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Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

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Re: Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

#341

Post by asdff »

eor wrote: post #133
stathibus wrote: post #10

Netflix is part of the FAANG acronym because they have all these highly paid engineers. Presumably those people have been doing something for the past 5 years in anticipation of being disrupted by Disney/HBO/etc. besides maintaining their CDN and tweaking recommendation engines, but it's not clear what - the product is more or less the same as it always was.

Based on what I've seen in their engineering blogs, they've been spending a lot of time on streamlining the production and distribution process. I guess that makes sense for a production company. But I wonder if they're getting good value for what they're spending on it. It may so much less than what they're spending on producing content that nobody's paying attention.

Anecdotally, I've heard working with netflix on the production side is not that fun. They ask a lot of you and pay a little, and you don't have creative freedom. Maybe that's the streamlining they are referring to? We will see if this helps them or hurts them by shooing what could have been good production talent for them to HBO and other competitors in town.

Re: Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

#342

Post by sschueller »

Any Swiss people in this thread?

I am curious if the new law that prevents companies from auto redirecting to a Swiss page with higher prices would require Netflix to let Swiss people purchase the subscription for example in the US where it costs less? The new law also forbids companies from blocking the use of Swiss credit cards on non Swiss sites.

Re: Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

#343

Post by gbil »

jb1991 wrote: post #72
gbil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Disney+ covers all of .. Europe.. nope, not available in my country and it is clear from their list too: https://help.disneyplus.com/csp?id=csp_article_content&sys_k...

I was including those countries where it has been announced it will be launching soon, so perhaps you are in one of those.

I’m pretty sure there is no such announcement, if you can point to it I’d appreciate it

Re: Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

#345

Post by greg7gkb »

discardable_dan wrote: post #2

I said this again recently, but it's worth repeating: Netflix is on the very fast downward slope. Their catalog is wilting, the space is heating up with well-established competitors moving in and serving the precise content that Netflix originally built their brand on, and their efforts to fund a new catalog with new IP (and taking ownership of old IP) is destroying the business model that made them so appealing in t…

> Netflix is on the very fast downward slope

I don't think the data is proving this out at all. Streaming will probably be a winner-take-most market and Netflix is on track to remain the leader.

We'll see what total 2021 subscriber growth was on Thursday, but estimates for Q4 are still around a net addition of 8 million subscribers. Compare this with Disney Plus growth in the same period of 2 million subscribers and I think the results are quite favorable.

If you pay attention to the details, such as in earnings calls, executives have reported that average subscriber watch time has only been increasing over the past few quarters. (Also see refs such as: https://backlinko.com/netflix-users#time-spent-with-netflix)

Keeping in mind that Covid has slowed production of content, in 2021 Netflix still managed to create the two most watched movies _ever_ on the platform (Red Notice, Don't Look Up). There are follow-up seasons launching for at least three of their strongest series, including Witcher (released tail end of 2021), Bridgerton, and Stranger Things. Plus the regular spikes of culturally relevant content such as Squid Games, Cheer, etc. which now happen fairly often.

> is destroying the business model that made them so appealing in the first place

I'm not sure how you are inferring that the business model has been destroyed here. It's certainly evolving over time but the promise has always been 'pay us a monthly subscription and we'll give you lots of things to watch'. I don't see how that has changed meaningfully or negatively.

Netflix has had naysayers at every stage of its growth. The landscape is always changing but I believe the critical idea is that Netflix leads in streaming and this has only strengthened over time. Total subscribers, revenue per user, and watch hours per account are all drifting up, and I fail to see how that represents a downward slope.

Re: Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

#346

Post by asdff »

rhino369 wrote: post #300
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, youtube then wonders why people use adblocks, and publishers wonder why people are starting to pirate again.

Nobody wonders why people don't want ads and want cheaper content. But these shows everyone watches cost a lot of money.

They don't have to cost a lot of money though. I've heard its getting to the points where its cheaper to shoot practical special effects like miniatures again than it is to contract out CGI work.

Re: Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

#348

Post by andrepd »

chollida1 wrote: post #315
ericmay wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren't Apple's shows (and movies?) appealing to you? If you dropped them on HBO I wouldn't know the difference. There are lots of different genres, great actors, and compelling stories. We have Netflix (via T-Mobile), Hulu, Prime, HBO, Disney+ and Apple TV. Some of these (Disney/Hulu) are from family or friends. WE only pay for Prime (probably the lowest quality of all of these) and Apple TV (because of Apple One…

> Why aren't Apple's shows (and movies?) appealing to you? What actual content do they have? I've seen a Beastie boys doc, Ted Lasso and The morning show * edited from Newsroom when my error was pointed out. That's a month's worth of content. What else do they have to justify continuing a subscription? Disney has more content with just the Simpson's episodes alone. Add on top of that the entire Marvel catalog, the en…

Do they have extra features? The kind of stuff that used to come on DVDs?

Re: Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

#349

Post by rhino369 »

asdff wrote: post #346
rhino369 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wonders why people don't want ads and want cheaper content. But these shows everyone watches cost a lot of money.

They don't have to cost a lot of money though. I've heard its getting to the points where its cheaper to shoot practical special effects like miniatures again than it is to contract out CGI work.

There are networks that operate on low budgets. But Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Disney, etc. aren't spending hundreds of millions of shows out of generosity to artists.

Re: Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable

#350

Post by praseodym »

nirvdrum wrote: post #286
pil4rin wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the compression change for OLED vs standard LCD etc? I guess it could be generally bad but only noticeable on a OLED?

OLEDs can display true black whereas standard LCDs cannot. If the black regions are compressed and blacks become something close to black, but not quite, it looks bad on an OLED as that region is illuminated. Netflix appears to compress blacks very heavily, so you end up with large rectangles of slightly different dark shades, none of which are really black. I'm not an expert on panel technology, but I think because…

I've also seen this issue on regular LCD TVs with HD streams. It can get really pronounced in scenes with slow camera movement where a static dark background turns into a blocky, jumpy mess of compression artifacts.
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