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Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

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Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#151

Post by praxulus »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #116
TremendousJudge wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that 15+ year old tech developed by some hobbyists (over asymmetrical networks not optimized for it mind you) provides a better service than anything modern corporations can deliver really is amazing to me.

It's because the corporations aren't really interested in providing a better service to the viewer, they're interested in providing a better service to their advertisers. That said, the idea of embedding the advertising freely is an interesting one, and I wonder if it's been seriously considered by the networks. Probably harder to convince the cheque-writers of the value they're getting, though.

Netflix and HBO don't have advertisers (well, except as providers, but not as customers).

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#152

Post by noelsusman »

isbjorn16 wrote: post #77

My problem with Netflix isn't the slate of shows and movies it has in its catalog. It's definitely not as nice as it used to be, but there are a jillion and a half shows and movies out there. My problem is that Netflix has taken note that we watch anime a few times a week, which doubtless means we want every single band/carousel/whatever to be about anime. New Anime, Critically Acclaimed Anime, Popular Anime, Watch i…

To be fair to them, everyone is failing at this. Recommendation algorithms, once held up as a crowning achievement of machine learning, have turned out to be terrible at their jobs. Amazon, Youtube, Netflix. None of them have it figured out.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#153

Post by SpaceManNabs »

randrews wrote: post #82
isbjorn16 wrote: post #77

My problem with Netflix isn't the slate of shows and movies it has in its catalog. It's definitely not as nice as it used to be, but there are a jillion and a half shows and movies out there. My problem is that Netflix has taken note that we watch anime a few times a week, which doubtless means we want every single band/carousel/whatever to be about anime. New Anime, Critically Acclaimed Anime, Popular Anime, Watch i…

I have this problem with ML and recommendation systems in general. I hope this fad goes away soon and people go back to making simple, understandable, show-me-the-newest-stuff feeds.

Netflix didn't always have this problem. They seem to have changed their cold start model within the last 2 years.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#154

Post by Mirioron »

randrews wrote: post #82
isbjorn16 wrote: post #77

My problem with Netflix isn't the slate of shows and movies it has in its catalog. It's definitely not as nice as it used to be, but there are a jillion and a half shows and movies out there. My problem is that Netflix has taken note that we watch anime a few times a week, which doubtless means we want every single band/carousel/whatever to be about anime. New Anime, Critically Acclaimed Anime, Popular Anime, Watch i…

I have this problem with ML and recommendation systems in general. I hope this fad goes away soon and people go back to making simple, understandable, show-me-the-newest-stuff feeds.

I think the issue lies with there being a single recommendation tab that gets filled in without enough variety.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#155

Post by jdsully »

perl4ever wrote: post #125
isbjorn16 wrote: post #77

My problem with Netflix isn't the slate of shows and movies it has in its catalog. It's definitely not as nice as it used to be, but there are a jillion and a half shows and movies out there. My problem is that Netflix has taken note that we watch anime a few times a week, which doubtless means we want every single band/carousel/whatever to be about anime. New Anime, Critically Acclaimed Anime, Popular Anime, Watch i…

It seems like there is some pitfall in making a recommendation algorithm that more and more people are falling in to. I don't watch TV or have Netflix, but I listen to streaming music, and I noticed something weird. I used to listen to Pandora, and it recommended a lot of different artists that I liked on hearing them for the first time. It single-handedly gave me a taste for 21st century music. But there wasn't enou…

Its less risky to give you things you already like than to try and guess if something new will be appreciated. Its the same reason hollywood keeps doing remakes.

If you only go by statistics and don’t think through the “what if everyone did this” question then giving you the same old content on repeat will have better metrics.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#156

Post by boznz »

bamboozled wrote: post #105
quicklyfrozen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly a hell of a lot easier to not have to think about where to find your favorites. And once it's downloaded there are (almost) never any playback issues.

It’s laughable to me that after all the years of investment and business development in these steaming services it’s still much, much, much easier to use p2p networks to get content you want. I wonder if there would just be more profit in injecting advertisements in tv shows and distributing them openly using BitTorrent? Think of the size of the audience, yeah people will cut the ads out but a lot of people couldn’t…

advertisements generally only make sense in the country of origin, the adds would be pointless for anyone else

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#157

Post by thebigspacefuck »

Waterluvian wrote: post #136
archey1 wrote: post #75

Netflix is just getting more expensive and less interesting to me. With all of the content I like being taken off to be hosted on network exclusive streaming platforms that I refuse to pay for - I'll probably eventually just cancel Netflix as well going back to the tried and true method of just buying bluray box-sets of the content I want to watch. Or piracy. I think the critical mistake that all these megacorps are…

Are box sets still batshit insane? It didn't make sense to me to pay $120 for a week of binge watching.

Resell it for $100 and you paid $20 for a week of binge watching. Buy it used for $100 and resell it for $100 and you watched for free.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#158

Post by brighter2morrow »

happytoexplain wrote: post #31
throwaway_009 wrote: post #26

They started going downhill with every original show losing logical consistency after the 1st or 2nd season, political pandering instead of offering good quality entertainment. And the removal of the user reviews was a degrade, as they want to push bad shows to users and waste their time, instead of letting them make an informed choice. I hope they get disrupted because of their arrogance.

>political pandering instead of offering good quality entertainment This, unfortunately, is the ultimate double-edged sword. It would be a very safe and content-less world indeed if fictional media did not in some what appear to address or include something political in nature. Usually when we feel like what we're watching is not political, it's actually because it's simply political in ways that we identify with or…

>Usually when we feel like what we're watching is not political, it's actually because it's simply political in ways that we identify with or do not find offensive.

I'd be interested to see a show that has nationalistic/right-wing assumptions. Any good examples?

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#159

Post by mh- »

ryanianian wrote: post #61
lallysingh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! They've optimized for the wrong metric. Users should feel like it's time well spent. After their $1MM prize years ago, they didn't even bother implementing the winning algorithm. Then again, nobody really recommends media well. You can't mine the media directly, and people have very different preferences. It's just too many factors that you can't infer from the usage.

I've recently started using ReelGood more often. (Not affiliated just a happy user.) You tell it which streaming services you have, what shows you've liked, etc and it gives you decent-ish recommendations from across all your services. More importantly it also shows the IMDB score, the Rotten Tomatoes score, and usually provides a trailer, and then they deep-link to the actual content so you can avoid all the Netflix…

Just tried this out for the first time. Am I missing something? I linked services, marked some movies as watched, but don't see any way to _rate_ movies I've watched. So it doesn't have any kind of (useful) signal from me for recommendations?

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#160

Post by mjevans »

noelsusman wrote: post #147
archey1 wrote: post #75

Netflix is just getting more expensive and less interesting to me. With all of the content I like being taken off to be hosted on network exclusive streaming platforms that I refuse to pay for - I'll probably eventually just cancel Netflix as well going back to the tried and true method of just buying bluray box-sets of the content I want to watch. Or piracy. I think the critical mistake that all these megacorps are…

Of course people would rather pay $10 a month to access everything, but that's just not sustainable. Look at Netflix's own financials. They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base. I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution. Isn't that what we hated about cable? Didn't we beg for the ability to pick an…

The Industry can't get this simple message in to it's collective head:

The convenience needs to be better and cheaper (including perceived risks') than piracy to win.

These are the things they MUST do:

    * One payment, that's reasonable.
    * All the content from FOREVER accessible FOREVER in one place.
Honestly, that's it for most people. For me they also need to...

    * Be DRM free so that it actually works on OSes that respect my privacy.
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