videos and DVDs from corner shops for maybe $2-4 a pop.

Throughout their history, all of Netflix's pricing structures have been designed to stay within that range.

It costs Netflix pennies to stream movies. ("Akamai charges a customer like Netflix about 5 cents for an HD movie, compared with about 3 cents for standard definition." See: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_34/b41920385...)

I expect their prices to rise, though. If they want to stream first run movies (a la cable), they're going to have to pony up serious dough for the licenses. That means higher costs to the end consumer.

Post reply on HN