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Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#161

Post by majewsky »

lozenge wrote: post #157
TeMPOraL wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. I wonder how this will evolve. Short-term, it looks like self-destructing greed to me. People are not going to subscribe to shit ton of services because each of them has a small slice of movies they might want to watch.

People are spending just as much time watching TV as they ever did. If they've always paid $70/month for it, why would the entertainment companies settle for people paying less now?

People are paying $70/month for TV in the US!?

In Germany, the basic HD TV package costs €60/year (not per month) if you want it. And also you have to pay €18/month for the public broadcasts (that part is non-negotiable). So that comes out to €23/month if you're watching over satellite. Cable TV sometimes imposes additional fees (€8/month in my apartment building).

There is also Sky, a pay-TV provider, but I don't know any subscribers except for soccer fans and sports bars.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#162

Post by krageon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #145
thisisit wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. That means Netflix has to scramble for content. And when starting out they were careful in selecting projects. But once they got a taste for success they have been green-lighting projects left and right. But, they are not going to select winners every time. Stuff like Bright, the Will Smith movie, relied solely on the star power. It will be interesting t…

> Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. I wonder how this will evolve. Short-term, it looks like self-destructing greed to me. People are not going to subscribe to shit ton of services because each of them has a small slice of movies they might want to watch.

It was the same way in games for a long time. A platform becomes dominant (because it is the best), then others want to emulate it (poorly). Eventually competitors do pop up, but the ones that don't fill a specific niche generally don't become incredibly popular.

The difference with movies/series is that the licensing situation is significantly more retarded. This will probably end up meaning we will end up with a million different streaming services (with different catalogues for different countries, or more accurately a good catalog in the US and a poor one everywhere else). This will drive more people to pirating, with predictable results.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#163

Post by krageon »

cncrnd wrote: post #119
willio58 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you’re coming from but self control is an important thing to teach children. If your version of self control is fully disconnecting, I understand that but it doesn’t mean you should feel sorry for kids that have access to Netflix. (Speaking as a 21 year old who spent a number of years of my childhood watching Netflix with my family)

I'm also in my early 20's. I think children are by nature more impulsive, and if they have access to Netflix at a young age without enough parental restrictions they might start down a bad path. When they're older it's easier to contain. That's part of the reason for age restrictions on drugs/alcohol. Some drugs aren't all that different from dopamine inducing digital stimuli. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsi…

The age restrictions on drugs (alcohol is also a drug) are because of researched and profound effects on developing brains. It has very little to do with undeveloped self-control (although that is definitely a thing). The difference in effects on dopamine between drugs and anything that isn't a drug is also profound, mainly because drugs will make things happen that simply cannot happen normally.

I don't at all agree with your "children should not be exposed to things they might want" premise, but that is a discussion for another day.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#164

Post by Grue3 »

majewsky wrote: post #159
TeMPOraL wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translations of movie titles are a pet peeve of mine. They are bad everywhere , and have been since way before the times of Internet streaming. My favourite example is Die Hard, which was translated to Polish as "Szklana Pułapka" (a glass trap). Presumably because the action took place in a skyscraper. I just wish I could have seen the faces of TV execs when they learned that Die Hard 2 came out, and was about airpla…

I always love when English movie titles are translated for the German market into different-but-still-English movie titles. My favorite example is Zootopia, which got changed into Zoomania for the German market.

Seems like Zootopie (Zoo + Utopie) would've worked just fine.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#165

Post by atombender »

TylerE wrote: post #12
wgerard wrote: post #8

Total anecdote: Kinda sucks when shows leave Netflix and don't get replaced; half the appeal of Netflix is the ability to quickly switch between Futurama and Always Sunny, and more importantly to be able to watch those shows on a platform that doesn't completely suck (FX's app has got to be one of the worst apps I've ever used). When "Parts Unknown" was about to leave Netflix, I really questioned whether it was worth…

They've been so aggressively getting rid of "real" content and replacing it with their in-house productions, the quality of which has slid quite a bit as they've ramped up volume. I'm on the verge of canceling it, since most of what I want is on Prime anyway.

Their licensing deals with studios such as NBC, Fox etc. are time-based. Netflix is not purposely getting rid of shows. Nor is Netflix the one deciding that "Parks and Recreation" is to only be available in the US.

Netflix is producing all of their own shows precisely so that they will no longer be held hostage by other license holders. Of course, now everyone doing the same thing, and consumers are left having to subscribe to a ton of providers (even when said providers currently are in a "drought" between seasons of your favourite shows) and jump between apps to get what they want.

(As an aside, Hulu stands out here in providing a "pause" button on your subscription. But it's month-based, and you still have to manage that yourself; it doesn't automatically credit you for those months when you didn't use the service.)

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#166

Post by fifnir »

natas_claus wrote: post #79
Spooky23 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your observations, but wanted to add the their browsing system is just bonkers. Discovery is impossible — imo they overoptimize for engagement and make it hard to explore the catalog. I find out about many new shows via PR placements in newspapers.

Try one of the standalone discovery sites. These improve this aspect a lot. I'm using Flixboss ( https://flixboss.com ).

Does this deal with Netflix in other countries?

I'd just like a big table of everything available with meta-data in columns and the ability to hide rows

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#167

Post by prades »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #149
Swizec wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep this is how you’re supposed to escape from a local maximum. But maybe Netflix’s usual customer doesn’t stick around long enough to have this problem so it’s not worth fixing. I can’t imagine none of their machine learning engineers know how to fix this.

Yeah, I bet they know. Question is, do their managers want them to fix this? There is this hypothesis that I've seen floating on HN at times, that Netflix does this to hide the fact that their selection is very small. I'm not totally convinced, but a lot of their UI choices feel like good evidence in favour of this hypothesis.

Thankfully there are alternative interfaces to browse the Netflix catalog:

https://www.coollector.com/index.html#netflix

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#168

Post by prades »

fifnir wrote: post #166
natas_claus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try one of the standalone discovery sites. These improve this aspect a lot. I'm using Flixboss ( https://flixboss.com ).

Does this deal with Netflix in other countries? I'd just like a big table of everything available with meta-data in columns and the ability to hide rows

Flixbox is USA only, but there are some websites like unogs.com who can handle more countries. In addition to a more convenient browsing of the catalog, if you also want an alternative recommendation system (with really accurate and unbiased predicted ratings), there's the Windows/Mac app Coollector Movie Database: https://www.coollector.com/

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#169

Post by gregmac »

geoffmcc wrote: post #43
unethical_ban wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audio previews! Holy shit! Terrible experience. And auto-play for episodes. I know it gets people hooked to watch, but still annoying. There are so few configurable items in their Netflix menu.

I have noticed lately that the "Are you still there" message has gone away. While it is nice when you are awake, it sucks when you fall asleep and wake up on season 6 of something when last you knew you were on season 2. Then you have to figure out exactly what episode you fell asleep on, not impossible but can be a pain.

You can turn off auto play of the next episode. It both saves your sanity and avoids that problem.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#170

Post by thebigspacefuck »

wgerard wrote: post #8

Total anecdote: Kinda sucks when shows leave Netflix and don't get replaced; half the appeal of Netflix is the ability to quickly switch between Futurama and Always Sunny, and more importantly to be able to watch those shows on a platform that doesn't completely suck (FX's app has got to be one of the worst apps I've ever used). When "Parts Unknown" was about to leave Netflix, I really questioned whether it was worth…

Are there any good alternatives?

I've used Prime and Hulu before but they seem to have the same issue from time to time. The obvious alternative for me is to rent the content from Prime or iTunes (I have an Apple TV so my options are somewhat limited), but at $3-$5 per rental that's 3-4 movies on Netflix before I get my money back. I think I watch that many but I'm not sure. I watch a lot of crap I wouldn't otherwise that I feel like I'm settling for, but on the other hand Netflix is just my ticket to zone out and stop thinking about other stuff, so it does the trick.

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