171–180 of 206 posts
What an absolutely awful name "Qwikster". I'm still frowning in disgust.
It seems I'm in the minority who thinks this is an over the top reaction to Wall Street pressure. It was clear for a number of years now that Netflix saw streaming as the future. But cutting off the DVD business like that... it's extreme. A lot of the movies are not available for streaming. Yes, their streaming portfolio is probably still the best (and has excellent children's content, my son watches it every night)…
Why did they lose Starz? Because they are too successful, and their suppliers are nervous about Netflix. Too many subscribers = too much cost.
To reduce their size they'll need to split the two services, and let each one compete directly.
To be honest, I would love to have Netflix's problems. Growing too fast and having to pivot your business model to keep your agility? Netflix is operating like a startup. Good for them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While there may be some business sense behind it, as a customer, I don't see any benefit for me. It may make things easier for Netflix, but how does it make anything better for me as a customer? This is the second time Netflix has made an announcement about changes that were seemingly for some good reason, but left customers bewildered.
If you had to pick between DVD and streaming service, and make one of them phenomenally better than what it is now, which one would you pick? DVD, because everyone knows and loves it? Or streaming, because it's growing rapidly? You get to pick one. With the split, Netflix gets to focus entirely on streaming - make it better for the customer. Which means, more (and better) content, faster and better streaming service,…
I don't want my experience dominated by picking between one medium and another.
I want to pick from a unified comprehensive content catalog, and get the content on whatever medium is available/convenient.
I want a single unified queue which I can append and rearrange with ease, not have to maintain 2+ queues of content separated only by medium.
I want to add title X with the intent of seeing it on pristine Blu-ray, and then on a whim watching it right now when streaming rights are negotiated - _without_ having to do a deliberate search on another site ("nope, not streaming yet").
FWIW: I was at Kodak when they decided that the distribution model was more important than the customer experience. You remember Kodak? used to make film for cameras? film? nevermind. Big name in the photography business, now bulldozing five miles of disused manufacturing buildings for tax reasons.
Splitting the delivery departments was smart, realizing streaming is the winning long-term move was smart, unifying the customer-facing content selection to cover all media would be smart. If I pick a title, I want the choice of media subordinate, not dominant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
DVDs are on their way out and streaming is now in and he's putting all his efforts into the streaming business. What if Microsoft did something similar? What if the CEO in 1998 put all his efforts and attention into the Web? Results for Microsoft might have been much better.
Microsoft is perhaps the most business-savvy major tech company around. I for one am glad that we didn't have this kind of disaster back then -- Microsoft has always recognized and capitalized on its bread and butter: Windows and Office. These two are the workhorses, the crown jewels in the Microsoft empire, and almost everything else that Microsoft does is centered on strengthening the positions of these two cash co…
Not to mention the diminished role MS has with developer mindshare.
Obviously, Windows is a great cash cow and I'm not saying they should have spun it off. I'm saying a VP should have taken responsibility for it and the CEO should have focused most of his/her energy on the Web.
The elephant in the streaming office is the lack of blockbuster titles, many of which are only available through their DVD by mail business. If they're betting everything on streaming i'm guessing (hoping) that they've also figured out a solution to this problem. Otherwise, they've lost the big benefit of credibility that DVD by mail brought to their service.
Eh. I'll just use Redbox for that. Faster anyway.
Every conversation of late about Netflix streaming seems to focus on the lack or pending lack of content when the Starz deal expires. A streaming service that didn't make lack of streaming content front and center to the user experience would seem to have a better chance of succeeding, especially for new users that quickly try and build up a queue only to find that particular item they now browsing isn't available to stream. Once you separate out the everything's availability of a huge DVD catalog, perhaps user won't miss what's not there quite as much.
I also wonder if those users that care about DVDs primarily care about having access to more than just recent movies and content that will never stream via Netflix (HBO shows?) and that perhaps the future of streaming is more about more recent movies and TV shows. However, if Netflix streaming doesn't progress to the point where it has a catalog breadth like the current DVD catalog, I worry what that means for those who enjoy having access to all of that long-tail content, especially now that local DVD stores with large catalogs are pretty much non-existent.
I know there's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by current Netflix customers with established movie watching habits who will now face more inconvenience.
However, I use Netflix exclusively for the streaming, so I'm very excited about the future here. If they can sell off the Quikster (sp? dumb name) business and then use that capital for all sorts of good streaming stuff, then that's good for me.
I remember reading an interview with Hastings a long time ago where he said his vision was all about streaming content (hence the name, "Netflix" from the start, and nothing locking him down to DVDs, which he felt would someday be obsolete leaving his company with an anachronistic name). At that time, though, so many people only had dial-up that it just wasn't feasible.
It's interesting and somewhat amusing to me that the interim "send DVDs by mail" business got to be so huge and successful, but I see Hastings as finally trying his hand at his initial dream.
More power to him, I say, as a decade or two down the line, it will be streaming all the way, no doubt.
It seems I'm in the minority who thinks this is an over the top reaction to Wall Street pressure. It was clear for a number of years now that Netflix saw streaming as the future. But cutting off the DVD business like that... it's extreme. A lot of the movies are not available for streaming. Yes, their streaming portfolio is probably still the best (and has excellent children's content, my son watches it every night)…
The attack surface for other companies has just doubled If anything, that is an underestimate. I really can't understand what they are thinking. Since I am interested in both DVD and streaming, up to now I was completely locked into Netflix because of the integrated system - my "Instant" queue is just the subset of my DVD queue that is streamable. If they break that link, and I derive no gain from being BOTH a Netfli…
The quality of those services compared to Netflix.
Netflix realizes that they have to move quickly to cement their dominance in this field over the long term. If they are held back by their legacy business, they are going to die quickly. They would rather risk pissing off their biggest fans than jeopardize their stake in streaming.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you had to pick between DVD and streaming service, and make one of them phenomenally better than what it is now, which one would you pick? DVD, because everyone knows and loves it? Or streaming, because it's growing rapidly? You get to pick one. Depth of catalog is the most important feature for me. I especially like watching HBO shows without paying tons of money for cable. I also sometimes like watching really…
Did Netflix kill independent video stores? Or did Blockbuster kill them?