Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

ben-evans.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 324 posts

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#271

Post by snovv_crash »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #224
cletus wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-watching is an interesting space. One I've worked in actually. And yes, I agree it's not "solved". Amazon has taken a stab at this with a watch party on Twitch. I imagine you could have a private stream and do it that way maybe? Not ideal of course. It's intended for a different use case. The best options I've seen involve using sites of questionable legality plus Discord. Your observations of skew are kind of int…

On different hardware how do they synchronize the playback speed? Each device has very different processing environment, so I cant imagine it would be easy to ensure that exact of playback speed. eg maybe one is playing 30 frames per second, and the other is playing 29.85 ...

Double or drop the occasional frame I guess? Audio is easier to stretch because it is stored as frequency components already.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#272

Post by nostrademons »

kenhwang wrote: post #270
Rd6n6 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A "tech company" is one where your tech is so good that either you can offer differentiated consumer experiences that nobody else can offer(…) or people pay you to handle the tech things for them It’s a decent definition. It has some implications though Almost no companies really differentiate via tech that nobody else can offer Almost no game or app companies meet that bar. Most game companies have tech that anoth…

Within gaming, there's Unity, Unreal, Crytek, and the like which I would classify as tech, but otherwise, most gaming companies are far more creative-focused much like film.

Depends on the company. Roblox, Epic, and Wube (Factorio) I'd also classify as tech. Most of the other ones are either driven by gameplay or art, though.

There's a pattern there: Unity, Roblox, Unreal, Crytek, and Epic all build platforms and game engines used by other game developers, so again, you are what you do well enough to sell to people who don't want to deal with it.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#274

Post by ComputerGuru »

snovv_crash wrote: post #271
maerF0x0 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On different hardware how do they synchronize the playback speed? Each device has very different processing environment, so I cant imagine it would be easy to ensure that exact of playback speed. eg maybe one is playing 30 frames per second, and the other is playing 29.85 ...

Double or drop the occasional frame I guess? Audio is easier to stretch because it is stored as frequency components already.

Audio is easier to stretch but audio should also never be stretched because we are extremely perceptive to it in a way that we aren’t with our visual processing abilities.

Video should always be kept in sync with audio and not the other way around. You can freely drop or repeat video frames (within the boundaries of reason) without anyone being able to detect it in a blind test, but audio should not be messed with. This is why when syncing audio and video from different sources during production, the master clock is always the audio.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#275

Post by Jensson »

auggierose wrote: post #211
Jensson wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company I have never heard that. Car companies are mostly manufacturing, that is the major part of their organizations and what drives their decisions. They have big engineering teams, but they have way bigger teams working at factories. If you had a company just creating car designs and selling those to manufacturing companies it would be a tech company, but the curr…

Audi. Vorsprung durch Technik.

I don't doubt they were tech companies 80 years ago when things were new and creating new tech was more important. However I don't think that Google or Facebook or Microsoft will be tech companies in 50 years either, its just the nature of having a field being mostly explored and companies being in maintenance mode since there isn't much else they can do.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#276

Post by sokoloff »

ariwilson wrote: post #187
ativzzz wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, for consumers, these minor technical issues don't matter as much as the content on the platforms. Yes, Netflix works much more smoothly than HBO, but we don't choose Netflix over HBO because of the quality of the video streaming app, but for the shows we actually want to watch.

I don't think this is true; I definitely choose YouTube / Netflix over e.g. Amazon Prime just to browse for new shows as the UI/recommendations are way better. This affects my watch time significantly.

100% agree. I’m watching these over 99% of time on an Amazon FireTV device and YouTube and Netflix both have a better UI/UX than Prime video. It’s not even close.

FireTV device is an excellent value. Prime video? Well, it’s free with Prime at least…

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#277

Post by Isthatablackgsd »

skohan wrote: post #117
citizenpaul wrote: post #88

This whole thing is pointless. It is basically about clarifying the definition of a financial/MBA term. Where do you draw the line at "tech company" vs some other classification? It only matters if you need to check a box on a portfolio investment diversification. If a company came out with a fully automated oil drilling solution they are a tech company. Tech defined the company even if the majority of their business…

I think the broader point is that this term is getting less and less relevant in general. It would be like if you defined any company that transported goods by rail a “train company”. It would have seemed relevant as a classification when trains were novel, but once it becomes the norm that ceases to be the most relevant characteristic.

My biggest gripes with headline and article that they used the term with extreme ambiguity. I'm sure 50% of the world companies are classified as "tech company". Every time I see those term popping up, all the question I have is tech in what? and What is their specialty? Espically with many new entities name and it is harder to track of what they do.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#278

Post by Benji_San »

ajford wrote: post #52
soneca wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The HBOGO app used to have pretty poor tech. It would logout with no reason, forget where I was in the show, sometimes freeze requiring to close and open the app multiple times, have problems with Chromecast. Still, I wanted to see GoT

I mean, I have Paramount, Hulu, and HBO subscriptions, but I'm far more likely to fly the black flag and watch it from my Plex server instead of their apps due to how painful those apps are to use. If I was a little less honest, it would be easy to skip paying the subscription entirely. I generally use their apps now to find and try new shows, then download them to Plex once I know I like a show (so I'm not burning b…

Yeah I kind of agree, Netflix still seems to be the only streaming service that actually offers a better service than just pirating the content and watching it through Kodi or Plex. There is always some minor or major technical issue or missing feature with every other streaming service I've tried except Netflix.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#279

Post by yurishimo »

jbay808 wrote: post #129
filmgirlcw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. For the first decade plus of its existence, Netflix was a DVD by mail rental service and there, its technology was a key differentiator. You paid a subscription depending on how many DVDs you wanted to have out at a time, Netflix mailed them to you in red envelopes, and you mailed them back in the same envelope. The ingenious part was that there was a website where you entered in all of the DVDs you wanted and Ne…

My local library has had the same service for about equally long. The only difference is that instead of ordering them to my house, I order them to the nearest branch and then I walk in and pick it up whenever I feel like it. Then I drop them off a couple weeks later. No need to mess with envelopes and shipping. And it's free!

While I don't disagree that this experience exists in many places, the reality is nowhere near as convenient as you describe it. The waitlist for any movie I want to see is astronomical unless it's a decade old so by the time I get it, I might not be interested anymore. Netflix somehow had the logistics worked out that everyone could get most new movies pretty close to release which I think is why they took off in popularity.

Also, the Netflix shipping/return mechanism is arguably more convenient than even driving to the library. The envelopes were prepaid and were built in such a way that opening it uses one part of the packaging, which exposed a tape seam to seal it for return. Chuck that in any mailbox and you're good to go. Better than driving 15 minutes across town to the library to return a movie in the drop-off bin and hope it doesn't get lost and I get charged for it, forcing me to go inside so I know it was returned properly...

I want the local library version to get better, but right now it still has a ways to go in my city.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#280

Post by OneEyedRobot »

robertlagrant wrote: post #230
OneEyedRobot wrote: post #199

I'm probably wrong here, but it seems to me that storage is practically cheap enough (not quite) that Netflix could simply send out a drive with their whole library and then a membership gives you access codes. Send out a new drive per year. Do they really only have 4,000 movies in the US?

I doubt my subscription would cover the cost of that drive every year, even if I wanted to wait 12 months for new content!

Imagine how small the drive would be if it just had 'things I might ever watch'.

The size for 100% isn't even that big given a few iterations of storage tech.

I'm just blown away by how little Netflix really gives you. Given the push to internally-financed programming they've basically become a production company with streaming bolted onto the back end. Their market cap is kind of a joke.

Post reply on HN