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

121–126 of 126 posts

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#121

Post by pmichaud »

rubyrescue wrote: post #108
pmichaud wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really go for new release type movie generally, so I call shenanigans. I was a heavy user who got movies sometimes the day after I returned the last one, which was great. Then I started getting them 3, 4, 5 days later. They blamed USPS, even though no other mail to or from me was slow at all, so I started tracking the returned movies. They uniformly were delivered back to the warehouse just as quickly as befo…

Addressing the 'Their loss' comment - Netflix could be happy you left from a business standpoint. I've talked to wireless carrier network execs who can speak specifically to the type of subscribers who they would like to encourage to leave the network.

They are only happy because they weren't charging me enough, and I was willing to pay that extra cost too, so it really is their loss.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#122

Post by eavc »

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…

Netflix can get a customer in perpetuity at $9-$15.

Much higher than that, it becomes a budget item that's scrutinized once a month, twice a year, or when times get tough.

I canceled cable with enthusiasm because it saved me $50 a month. I look at the value I get for $10 from Netflix, and it's clear that canceling it would be a mistake.

If it was $20, I'd cancel it. Instead, they have me forever and ever.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#123

Post by dhess »

Terretta wrote: post #120
dhess wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, it's a poor choice for streaming technology on the Mac. Can we expect to see HTML5 video support for the Mac anytime soon? It pains me that Netflix HD streams on my iPad look better than on my 1080p projector hooked up to a Mac mini.

Of course video using only 1024x768 tiny pixels on a bright glossy screen will look better than using 1920 x 1080 pixels from a projector. You simply won't see as many problems with video compression on the small screen with less pixels. Also, just to clarify -- there's not really any such thing as HTML5 video. There's an HTML5 video tag , and browser vendors can decide what kinds of video the tag should handle in th…

Thanks for taking the time to explain Netflix's justification for choosing Silverlight. As a customer, I would still prefer a solution that doesn't require installing a plugin.

Let me rephrase my original question: is there any chance we'll see a native or browser-based application for the Mac that doesn't require Flash or Silverlight, ala the iPad app? Presumably whatever sort of DRM the iPad app is using could be implemented on the Mac, as well.

By the way, you could have skipped the patronizing bits in your response about HTML5 tags and the definition of the word "codec." The term "HTML5 video" is used colloquially to refer to native browser support for H.264 or WebM video. I thought that was clear enough, but perhaps I should have been more precise.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#125

Post by Terretta »

dhess wrote: post #123
Terretta wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course video using only 1024x768 tiny pixels on a bright glossy screen will look better than using 1920 x 1080 pixels from a projector. You simply won't see as many problems with video compression on the small screen with less pixels. Also, just to clarify -- there's not really any such thing as HTML5 video. There's an HTML5 video tag , and browser vendors can decide what kinds of video the tag should handle in th…

Thanks for taking the time to explain Netflix's justification for choosing Silverlight. As a customer, I would still prefer a solution that doesn't require installing a plugin. Let me rephrase my original question: is there any chance we'll see a native or browser-based application for the Mac that doesn't require Flash or Silverlight, ala the iPad app? Presumably whatever sort of DRM the iPad app is using could be i…

The sort of DRM the iPad is using is what the Silverlight player offers on the Mac desktop:

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/netflix/netflix-selects-new...

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#126

Post by dhess »

Terretta wrote: post #125
dhess wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for taking the time to explain Netflix's justification for choosing Silverlight. As a customer, I would still prefer a solution that doesn't require installing a plugin. Let me rephrase my original question: is there any chance we'll see a native or browser-based application for the Mac that doesn't require Flash or Silverlight, ala the iPad app? Presumably whatever sort of DRM the iPad app is using could be i…

The sort of DRM the iPad is using is what the Silverlight player offers on the Mac desktop: http://www.homemediamagazine.com/netflix/netflix-selects-new...

Ahh, that's an informative link. Thanks for posting that.

You didn't really answer my question about a native Mac app, but that may be because you can't talk about anything that may or may not be in development, which is understandable. In any case, just to re-iterate, my customer feedback is that I'd be much happier with Netflix streaming on my Mac if there were a native Mac app that incorporated the iPad implementation of PlayReady, without the need for installing Silverlight. On the bright side, I'm definitely happier with Mac streaming since learning from elq that Netflix supports "HD" streams on the Mac since May. I guess I should have subscribed to the official Netflix blog, as I'd have heard about it before yesterday.

p.s. Also in that article is this gem:

In addition, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings sits on the Microsoft board.

I guess we've hashed this to death already, and you've made good points about the technical merits of Silverlight (version 3, at least, which was not available to the public when Mac streaming was originally released), but given the relationship between Netflix's CEO and Microsoft, you can probably understand why people would be skeptical that the choice to use Silverlight was an engineering-driven decision, which was staunch's point in his original post, I think.

At any rate, I think you and elq have made a good argument that as of v3, it's probably a better technical solution than Flash, at least.

Post reply on HN