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Netflix's New Chapter

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251–260 of 314 posts

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#251
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of the... 'opportunity cost' of not licensing out content that otherwise would have went to Netflix, ABC, whoever. If previously Disney made Daredevil and 'sold' it to Netflix for $1m (hypothetically), but now you're holding that back to stream yourself, you've got to account for that missing $1m somehow.

No you don't. You don't normally include opportunity cost on your balance sheet.

Not to be pedantic (ok a little bit), but you don't normally include any costs on your balance sheet, but you might want to include them on your income statement.

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#252
post #48

Sort of an aside question, but the article praises Hastings ability to execute: > To say that Hastings excelled at execution is a dramatic understatement; indeed, the speed with which the company rolled out its advertising product in 2022[...] is a testament that Hastings’ imprint on the company’s ability to execute remains. Is there a place where one could read details on what made him so great at execution?

I can tell you as a former employee what I think it was. Reed was a developer, and in fact made software to make other developers more productive. He still thinks with that mindset internally. The entire culture at Netflix is built around enabling engineers to do what they think is the best thing. This in turn attracts engineers who like that kind of environment. I would gladly work with any of my former Netflix cowo…

> "we could do this a lot faster and eventually worldwide if we hitch our wagon to this new AWS thing"

Standard reminder, this was for all the non-content delivery parts of Netflix. They have always and continue to run their own CDN in-house, and don't use AWS for that part. It also took almost 8 years to fully transition to AWS: https://ayushhsinghh.medium.com/case-study-how-netflix-is-us...

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#253
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here's some advice, skip everything else, just watch Andor, it's fantastic, best Star Wars since Empire. Other stuff has been hit or miss.

My gosh, I thought Andor was just a horrific bore. I literally couldn't stay awake for it. It felt like about four episodes worth of story stretched out to 12 episodes. I feel like with all the glowing reviews, people are watching it through the lens of being Star Wars universe fans, and not judging it objectively against other content. I did enjoy the Mandalorian series because at least it had the comic relief of Gr…

That's a surprising take considering how little it intersects with the rest of the SW universe. There's no Jedis, no lightsabers maybe one brief space battle and barely any direct overlap with the films. You could come in cold without having seen anything else and still enjoy it. I thought it was outstanding, especially the pacing and suspense of the early episodes. The second half is a lot more action-packed and squeezes in both an epic heist and an emotional jailbreak sequence.

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#254
post #195
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked with several of my friends about this. EVERYONE was universally willing to pay Netflix their monthly sub when all the studios just sold their content to Netflix. NO ONE has subscribed to all of Disney+, Apple+, Paramount+, Peacock, etc. in the new everyone-built-their-own-netflix era. They're all either making do with less content or sailing the high seas mateys yo ho. In many cases they've even DROPPED N…

I don't know how big a factor this is, but note that some of those have bundling deals with other services. For people that happen to use those other services this can as a side effect greatly reduce the annoyance of the things one wants to watch being spread over different non-free services. I have Hulu as part of my Spotify subscription. I have Peacock Premium as part of Xfinity internet. I have Paramount+ as part…

For a lot of people I know their bundling deal is just sharing passwords with friends and family.

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#255
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you as a former employee what I think it was. Reed was a developer, and in fact made software to make other developers more productive. He still thinks with that mindset internally. The entire culture at Netflix is built around enabling engineers to do what they think is the best thing. This in turn attracts engineers who like that kind of environment. I would gladly work with any of my former Netflix cowo…

> "we could do this a lot faster and eventually worldwide if we hitch our wagon to this new AWS thing" Standard reminder, this was for all the non-content delivery parts of Netflix. They have always and continue to run their own CDN in-house, and don't use AWS for that part. It also took almost 8 years to fully transition to AWS: https://ayushhsinghh.medium.com/case-study-how-netflix-is-us...

That article is full of inaccuracies FYI. It took six years, not eight, and 95% of the transition was done in four years.

Also, Netflix didn't always have its own CDN. We used Level3, Limelight, and Akamai to deliver video from 2010 until about 2012/13. And content is still stored in AWS. It's all rendered there and all the original copies are stored there.

You are correct though that Netflix never delivered video bits to users via AWS, because it was cost prohibitive.

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#256
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of the... 'opportunity cost' of not licensing out content that otherwise would have went to Netflix, ABC, whoever. If previously Disney made Daredevil and 'sold' it to Netflix for $1m (hypothetically), but now you're holding that back to stream yourself, you've got to account for that missing $1m somehow.

No you don't. You don't normally include opportunity cost on your balance sheet.

You don't, however Disney was making this money before as they were directly licensing it to these services, so it's not just opportunity cost, but actual lost revenue when compared to previous years.

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#257
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm like 3 Star Wars series behind. Catching up at this point feels more like a chore than entertainment. Here let me get you caught up. Blue laser sword is good, red laser sword is bad.

Is green laser sword ecofriendly and organic?

They are marketed as an ecofriendly alternative but that is just greenwashing by the kyber crystal mining industry.

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is making money. There are lots of low budget movies with good plots that don’t make money (or not a lot of it). While at the same time, they can make the 5th sequel to some shitty comic book video and almost guarantee a few hundred million in profits. Of course movies can tank, but generally they are not stupid and the accounts have it figured out.

If you're going to spent $100 million on a movie, why settle for a boring plot and pedestrian dialog? I watched the La Brea show for a while. Lots of expensive special effects. But the dialog was just pablum. The characters each talked like they were the same person - using the same words and phrases. They behaved the same, too.

Because it makes money anyway and getting actually good people would cost more nd take longer.

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#259
post #229
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, totally off topic, but am I the only one that hears “Explore, Rescue, Rrotect” rather than “Protect” in the intro? See here at 0:40ish: https://youtu.be/mR_Ui_3Iz2o

If I can go on another tangent I would just like to recommend Octonauts. It is charming, funny and clever show. My 5 year old daughter loves it and she would like to have a Tweak costume. I can't stand many kid shows, but this one even I can love. It is incredible for me how Octonauts are not pretentious, like so many "science!" shows for kids are.

I would recommend it for children also. My kids have learned a decent amount from having watched it, unlike many other shows without any real educational content.

Re: Netflix's New Chapter

#260

Something I don't understand is why Disney and others need to have their own streaming service. Why Netflix can't sit down with Disney and merge the two streaming services. Disney is amazing at making content, so is Netflix at the moment. They could take a look at the present, their market cap, debt and so on and structure a solution that would: 1. Make Netflix the best streaming service with the best content, also b…

I think what you're describing could be a white-label Netflix. Essentially a different UI skin, branding and content library but served by Netflix's tech stack, etc. Its probably more likely any consolidation would happen with the smaller players (NBC, CBS) doing this with Netflix rather than Disney.

It's also interesting to note that while Netflix may not yet have a white label arm, others do. Vimeo pivoted from trying to compete with YouTube to being a white label streaming service and there are several "powered by Vimeo" if you look under the hood. YouTube themselves offers some "gray label" services (Google is too proud of the brand to entirely wash it from such services).

Most interesting to this particular discussion is that Disney themselves have a white label platform at this point. Disney Streaming powers Disney+ and others at Disney, started as the pure white label platform from BAMTech (which Disney acquired), has merged in some of the platform used by Hulu as well (and Hulu had some white label deals beforehand, to my understanding) and is still the white label powering things like MLB and NHL streaming services (which both used to have small amounts of ownership in BAMTech, but now Disney is sole owner).

If Netflix were to build a white label platform today, they'd already have Disney as competition.

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