Posted on 11/25/2010 4:24:51 AM PST by abb
In a matter of months, the movie delivery company Netflix has gone from being the fastest-growing first-class mail customer of the United States Postal Service to the biggest source of streaming Web traffic in North America during peak evening hours.
That transformation — from a mail-order business to a technology company — is revolutionizing the way millions of people watch television, but it’s also proving to be a big headache for TV providers and movie studios, which increasingly see Netflix as a competitive threat, even as they sell Netflix their content.
The dilemma for Hollywood was neatly spelled out in a Netflix announcement Monday of a new subscription service: $7.99 a month for unlimited downloads of movies and television shows, compared with $19.99 a month for a plan that allows the subscriber to have three discs out at a time, sent through the mail, plus unlimited downloads. For studios that a few years ago were selling new DVDs for $30, that represents a huge drop in profits.
“Right now, Netflix is a distribution platform, and has very little competition, but that’s changing,” said Warren N. Lieberfarb, a consultant who played a critical role in creating the DVD while at Warner Brothers.
For the first time, the company will spend more over the holidays to stream movies than to ship DVDs in its familiar red envelopes (although it is still spending more than half a billion dollars on postage this year). And that shift coincides with an ominous development for cable companies, which long controlled home entertainment: for the first time in their history, cable television subscriptions fell in the United States in the last two quarters — a trend some attribute to the rise of Netflix, which allows consumers to bypass their cable box to stream movies and shows.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My most common mail item these days is Netflix movies. It is no doubt keeping the US Postal Service afloat.
The only reason I have cable anymore is that my wife and kids like it. If it were up to me, it would be gone. 90% of it is crap. Exceptions are: FX, Comedy Channel, AMC, and Fox News. Even with shows I like, such as Dexter, I wait for the DVD to come out and watch the whole season in 2-3 days.
I could easily see in the near future that I might not want or need cable or satellite TV. What is even more amazing is that Netfliks is reducing the price for its basic streaming service and the new Roku box is about 40% cheaper than the one I purchased two years ago. This is what free market capitalism and innovation is all about. My only fear is that the government will interfere with my Internet access or add new Internet taxes.
4G networks are being built that can affordably provide the needed bandwidth wirelessly...
I’m no computer geek at all, but isn’t software development paralleling the work of bandwidth improvements?
That is to say, Flash, etc. - stuff that doesn’t require as much bandwidth to transmit as did video/audio of ten years ago?
This question is posed to the geek types here.
Unintended consequences.
NETFLIX data flow will dominate the spines of the Internet, and those data streams will be given priority over other traffic from non-pay websites.
Non-pay websites will have to PAY for higher priority, which means they will have to change to a pay website.
The days of FREE VIDEO are almost over. YOUTUBE will become a ‘paid-member’ only website soon.
All FREE VIDEO/MOVIE websites will disappear very soon.
Many already have, the ones left have had to delete most of their movie files due to RIGHTHAVEN and other legal challenges.
As long as YOU PAY.
At some point I realized netflix is a superior company being run by its founder. This made me think, hey, why not buy some netflix stock. So I looked it up and apparantly a lot of people already had my great idea! Expensive!
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=147260
Royal Wedding Promises Boom Times for Media
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/460304-FCC_Officially_Launching_Spectrum_Reclamation_Process_Nov_30.php
FCC Officially Launching Spectrum Reclamation Process Nov. 30
Will vote to change rules to allow mobile broadband use of spectrum currently allocated to broadcasters
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/coming-soon-the-twitter-news-network_b41190
Coming Soon: The Twitter News Network?
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=140025
FilmOn Slapped With Restraining Order
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/11/another-setback-for-non-profit-news.html#comments
Another setback for non-profit news
How long before the movie companies cut out the middleman and begin streaming their product themselves?
And will all those multi-screen movie theatres with their $5 popcorn go dark?
I just got a box to stream Netflix. I haven’t decided whether to pay the new 9.99 for dvd rental plus streaming or pay 7.99 for just streaming. They have a lot of stuff streaming. Not everything, but plenty.
AND TOTALLY INCORRECT.
Even if you STREAM a movie, you are actually DOWNLOADING IT.
All you have to do is find the folder where the file is kept.
I use the DIVX player for 99percent of the movies I watch ONLINE, and it has a folder where the 3 incoming files are downloaded. The instant it completes downloading (buffering the entire movie. The 'status' bar on the bottom of the DIVX player), just close your browser.
In that folder will now be the ONE DIVX file prefixed with the movie name. I.E. movienamexxxx.divx Move it to another folder, and you can play it all you want. Simple as pie.
I’m not so sure. The record companies have been trying (unsuccessfully) to stop up the hole of music piracy since the early days of the interweb thingy. Any average sixth-grader can find/download just about any song that’s ever been
recorded.
For free.
Why would video content producers be any more successful? Digital bits do not know whether they represent audio, video, text or photo pixels.
Streaming is a great way to watch tv shows season by season, for that there is a ton of good selection. Though for some reason they pulled the first 4 seasons of Lost off, have no idea why they would do that. For movies, yeah it’s a ton of stuff most people have never heard of, but look closely, there are some gems...Iron Man, Apocalypse Now (both versions), Star Trek, Casino...and a lot more. Certainly though they should start adding a lot more.
No matter what, if you are streaming, you are downloading the file to your harddrive. You may not be aware it is being done, or where the file is, but it is there.
MSNBC, CNN, NBC
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That’s how I feel. Dump them!
Our family cut cable when our kids were preschoolers. Never missed it.
Lawyers do.
Just ask the owners of LIMEWIRE.
About eight years ago there was all sorts of concern about the oversupply of dark fiber (broadband capacity).
Liberals like to use such conditions to argue that business investment should be discouraged during economic downturns. People like me argue that investment should be encouraged at all times because businesses will find ways to use that oversupply rather than add to it.
I think those who are paying cut rates for Internet will see a huge rise in rates. Some of us already pay a premium for the privilege of NOT having cable tv over our cable connection.
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