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NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

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Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#81

Post by afterburner »

dkarl wrote: post #51
reitzensteinm wrote: post #31

Earlier 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 suspect you're vastly overestimating the hassle in using Bittorrent. But it is true that most people don't want to bother learning even the simplest things.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#82

Post by afterburner »

trunnell wrote: post #69
duck wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what I was wondering since I hadn't really seen anyone outside of the tech world use it. So with that I can see it being a competitor, but then I wonder how do you compete with something that is illegal and not really an entity?

I wonder how do you compete with [BitTorrent] Netflix competes by being more convenient than BitTorrent. BT might be free, but it doesn't deliver TV shows and movies directly to your HDTV.

It can if you buy DVRs that can run Bittorrent internally and decode a variety of codecs. Not to mention just using your computer to host the files and pass through such a device or PS3/Xbox directly to the television. Or just hooking up the computer to the TV, but of course then there is the hassle of setting it up to be convenient to control from your couch. Wireless mouse is often enough.

Again, it's not hard. But there is a small learning curve. Netflix and competitors have to keep making it easier and easier, since alternative sources will also keep getting easier to use.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#83

Post by avar »

dkarl wrote: post #51
reitzensteinm wrote: post #31

Earlier 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'm not in the U.S. so I can't spend a few bucks on Netflix. But your bad experience with BitTorrent is probably purely a function of using the wrong trackers.

I have access to some trackers where the download very rarely goes below 2MB/s, with 5-8MB/s being the average. Some of these have material like discontinued music and foreign films that I could never get where I live, at least not without significant hassle.

With this setup I can initiate a download for a foreign 720p film, go and make some tea, and it'll be there by the time I come back.

That's quality of service I can't even pay for where I live, no matter how much cash I fork out.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#84

Post by DannoHung »

Vivtek wrote: post #24

Argh, 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 watch way more stuff with Netflix than with BitTorrent because getting the stuff I want to watch on BitTorrent would be a huge hassle.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#85

Post by philwelch »

avar wrote: post #83
dkarl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm not in the U.S. so I can't spend a few bucks on Netflix. But your bad experience with BitTorrent is probably purely a function of using the wrong trackers. I have access to some trackers where the download very rarely goes below 2MB/s, with 5-8MB/s being the average. Some of these have material like discontinued music and foreign films that I could never get where I live, at least not without significant hassle.…

To get access to those trackers, you generally have to be "cool enough", or know the right people, which for me is impossibly daunting.

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#86

Post by dkarl »

philwelch wrote: post #85
avar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in the U.S. so I can't spend a few bucks on Netflix. But your bad experience with BitTorrent is probably purely a function of using the wrong trackers. I have access to some trackers where the download very rarely goes below 2MB/s, with 5-8MB/s being the average. Some of these have material like discontinued music and foreign films that I could never get where I live, at least not without significant hassle.…

To get access to those trackers, you generally have to be "cool enough", or know the right people, which for me is impossibly daunting.

Yes. Everything I found was junk; it was like Gnutella all over again. The last time I tried to download a movie torrent, it turned out to be porn of a type that I do not want on my hard drive. (That's why it was the last time.)

Re: NetFlix: America's Most Underestimated Company

#88

Post by pmichaud »

danilocampos wrote: post #63
pmichaud wrote: post #60

Earlier 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…

I don't really go for new release type movie generally, so I call shenanigans.

I was a heavy user who got movies sometimes the day after I returned the last one, which was great. Then I started getting them 3, 4, 5 days later.

They blamed USPS, even though no other mail to or from me was slow at all, so I started tracking the returned movies. They uniformly were delivered back to the warehouse just as quickly as before, but remained (via the netflix interface) unreturned for several days after that.

Normally I'd chalk that up to simple incompetence: they just weren't processing the movies very fast and/or their backend system was a piece of shit. I could buy that.

But I'd seen just how efficient they could be when they _wanted_ to be, ie before I passed the "heavy user" threshold, so I knew they were doing it deliberately.

I get the logic, I'm a heavy user, they can only send so many movies before I'm not profitable. But like I said before: don't lie to me about it.

I would've paid extra for a premium "heavy user" account if they had offered me the option, but instead they pretended USPS was magically slow JUST for netflix movies, and they permanently lost a customer.

Their loss.

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