The thing is, like you said, the technology has changed. I want shows on my current setup. I am willing to pay more for more content. One thing I thought was very interesting is Apple removing TV show rentals. I never purchase movies or TV shows. I like to rent them, watch them once and I usually don't want to watch them again. If I do, I will rent it again.

Why can't content providers understand this? Netflix and Hulu need to start creating their own content, which I know they are both working towards.

One semi-related note: AMC is ending Breaking Bad next season because of Madmen sucking up the budget - Netflix and Hulu: go buy that show! I would gladly pay for a show-specific season pass just to watch Breaking Bad.

Thankfully, that's not going to happen. AMC tried cutting BrBa back to only 6 episodes next season. But Sony owns the rights to the show, so they shopped it around. AMC caved. For all the press Mad Men gets, Breaking Bad has ~2x the viewers per episode, and Walking Dead (which had it's budget cut due to Mad Men's cost) gets about ~2.5x the viewers.

[Edit: Removed my snarky comment about AMC's management.]

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.printFrie...

http://main.stylelist.com/2010/08/05/dove-mad-men-commercial...

Very glad it is coming back for a second season.

I actually just purchased a Roku the other day and connected it to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Prior to that I was using my Xbox for these services (not Amazon). Roku is pretty cool but very buggy and slow to load. I am not as impressed as I thought I would be.

Of course, the Roku also does Hulu and Pandora, and I have a second one upstairs on the non-SD tv. From what I've gathered the Apple TV 2 doesn't play nice on SD.

Roku 2 has access to a lot more content, but the experience of surfing channels is kind of fragmented. The included Angry Birds game and motion remote rock tho!

I have all the users that upload old Formula 1, so I can watch old races whenever I want.

Democracy Now also has it's own Roku channel, as do many many other things like Ted that you might not have thought of. It's worth spending some time on Google searching this stuff out.

I'd say I spend more time watching YouTube, NetFlix and HULU+ on the Roku than any other consumption mechanism.

Local news on OTA HD follows behind.

One slightly sad note, I only have the base Roku, and it's quite slow (maybe buffering), so my 2 year old is now utterly tolerant of loading bars, and will watch the loading bar, since she knows that content will follow. Her absolutely favorite thing on TV, though she doesn't watch much (seriously), is the mime segment on Nihongo Quick Lesson, NHK's little Japanese-lessons show that runs about 2:15pm, right after her lunch. I guess really, it's not much different to me as a kid waiting for the TV to warm up and show a picture...

I'm not sure what sites you're using, but if you use a scene-only torrent tracker, the only releases you'll see are XviD for SD and x264 for HD, which never give me any problems. And one of the fundamental purposes of the scene is to eliminate duplicates - one valid release per movie/TV show episode.

If you want to spend your time reading scene notices and follow along with the endless pissing contests between the different release groups, that's fine. But if you just want to consume the content, like I do, it's pretty hard to find a better all-encompassing, no-bullshit source than the scene. With my 20 mbit connection, I can have an HD TV show ready to go in <10 mins and a movie in <30.

I had no idea there was any drama about who provided what content in that scene, but I suppose that's one more reason to welcome legitimate online video sources.

It's called The Scene[0], and yes, there are humongous drama queens in some of the biggest release groups.

> but I suppose that's one more reason to welcome legitimate online video sources.

Not really, since, as I said above, it has no effect on the end consumers of said media.

0: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Warez_scene

Starz isn't turning it's back on the internet, Starz realizes the internet is where it's financial future lies and so it wants more money from the internet. And it's betting that it can take Netflix for more then Netflix wants to pony up today.

And maybe Netflix will pay a higher price to keep that content or maybe they can get by without it (see my link to Reed Hastings' comments). But even so this pattern is going to repeat over and over with every other media deal Netflix has as internet tv mainstreams and cash rich Amazon, Apple and friends bid up the price of net based content deals.

Only a small fraction of Netflix subscribers are cord cutters. They will undoubtedly see a benefit (short term) of this move. Long term internet TV is going to be a lot like cable TV is today. There won't be aggregator services. Starz will have it's own "app" on all of these boxes that you subscribe to outside of Netflix. NBC will probably have their own as well. CBS will be one of the last holdouts, their audience is old enough that the internet is having a softer affect.

Us early adopters have had it really good for the last few years, surely you didn't think it was going to continue? Surely you didn't think you'd be getting a large and continually growing catalog of movies (many of which are fairly recent) for only $8 a month forever? Like it or not but businesses like Starz hold all of the cards.

What they might be thinking is to start an online VoD service themselves, they could offer it as a bonus to cable subscribers as a way of enticing subscribers.

Netflix, and even companies like STARZ, may have issue when internet TVs take over completely and all studios/channels can easily setup their own 'channel' to stream content rather than having to join services that have a foothold on consoles, devices and TVs currently. The middle man is getting worked out of many markets. Why wouldn't the movie companies that license to STARZ want to collect from all that content? STARZ may just have killed themselves off.

Maybe they are right. Maybe they are wrong. My opinion is that they have the stronger position. I think Starz content will be back on Netflix when either the timing is better for them or the get better terms from Netflix.

Regarding S3, S3 is not a CDN.

To your point about disintermediation, it's a good question. A direct to consumer play by the content owners would cut out Starz as well as Netflix. The last time the studios did that, it didn't end so well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount_Pictures#1941.E2.80.9....

I can think of a couple good reasons it wouldn't work out today, either. I'd predict that the business model of a content silo would be less profitable than the current system. Studios make more money when they have multiple distribution channels; distributing their own goods would give rise to conflicting incentives. Also, you need the DNA of a software company to compete in the streaming space. Studios are built to make movies; Netflix (and Amazon) are built to make software, and it's software that powers streaming. Even if that software is almost invisible.

Ultimately, the same Internet that will kill the cable companies will also kill Netflix. (I have more confidence in Netflix to reinvent itself when the time comes, of course, since you've already done it once.)

Regarding the game business, it's not a good comparison. Selling games is like the DVD business: games are produced at a fixed cost and sold at nearly zero marginal cost. This is true of games sold on disc as well as games sold online through Steam.

But this is not how the movie streaming business works. Content is licensed, not sold. It's licensed to a single buyer for a fixed window of time. After that, it's licensed to someone else. This is why HBO, AMC, and Netflix will never be showing the same movie at the same time.

This is a profit maximization strategy by the studios. I doubt that major studios would make more profit with a direct to consumer model, at least not with one that would replace the windows in which Netflix typically buys content. It could potentially work for new releases, though. I'll leave the exact reasons why as an exercise to the reader.

I hope that Netflix's long term business model doesn't depend on the answer to that question being "No, that's not in their DNA."

It's nice that so many websites offer some kind of streaming video, but the friction of moving from site to site, each with their own navigation and search functions of varying quality, seems like as much trouble to most consumers as getting up and walking across the room to change channels on their TV.

Netflix has done a good job in aggregating content, although I don't believe they have a format and business model that is sustainable into the next decade.

In contrast there's itunes, where in theory I can watch movies that aren't on Netflix. But I don't. I'm not buying an apple TV when my TV is already overloaded with input. And because I can't watch it on my TV, I've never bothered to figure out how to do it on my Mac or my iPad. I have watched plenty of Netflix on my Mac though. Unfortunately, a new release movie for $9.99 is just not that much better than an old movie included in my monthly fee. $9.99 to rent a movie? Fuck. No.

Less space than a Nomad, no wireless. Lame.

That deck isn't just aspirational, it's how the company actually runs.

So the answer is that Netflix is not for everyone. High performers and those who can take smart risks tend to like it. Those who prefer lots of process or are more risk averse tend not to.

Oh, I think they do get it. This will start happening soon with all the content providers. They saw how Apple monopolized the music business, and now they want to avoid the same fate with Netflix. This is basically a bunch of posturing in order to bend Netflix over a table during contract negotiations with the major networks and channels.

Having worked in Hollywood before, I would not be surprised whatsoever if the heads of all the networks got together one week in a boardroom, hashed out their Netflix bargaining strategy, and agreed on a tactical plan. Hell, the industry is so consolidated that the same two or three people basically run every network out there.

They might be annoying. They might not give a good goddamn what's best for the consumer. But they're not stupid. (Or at least not as stupid as the music industry execs were).

That said, I wish they'd invest more money, time, and effort into building or supporting Netflix competitors, rather than stifling the Netflix business model altogether. I could live with a world in which I had to pick between Netflix and a handful of others like it. But I would probably tear my hair out in a world with just a content-crippled Netflix and no viable substitutes.

You think? I do wonder about the economics though. $300M vs what? People with content aren't married to a distribution partner, and they certainly aren't married to one who can't deliver eyeballs. So come the next NAB show in Vegas it will be an interesting discussion Netflix has with its potential partners.

The next HUGE disruption will be the first team to put together a streaming 24hr news channel. Think about it, something like Google+ for news, where you get notified when there is actually new information about a news story you are following, and you can go back and see that story. Or you open the 'portal' and it shows you the top 5 news stories being covered in each segment, then as you watch them they drop off to be replaced by stories lower in the list, only to re-appear if they have new data. I can't wait, but nobody has done a Ted Turner yet. Hard to kick off since it violates a lot of current practices in the news business, but it will come.

It is really a historic time, this realignment which allows 'pure' information businesses. As folks who know me are aware I find economics of information to be pretty cool.

But maybe this will change in the future. For now, text mode is much less biased.

If I could have someone who I could say "what's new?" and have them tell me, knowing what they have already told me, so that I could actually just get what was new. I'd really really appreciate that and leave my car radio in aux-in mode 24/7 :-)

(as an example)

There is still so much room in this space, and Netflix is more vulnerable than they look. No matter what set-top box you buy (e.g, Roku, Apple TV) or software you use (e.g., Boxee, Clicker), something important is left out. Please, somebody, make something solid.

If you want to set up Boxee to plug in to your favorite trackers, you can have this right now, but no one can offer it out of the box because the content owners don't want them to do it, and our law allows the content owner to dictate that.

Then someone had better make an illegal application that does all this in a very attractive & easy-to-use way, because that seems to be the only way to get the companies off their asses and in action.

When the NFL gets their act together and I can get nfl.tv the way I can get mlb.tv, I'm gone from directv and just getting everything via the net.

[1]http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/08/17/directv-and-playst...

What torrent sites have you ben using? I use tvtorrents, demonoid and thepiratebay, and they are great. "Billion codecs"?! my media player (totem on linux) can play them all, I don't know what codecs they are in. I never notice anything about groups fighting, there's always a file there, sometimes more than one. Doesn't matter to me if there's > 1 file. "Sketchy sites" might apply if you're using windows, which is insecure, but I use Linux and it's fine.

IME torrent sites are some of the best (and often only) ways to get lots of music, tv and film.

What media players can't play every single format?

My childish dream: Apple, Google, and MS combine efforts to create their own production companies with content available on all platforms. Hire away all the talent and we return to 70's style filmmaking and TV shows where the studios had less control. The big three have always treated this part of this business as break-even so the prices will be cheaper.

1. Take any crappy MMO going down the tubes.

2. Hack in a frontend for Kinect and a higher quality text to speech ala Xtranormal

3. Release it as Blizzard Fantasy Studio and Profit.