I won't become a netflix customer until they stop using pop-under advertising.
Are you thinking of Hulu? When does Netflix do pop-unders?
NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
71–80 of 126 posts
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#72Argh, a truly good article marred by one thing: the assertion that BitTorrent is a competitor for NetFlix. This notion just won't die - I use BitTorrent, sure - to get stuff I can't pay for, because nobody is interested in selling it to me. But I'd much, much, much rather toss NetFlix their $9 every month to deliver what I want without the hassle of BitTorrent, and that's the canard that the entertainment industry ju…
You might have morals and/or value your time, but actually I think the article is dead on that they're competitors. A large segment of the population chooses to pirate instead of pay. If BitTorrent ceased to exist (as a technology - not the company), NetFlix would almost certainly gain some customers.
I donno -- I know some people who bittorrent as default behavior. They tend to also pay for both netflix and a fast network link.
Remember, many people technically sophisticated enough to do bittorrent are also smart enough to be lazy with their effort.
Didn't the strength of iTunes paid songs show that people's time is worth money?
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#73This is a tangential pricing-related question: Why does Netflix, which is solving some hard and interesting problems both on the technical (delivery/algorithms) as well as business side (licenses etc) only charge $9-$15 a month whereas online services like dating sites and project collaboration SaaS tools that are arguably much easier to build get away with charging anywhere from $30 to $60 a month? If pricing is abo…
Prices are always based on demand, not costs. So the difficulty of creating something is irrelevant to its price in the market.
If there is a perfect substitute for a good, competition might drive the price down. In a perfect market, the price of a perfect commodity will equal its cost (in theory), but in practice there are no perfect commodities-- not even toilet paper.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't so lucky with them. I was a good customer, but they started silently throttling my account, and they wouldn't admit to it either. It's since come out that that's exactly what they were doing. If it's too expensive to send me that many disks, fine, but don't lie to me about it.
I didn't know about this. So much for my remark on integrity. Do you know if they still do this throttling? I personally never ran into this -- I've never been more than a light-to-medium user, except in spikes. Like when I when I discovered 24 six years ago. edit: Here's something straight from the horse's mouth: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/... "I stopped my subscription to your servi…
The accusation was that if you were an exceptionally heavy user of the service, they'd start taking 2 or 3 days to send your next movie after you returned one.
That said, I'm not sure what the threshold was, because I was a very heavy user during that time and I never hit the problem. As such, whatever the threshold was, it was high.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#75I won't become a netflix customer until they stop using pop-under advertising.
are you sure it's them directly and not someone advertising for their affiliate account?
No, but that doesn't really matter to me. If netflix doesn't realize it's happening, maybe someone will notice my comment and do something about it.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#76Argh, a truly good article marred by one thing: the assertion that BitTorrent is a competitor for NetFlix. This notion just won't die - I use BitTorrent, sure - to get stuff I can't pay for, because nobody is interested in selling it to me. But I'd much, much, much rather toss NetFlix their $9 every month to deliver what I want without the hassle of BitTorrent, and that's the canard that the entertainment industry ju…
I think the article is referring to the Bittorrent company's attempt several years ago to get into bed with the Hollywood studios. The result would have presumably provided a service similar to Netflix's online offering -- i.e. not the same service you are currently getting from the Bittorrent software for free. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/search/article_display.j...
Ah - I hadn't known that. Then they shouldn't have called it a "new technology" imho, if that's what they meant.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might have morals and/or value your time, but actually I think the article is dead on that they're competitors. A large segment of the population chooses to pirate instead of pay. If BitTorrent ceased to exist (as a technology - not the company), NetFlix would almost certainly gain some customers.
Whoever prefers the hassle and crappy experience of using Bittorrent instead of spending a few bucks a month for Netflix, their money isn't worth chasing. It would be like Econolodge trying to market to the homeless population.
I agree with your comment, but it stings to think of myself as a "homeless" - these things tend not to work in Uruguay* (my home country), and even if they do, they're illegal anyways.
Being a small South American country means large corporations often ignore you (it's cheaper than trying to cater to yet another mass of hungry legislators and tiny fiefdoms)
*that means I haven't actually tried Netflix itself despite it would be good for me, but I have tried similar services like Pandora and they aren't legally allowed here.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#78I won't become a netflix customer until they stop using pop-under advertising.
What browser are you using that you still see pop-under ads?
It happens occasionally. I haven't used the same browser on the same computer every day for the past four years, and providing a matrix showing the pop-under-exploit-blocking capability of each one over that timeframe would be difficult.
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#79I won't become a netflix customer until they stop using pop-under advertising.
Are you thinking of Hulu? When does Netflix do pop-unders?
For the past several years I've observed netflix pop-unders at various points on www.reelviews.net, and possibly other sites. (see my comment about using a variety of different computers and browsers over that timeframe)
Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company
#80I won't become a netflix customer until they stop using pop-under advertising.
Doesn't happen on the Wii, PS3, Xbox, iPad, iPhone and I'm guessing not on the new apple tv either.
Right, it happens when I visit other sites on a the web with a browser that doesn't block pop-unders. I'll see a big red ad with the word "Netflix" on it.