Latest Netflix Selection?

[Geoff]

Streaming video over WiFi often causes problems. If it's at all practical, it's always better to use copper. If you're using WiFi, at least make sure everything is the newer 'n' stuff. 'g' home routers can drop a lot of packets.

 

[Geoff]

I watched "Cashback" last night on Netflix streaming video. I really liked it.

 

[riverc0il]

From Comcast's perspective, Netflix is profiting from the infrastructure Comcast has put in place and maintains.

What a bunch of BS. By that measure, every company on the internet is profiting on Comcast's back when a user of Comcast service buys stuff online (or even browses a page using Google AdSense). Phone companies never complained that their customers were abusing their services when they called 800 telephone numbers to do mail order over the phone before the internet, right? Same thing here....

 

[Geoff]

What a bunch of BS. By that measure, every company on the internet is profiting on Comcast's back when a user of Comcast service buys stuff online (or even browses a page using Google AdSense). Phone companies never complained that their customers were abusing their services when they called 800 telephone numbers to do mail order over the phone before the internet, right? Same thing here....

Comcast has to give their customers a compelling reason to take their On Demand video product rather than simply stream Netflix over the top.

The Comcast free On Demand HD selections are really limited. The quality of the video feed is much better than Netflix but they simply don't offer enough content.

If I could stream sports over the internet (Red Sox and Patriots), I'd ditch the video part of Comcast completely.

 

[riverc0il]

If I could stream sports over the internet (Red Sox and Patriots), I'd ditch the video part of Comcast completely.

I CAN NOT WAIT until that day comes. I ditched television/cable eight years ago. Netflix has been great but I still need to go out to bars to catch games. I'd love to buy, say, an online season pass to watch all the Bruins games online. I'd pay good money for that. I'd pay more than what they get for Center Ice just for the Bs only.

 

[Geoff]

I just mailed back 3 movies yesterday. I'm now really annoyed that Netflix delays any "good" new movie release for 30 days. I'd like to be able to watch a DVD on release day #1 and be able to buy it while it's on sale if I want it in my collection. That saves an awful lot of buying mistakes.

My Panasonic Blu Ray player just auto-updated itsself. I can now stream Walmart's Vudu and Amazon movies. If you want to watch high def, Vudu is really expensive. I'm better off waiting until I can pick up the Blu Ray versions when they get cheap 6 months after release. I might stream my free trial offer movie just to try it out but $5.00 for a 24 hour HD rental is rediculous. I've purchased some DVDs and Blu Ray movies recently on Amazon and they seem to include the streaming video feed of the movie for free. I'll have to check that out, too.

My most recent Netflix streaming movie:
Cherry 2000 - A post-apocalyptic movie where some guy gets his really hot humanoid robot sex toy wet and fries it. He hires Melanie Griffith as a female Mel Gibson Road Warrior character to get him a replacement out in the badlands that are supposedly in the desert east of LA. It's a really bad B movie but still fun to watch.

 

[legalskier]

"The Disappearance of Alice Creed," starring the lovely Gemma Arterton. With only 3 characters this movie has more suspenseful twists and turns you can imagine.

"Owning Mahowny," starring the brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman who "brings fresh depth and tortured humanity to his portrayal of a [bank loan officer] who helplessly feeds his pathological need to gamble with millions in embezzled bank money that he can't afford to lose" (amazon).

 

[riverc0il]

I just mailed back 3 movies yesterday. I'm now really annoyed that Netflix delays any "good" new movie release for 30 days. I'd like to be able to watch a DVD on release day #1 and be able to buy it while it's on sale if I want it in my collection. That saves an awful lot of buying mistakes.

As I understand it, this is not a Netflix decision but rather it was forced on them by the movie studios that want to sell DVDs. They make money off your mistakes which you are less likely to make if you don't have to wait 30 days.

I don't have TV but saw a Blockbuster ad while at Thanksgiving dinner. Interesting that they are fighting back against Netflix by promoting not having to wait 30 days. Only problem is you have to drive 30 minutes to find the nearest Blockbuster kiosk or store.

It always hurts to see a desperate company trying to stay alive by attacking "the other guy" instead of innovating and coming up with something better.

 

[Geoff]

As I understand it, this is not a Netflix decision but rather it was forced on them by the movie studios that want to sell DVDs. They make money off your mistakes which you are less likely to make if you don't have to wait 30 days.

I imagine the true story is that the studios offered Netflix much better pricing if they held off for 30 days with blockbuster movies. They can't refuse to sell DVDs to somebody.

 

[severine]

I imagine the true story is that the studios offered Netflix much better pricing if they held off for 30 days with blockbuster movies. They can't refuse to sell DVDs to somebody.

Redbox has the same limitations.

 

[mondeo]

That infrastructure is paid for by it's subscribers. Lots of companies make money over the internet, should they all be paying fees to the ISPs??

The ISPs Provide the Service of the Internet, why shouldn't they be allowed to charge what they want? It's far from a monopoly, especially once 4G service becomes more widespread and people can start dropping home internet connections for a single mobile connection. Both sides of a telephone call get charged, I pay UPS to ship but they have to pay usage charges in the form of gas taxes, highway tolls, airport fees, etc. It's not unprecedented to charge both sides of a transaction for using a third party's assets.

Again, I'm not on either side here. It's just easy for Netflix or Google to point the finger at Big Telecom and say they're evil, you should do things exactly the way we want. In the end it doesn't matter much to the consumer, after the pricing inefficiencies settle out you'll just end up paying, on average, more to Netflix and less to Comcast.

 

[mondeo]

If I could stream sports over the internet (Red Sox and Patriots), I'd ditch the video part of Comcast completely.

The NHL has an online parallel to CenterIce, where if you pay the ridiculous amount (~$150 for the season) you can access most, if not all, of the CenterIce carried games through a streaming feed. I'd think the same would be true for the MLB package, NFL might be a little different.

But you can't just buy a package for a single team. I don't care about the rest of the NHL, but I'm not going to pay $150 to watch Sabres games. $50 for a single team for the season would be a no-brainer for me, but that eliminates the package pricing model that all the TV networks love and is why the content available on TV won't be fully available online any time soon.

 

[Geoff]

It's far from a monopoly, especially once 4G service becomes more widespread and people can start dropping home internet connections for a single mobile connection.

You're not going to get all-you-can-eat 4G data plans since the radio spectrum is so scarse. HD Video over the cellular network at 3 to 5 megabit/second is going to be expensive if you use it all the time.


In other related news:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscent...mcast_demands_fees_for_web_movie_viewing.html

Comcast has demanded that broadband backbone provider Level 3 Communications pay it a recurring fee for delivering video traffic to Comcast customers, Level 3 said Monday.

The Comcast decision violates network neutrality principles that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved in 2005, Level 3 said. Comcast successfully challenged the FCC's enforcement of the net neutrality principles when, earlier this year, a U.S. appeals court threw out its ruling against the broadband provider slowing peer-to-peer traffic on its network.

It's unclear why Comcast would seek to charge Level 3 for the activities of its own broadband customers. Level 3 announced Nov. 11 that it would be the primary delivery partner for streaming video service from Netflix.

Comcast informed Level 3 on Nov. 19 that it would begin charging the backbone provider for transmitting online movies and other content to Comcast customers, Thomas Stortz, Level 3's chief legal officer, said in a statement.

A week ago, "after being informed by Comcast that its demand for payment was 'take it or leave it,' Level 3 agreed to the terms, under protest, in order to ensure customers did not experience any disruptions," Stortz said in the statement.

A Comcast spokeswoman said late Monday she was looking into the Level 3 complaints. She didn't have an immediate comment.

The timing of Comcast's actions are curious, given rumors that the FCC plans to act on formal net neutrality rules during its Dec. 21 meeting, said Matthew Wood, associate director at the Media Access Project (MAP), a communications policy group favoring stronger net neutrality rules.

"That is exactly the kind of thing that we're trying to prevent from happening, some sort of paid prioritization or payment for the privilege of terminating your traffic with a particular ISP's customers," Wood said. "The type of thing they're describing ... is exactly the reason that we need to have rules in place."

Opponents of stronger net neutrality rules have often suggested that there have been few examples of broadband providers selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic. "The problems seem to keep cropping up without us doing much stirring to find them," Wood said.

Comcast's efforts to collect recurring fees from Level 3 go "well beyond" filtering or prioritizing Web traffic, Stortz said. "With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast's subscribers at all, unless Comcast's unilaterally determined toll is paid -- even though Comcast's subscribers requested the content," he said. "With this action, Comcast demonstrates the risk of a 'closed' Internet, where a retail broadband Internet access provider decides whether and how their subscribers interact with content."

Level 3 will continue to work with Comcast to solve the issue, Stortz said. But the company does not want a special deal not available to other backbone providers, he added.

Also on Monday, modem manufacturer Zoom Telephonics filed a complaint against Comcast with the FCC. Zoom complained that Comcast is requiring an "unreasonable, irrelevant, time-consuming and costly" process before independent modem makers can be certified for use on Comcast's broadband network.

The certification program is a violation of the FCC's net neutrality principles, alleged Zoom, MAP and other net neutrality advocates.

 

[mondeo]

You're not going to get all-you-can-eat 4G data plans since the radio spectrum is so scarse. HD Video over the cellular network at 3 to 5 megabit/second is going to be expensive if you use it all the time.

Not sure how involved with those systems you are, but I'll take your word for it. Still, the bandwith capabilities of 4G open up some possibilites. I bet some interesting usage models will crop up (queue large downloads for off-peak use, then store to use later?) that will at least put some pressure on the traditional ISP models, if not be complete game changers.

 

[riverc0il]

They can't refuse to sell DVDs to somebody.

Sure they can. What law says they can't set the terms of sale?

 

[Geoff]

Not sure how involved with those systems you are, but I'll take your word for it. Still, the bandwith capabilities of 4G open up some possibilites. I bet some interesting usage models will crop up (queue large downloads for off-peak use, then store to use later?) that will at least put some pressure on the traditional ISP models, if not be complete game changers.

I did a lot of work on 4G in my previous life. I did a lot of the WiMax standards work. That's the technology Clearwire (Sprint) is using. I also did a lot of LTE system engineering. I have quite a few Ericsson buddies who are doing the Verizon deployment so I have a pretty good handle on where things are today.

Until you lower the power and dramatically increase the number of towers, the shared radio bandwidth is always going to be a very limited resource. It will take many years to do that. Deploying a new cell phone tower is a massive permitting battle and a lot of the tower sites are very expensive. I did a lot of work on strand-mounted transmitters that pulled data and power off the coaxial cable to put the cable tv companies in the 'tower farm' business. Anywhere you have a phone pole, you can have a 4G cellular transceiver. You can't put it on the phone pole since the cable company doesn't own it but you can put it on the coaxial wire strand between phone poles.

 

[Geoff]

Sure they can. What law says they can't set the terms of sale?

Anybody can buy a DVD. It's two tier distribution. The court challenge about renting DVDs happened many years ago. Anybody can rent their DVDs. This is all about Netflix getting better pricing for delaying best selling movies by 30 days.

 

[severine]

Anybody can buy a DVD. It's two tier distribution. The court challenge about renting DVDs happened many years ago. Anybody can rent their DVDs. This is all about Netflix getting better pricing for delaying best selling movies by 30 days.

It's not just Netflix! Like I said before, Redbox is also limited.

Wouldn't this be similar to buying software for personal use versus getting a licensing agreement to put it on every machine in your 50-person office? Different rules depending on the distribution...

Aren't on-demand movies restricted, too? I don't have extended cable but I seem to recall that from when I lived with my parents--they usually weren't available at the same time that movies went on sale.

 

[Geoff]

It's not just Netflix! Like I said before, Redbox is also limited.

Wouldn't this be similar to buying software for personal use versus getting a licensing agreement to put it on every machine in your 50-person office? Different rules depending on the distribution...

Aren't on-demand movies restricted, too? I don't have extended cable but I seem to recall that from when I lived with my parents--they usually weren't available at the same time that movies went on sale.

I can watch movies in HD IP streaming video on Walmart's Vudu the same day they are released on DVD/Blu Ray.

Anybody in the world can go to Best Buy, purchase a stack of new releases, and stock a vending machine with them. That was tested in court many years ago and is why companies like (formerly) Blockbuster and Netflix exist. Initially, video rental companies got sued by the content companies to force people to actually buy private copies of media.

 

[riverc0il]

I can watch movies in HD IP streaming video on Walmart's Vudu the same day they are released on DVD/Blu Ray.

Aren't these services pay per play? I don't see how they are equivalent to a rental service. It is a difference business model and likely subject to different terms with the movie studios that license their content for digital distribution.

Why would Netlix voluntary hold back releases for the first month? So Blockbuster can clean their clocks via local distribution? Any cost savings, as you suggest, would be lost in potentially alienating customers (such as yourself) that care very much about watching movies as soon as they are released. It just doesn't make sense from a business perspective to reduce services and allow your competition to gain an advantage.