Netflix kills Qwikster • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#111

Post by dpark » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #107

dpark wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a PS3, specifically for Blu-Ray, but I rarely use it for that any more. I use it for Netflix, and at this point any number of devices could handle that. If I were buying a Blu-Ray player again, I'd probably buy something else. I got a first-gen, when the PS3 was still the cheapest. But now it's not, and I don't game, and having to use a dedicated Bluetooth remote is annoying. Also there's no Amazon Prime app…

You're probably right about 720 vs 1080. You've go to be pretty close to see the difference on a 46" screen. I believe I read that someone with 20/20 vision has to be closer than 8 feet to see the difference on a 50" screen. If I was building a home theater setup with a huge projector (or giant LCD), dolby digital (7.1 now?), etc... then of course I want the best quality in everything I can get. A friend of mine has…

For sure, if you're setting up a proper home theater, the 1080p media will make a difference. For the family room, I agree the difference is minimal. At typical viewing distances, it's probably not even visible.

As for streaming, from what I understand, 720p is actually better than 1080p when streaming, because 1080p streams end up getting compressed to the point that they actually look worse than the 720p equivalent. Fuzziness from stretching the 720p signal is less visible than blockiness from 1080p compression. Blu-Ray obviously doesn't suffer from streaming limitations, though.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#112

Post by macrael » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

fryguy wrote: post #104

macrael wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most convincing explanation of their actions I read was essentially: 1. they made streaming a free add on to DVDs to get people using the service, which resulted in streaming becoming popular. 2. The media owners started to (or perhaps always had) cut their deals with Netflix on a per subscriber basis rather than per view. So Netflix was paying the networks for everyone who subscribed, including evyone who only w…

I think they were paying a flat amount for an up to X million subscribers, not a per subscriber fee. Then they got close to the cap and needed to remove the people from the cap that weren't really using it, but the contract counted everyone that had access. It's pretty much the same thing though.

Where does that information come from? Is that a common way for such deals to be made?

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#113

Post by wycats » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

The mistake Netflix made was adding in streaming to its DVDs-by-mail brand in the first place. Had they launched Qwikster instead of adding Instant to Netflix, Qwikster would almost certainly be a strong brand today, probably the leading streaming movie brand.

If you doubt this, take a look at Hulu. Hulu's a strong streaming TV brand because of its content deals; it didn't need to tack on the names of its industry sponsors to become the place to go for streaming TV.

Now Netflix is saddled with trying to be two things at once. Just because one company is trying to do two things doesn't mean it needs to stuff them both into a single brand.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#114

Post by bshep » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #67

smoyer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We switched to the streaming-only plan before our billing cycle and have been happy ... We weren't good at quickly watching the DVDs and returning them anyway plus we saved a buck a month. How did other HNers respond to the price hike? I would expect this group to be dominated by streamers anyway.

We looked at the value: not-deep-enough streaming catalog plus deep DVD catalog was a great service and a good value. Either one alone? Incomplete service. Both? Not enough value at the 2X price. We kept our subscription open until the day the price hike would hit us (How does Netflix get away with "the moment you cancel, your subscription ends, no refunds for partial months"?!?), then canceled completely. I tried to…

I did the same, first switched to DVD only before the price hike ( couldn't find anything on streaming I liked... ), then just today cancelled the DVD service, probably wont be back as a customer...

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#115

Post by daimyoyo » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 5:46 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #13

Wouldn't market questionnaire testing of just 100 people saved them this expensive juggling act? Anyway, I fear streaming price increases next year for sure as all the media outlets start to gouge netflix and they pass it on. Best thing netflix can do is make sure consumers know which distributors are purposely giving them horrible contracts and that it's not netflix's fault.

100 customers is not remotely close to a large enough sample size to glean anything worth the hassle to do the test. 100,000 would be better, but then you're spending a huge amount of money for results that might add nothing to your research. The whole "faster horse" theory applies here.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#116

Post by igorgue » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 5:54 PM UTC

That was more like an abortion.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#117

Post by dpark » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 6:03 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #84

dpark wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I was hoping since you had an Xbox, you were ripping on Windows. I've used HandBrake on OSX before, and it worked great. I just wish the Windows version would handle DVDs the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlySoft

I appreciate it, but I've used that before. I really would prefer not to spend $50 to rip DVDs I own if I can avoid it. I don't really understand why HandBrake has this capability on OSX but not Windows.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#118

Post by goodweeds » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 6:15 PM UTC

When I heard about this, I canceled the DVD service and sent back the 5 dvds that had been on my bookshelf for 3 years. Then I started using the streaming service again, and got frustrated. Silverlight is pretty bad, especially with it's bizarre volume limitations. I realized that Netflix's streaming quality matches it's streaming catalogue, in other words, it sucks, and I canceled.

Had all of these shenanigans not happened I probably would have been too lazy to cancel Netflix for another year or two.

Dear Reed, Thanks for reminding me that Netflix sucks and I'd rather read or exercise than watch movies!

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#119

Post by talmand » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 6:16 PM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #49

talmand wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think they had a long-term goal in mind without considering the short-term consequences. I'm not a Wall Street guy and I could have told them their stock would tumble immediately. Why? That's easy, if you split off a significant amount of your business to a second company then the company is worth less the exact amount you are splitting off. For example, $200 million company splits off $75 million of it…

That's not true. If company A is worth $200M and you split it, (assuming no other factors liked pissed off investors and/or customers) you'll have company A worth $125M and company B worth $75M. There is no reduction in the value of the companies. Investors get five shares in A and three shares in B for every eight shares they held. The problem here is everybody (customers, investors and pundits) thought it was a hor…

Well, I would say that a value change of $200 million to $125 million is a reduction.

Although I didn't assume that investors would automatically get shares in the new company to equal the value they lose in the original company. It's nice if it works out that way but I just don't assume that kind of thing.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#120

Post by talmand » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 6:21 PM UTC

CognitiveLens wrote: post #33

talmand wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather they keep the one price for everything plan. Once you start having tiered prices for different levels of service you are well on your way to the current cable TV situation we have now.

One of the strongest criticisms of current cable TV is that their selections are not fine-grained enough (e.g. I don't want to pay for HGTV and ten other useless channels just to watch the Discovery Channel). I don't think the one-size-fits-all approach works well with entertainment media.

It seems to be working quite well for new media companies on the internet.

But I can't argue very strongly against your point as it was a complaint of mine before I dumped cable.

Although if cable would give me access to all their content (tv, movies, sports, premium channels) for one affordable flat fee I would go for it.