Considering how many DVD titles are no longer available or have an infinite “wait time” at Netflix these days, I will only believe they intend to hold onto the DVD side if they start restocking at some point.
I do my browsing at IMDB.com. The trouble is that brick and mortar video stores don’t have trailers. Most movies are in my Netflix queue before they even get in the movie theater.
That doesn’t make much sense. It the mail business has a positive cash flow why sell it? I don’t see any obvious synergy where an company would buy the mail business except for the cash flow. If the Post Office was a real private business, then it might make sense for them to buy it. Maybe UPS could negotiate a special rate where it picked up and delivered the Netflix envelopes directly to the local post office?
Hard to restock if the DVD is no longer in production. I don’t think Netflix considers eBay an acceptable stocking source.
The only time I see this is when the DVD is “out of print”. DVD do wear out and get damaged and if Netflix can’t replace it then you are SOL. This is especially a problem with Disney animation, where they have limited availability windows.
I’ve never understood the netflix rage most people expressed after the price increase. Personally I’m just happy that I can watch movies and tv on my cell phone. Makes me think that all that future nonsense I grew up with at least succeeded at some level. Sure the jet packs would’ve been preferred, but you can’t always get what you want.
And I wasn’t annoyed at the whole Quickster…sorry…Qwikster thing. Yeah having two queues would’ve been a bit of a hassle, but I still liked the service and was looking forward to the addition of games. My only issue with gamefly was the lack of distribution centers causing long turnaround time. I can get a disc from netflix in 24 hours if I pick the right mailbox.
Now? I’m a little annoyed. Not enough to give up the service mind you. Future movie phone and all. Just a little irked at their lack of a plan and the lack of spine to stand up to the nattering nabobs of negativism on Facebook. Was it really necessary to bitch about Netflix on their facebook page when they announced that the Conan O’Brian documentary popped up on instant? Really?
Just pick a plan and stick with it Netflix.
Netflix stock dropped from a peak of ~$305 per share down to ~$209 between announcing the price increase and announcing the decision to split the company, a period of about two months. When Netflix announced the decision to split the company, the stock plummeted, almost literally overnight, to $128. It’s now at $108 and looks likely to keep dropping, though I expect it to stabilize eventually (probably after the board fires the CEO).
Again, it went from around $300 down to around $100. Two thirds of the stock value disappeared over two months.
That’s not just people bitching on Facebook. Investors completely lost confidence in Netflix.
Well, yeah. But I’m not making up grand scenarios about how sucky life without netflix will be or white knighting them into some company that saved us from the tyranny of hollywood video. In the 90s people did end up paying 30 or 40 dollars a month if they liked renting movies to watch at home and people thought that was a good deal. Because it was. In the 90s. Now people have had a taste of unlimited movies for 10 dollars a month and it looks to me like a lot of people have decided that much more than that is not a good deal. So either netflix, hulu, and the like will fail because they can’t deliver on that sort of promise or a way will be found to get the rights cheaply enough to make the price tenable. But every time we have a netflix thread, someone posts something about how much more money it cost to watch movies at home in the past as if that were relevant to the current streaming situations.
Because I want to pick a movie and watch it that night. While I understand I can do this with Netflix’s streaming (possibly - if it’s available on streaming, which it seems much isn’t), I can’t do it with their DVD service. I’d pick it, then have to wait until it shows up. At my mom and pop shop, they either have it or they don’t, and I can pick the DVD up and be watching it 15 minutes later. It’s all about the immediate gratification.
I’m also not much of a website browser. I use Amazon for a ton of things, but I rarely, rarely check out the “recommended products” or “you might also likes” - I go there for a specific product, type it in, and purchase it (or not). There’s no browsing. (Heck, I do most of my “browsing” here - read the “Whatcha Readin’” thread, then type the books I find interesting into Amazon to further check them out.) But there’s nothing like browsing through books or DVDs in a bricks-and-mortar store - you find things you never would have thought of, just because a cover caught your eye or whatever. I’ve never been able to replicate that with a website.
What bothered me the most is that once separated the services wouldn’t pass your ratings between one another. The more I use Netflix the better it gets at recommending really good movies that I’ve never heard of and never would have seen otherwise.
Since I tend to fill my queues differently, streaming for whatever I stumble upon, DVDs for things I already know I want to see (unless Netflix has recommended something that sounds interesting), eventually the DVD queue would assume I only like popular movies and shows and not recommend me anything off the wall while my instant queue wouldn’t recommend me DVD-only new stuff because they don’t have access to the DVD selection. I’m glad they’re keeping the two together.
I can’t imagine watching movies like that anymore. If I’m going to make a two hour commitment, I want to know what I’m getting into. You might end up watching something by Uwe Boll and claw your eyes out. 
Sort of like how everyone should have fellated Compuserve in 1992 because, hey, after 2400 baud dial-up access disappears, there will be no more internet.
Here’s the Netflix CEO’s mea culpa: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: 'We got overconfident' - Dec. 6, 2011
I was skimming it, not expecting anything exciting.
But his comparison of Netflix to Moneyball makes my blood BOIL.
What an idiotic piece of shit. This guy needs to STFU immediately.
Moneyball is about paying for content\people who will mature into fine wines later on, investing in them to begin with. And it’s about not having the money in the first place to pay big bucks. For being the George Steinbrenner of home entertainment, Reed hastings demonstrates how truly out of touch he is, in both his perception of the company and in what the consumer wants.
Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs he is not.
Moneyball is about market inefficiencies. Finding valuable things that the rest of the world undervalues. It works best for the little guys, but the big guys can use it to their advantage, as well. I guess Hastings is trying to say Netflix looks at what is watched most often, and looks for popular things that aren’t sought after by the bigger players.
In the world of DVD rentals, surely Netflix is the Yankees sized big guys on the block. In the world of entertainment content providers (which is what Netflix is for streaming) they would certainly be small market. Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and the networks (who own a majority share of Hulu) are all worth 5-20 times more than Netflix.
Right. Or in layman’s terms, what I said.
This depends on if you view them as video\movie v rentals or as “content providers”. Most view them as a rental service, a middle man, not a “content provider”. I would never compare them to the big boys, especially when the big boys are monopolies or duopolies in their own markets. People are “cutting the cord” left and right, but that doesn’t mean that people want – or view Netflix as – hbo.
I think it’s a huge mistake to go into the creating content route or to view themselves as a premiums channel.
Not really. It was close, though.
The concept of moneyball as applied to small market teams is NOT that you are looking for players that will ripen into fine wine. You are looking for “bang for the buck”.
In other words, you are willing to accept a bunch of players who will ripen into moderately priced, bargain bin wines as long as they are collectively cheap enough and get the job done. And every so often, you make an incredible find. That’s far from guaranteeing that any of them will turn into All-Stars.
Big market teams can play the same game, except they have more money to look at high priced talent, as long as the return on investment looks to be good. The Red Sox and Yankees (yeah, Steinbrenner’s team actually is a Moneyball team these days) in recent years are good examples of this principle.
Netflix’s basic philosophy, at least a few years ago, was exactly this. They found a market inefficiency and turned into a big time company. Maybe they screwed up that strategy this year, but their underlying philosophy is exactly that of trying to make their business as efficient as possible. That’s something many companies claim to do but few actually try to think of what “efficiency” actually means, compared to simply cutting costs and increasing sometimes meaningless estimates of “worker productivity”. Ditching DVDs for streaming is exactly the sort of experiment a Moneyball type might try. Their actual implementation and some of the reasoning sucked, but the philosophy behind it was at least consistent with the explanation.
I may have said this before, but the problem that Netflix has is that there are few barriers to entry in the streaming market. In other words, anyone could get into the business fairly easily and many have. But the DVD business is more complicated because Netflix already owns thousands of DVDs and has the processes in place to ship and receive them. I don’t think a potential competitor could build such a system very easily. On the other hand, the service reductions at the USPS are going to hurt the DVD-by-mail business.
Thanks, Great Antibob. You’re description of Moneyball was much better and more complete than mine. I would also add, that the practice of looking for young players through the draft who would mature (and teams could help develop) into all stars is how baseball teams rebuilt for decades. That idea isn’'t new nor especially important with what is considered Moneyball.
Netflix was fine as a middleman when it came to DVDs. But, they are forced to act as a content provider when it comes to streaming. In the beginning, Netflix didn’t have to pay an overwhelming amount for the rights to content. As time has gone by and the studios, and networks have seen what a cash cow streaming can be they have reconsidered the sweetheart deals that Netflix was able to negotiate. This left Netflix stuck having to pay larger fees, and creating their own content to differentiate themselves from competitors.
This doesn’t explain, nor does it excuse the terrible management and decisions they have made this year. I just don’t see it as that far off the mark to compare themselves to the Oakland A’s when it comes to providing streaming content.
The problem that Netflix has is that there aren’t likely to be any middle men remaining once everything moves to internet delivery, or if they are, their profits will be at the whim of the content owners.
Look at the way the book publishers managed to get Amazon and Apple to agree to agency pricing, and the other services that have been effectively pushed out of the space. If Netflix owns neither content nor display hardware, it’s going to find itself increasingly pushed out of future video delivery.
On the other hand, if they can become a content producer, then they can either try to make themselves into a sort of internet-premium channel, or they can try to cross license their stuff and get other production companies’ stuff in return.