I think that's fairly well-known at this point, though I agree it should be more widely known.

I think the real secret is that Netflix discovered that their users aren't trying to watch the best movies, they're just trying to kill time. Apparently you can substitute good films for generic junk and people will keep their subscriptions.

Really, the business model for Netflix has some weird perverse incentives. They make money from monthly subscriptions. They lose money when actually streaming content to users. So the ideal user from their standpoint is one who keeps paying but never watches anything.

Thus, the company is incentivized to put out just enough good stuff that you can't miss that you don't cancel, but otherwise produce garbage you don't want.

?

In recent years, this has still not been a sure bet month to month, but over a year, 12 scores are pretty much guaranteed.

Amazon will rent you most movies for <$4, so 4 movies per month is the number for Netflix to beat, not 1.

Also, most movies I might go to a theater to see cost substantially more than $4 on amzn.

You can rent movies on many services like google, itunes, youtube, etc... But for shows, you only have the option to buy each episode, which makes no sense.

But I think that I'm a very unusual consumer in that respect. If I liked to watch TV series more then I'd be bingeing those, and that's where I think Netflix really attracts consumers, not movies. I don't think there's an economical way to do a la carte viewing of TV series on a regular basis.

And, yes, on an hourly basis they're probably comparable but renting a film now and then feels reasonable to me whereas paying per TV episode feels expensive.

With the fragmentation, streaming services start to make more sense if you're someone who likes to have the TV on as background. They make less sense if you watch a few hours of deliberately selected video a week.

Netflix rarely does good shows that are created exclusively by them. My go to example is the Witcher series. What they are amazing at though is picking up projects from small scale studios and helping them produce it. Nimona, Klaus and Arcane are some of the stuff I remember on top of my head. Wish they stick on to that, helping small scale studios reach a wider audience

Unlike netflix where I downgraded my plan to the lowest tier, there's literally nothing on it and they also keep on cancelling good tv shows. I think they should focus on serious stuff and work with more indie directors. But then again I can't blame them because they're just following the trend.

(This is part of what economics means by "markets are rational" - the irrational people go broke.)

Netflix and gyms are pretty similar here.

Maybe Netflix should add loads of learning content so people feel good about their sub.

Combining discs and streaming in one subscription provides customers with the best of both worlds. Need something to watch right now? No problem, we have an excellent streaming catalog and you're going to love Stranger Things! Want a specific movie or show, maybe Friends or The Lion King? We've got that too, it'll be in your mailbox in a couple days.

And if some customers choose to forgo either the digital or physical side of the package, it doesn't cost Netflix anything.

That would be the best of all worlds. Just scan the Redbox with your Netflix app, look at the top 1000 discs in there. And just get it.

(Again this would be better than what pirates can offer. Cheap AND easy AND good.)

You can always buy most films. It's just relatively expensive (and not instant) for a one-time watch. Of course many are available for a la carte buying/rental via streaming as well.

https://ithacareuse.org/

this afternoon and saw 5 DVD or Blu-Ray players that cost about $20. They even had a funky VCR with a USB port (to digitize movies on your computer) for $12.

That assumes you have some kind of TV set. I'd think a lot of people get their entertainment on a laptop or phone, VR headset or something like that and don't have a TV.

Only the original Xbox One had a disc drive integrated.

It’s always fascinating that people say things that are verifiably untrue. Like, really?

You can get a PS5 with a built in disc player.

Ironically one of the reasons I bought a PS3 was to play Blu Ray movies. But during Covid I ripped all my physical media and got rid of them, I only use the disc model of the PS5 to play my old PS4 games.

Source: I own all of them except for the One X.

EDIT: Definitely shows the shift to online game delivery in a way that I have not seen before.

I have an Xbox One X and there is no disc drive. I remember having an Xbox One before that did have a disc drive.

When I looked it up, the first search results are news outlets saying the Xbox Series X/S are not going to have disc drives...

Isn't there a slightly wider hole the left (other side than the Xbox log) between the top part and the black bottom part? You should be able to fit a disk there even if it's pretty hard to notice...

e.g.: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61+XhWct5lL._AC_SL1500_....

I loved greencine and physical netflix but those killed themselves, seppuku, it seemed like, a long time ago.

Were you referring to resolution instead? The picture quality of a DVD (even properly digitized) would be atrocious by modern standards (high bitrate 1080p)

I think Netflix got cocky. When Netflix separated the plans, streaming rights were cheap and Netflix's streaming catalog was growing quickly. They didn't foresee the market becoming so competitive.

Continuing to offer discs would have allowed Netflix to hedge their bets and avoid relying on rights-holders. The original content push did that too, but at a much higher cost. If keeping DVDs meant Netflix could produce a few less original shows per year, that seems worth the trade.

They saw that streaming was the future but that mailing discs would let them build a big brand early on, but they took the disc market very seriously and optimized it.

Once you're streaming the cost structure is like this: Fox or Disney or someone like that will charge them $X /month/sub but it costs $Y to create a piece of content, independent of how many subscribers you have. There is a crossover point where you have enough subscribers that it makes sense to own.

I was a die hard subscriber to the end. I would have happily paid more money per month to get access to 4k disks as well

I don't believe the person you're replying to is overstating at all, and certainly not 'considerably'.

It makes sense to me that the first thing to go is the other streaming services, as Netflix has such a strong mindshare, but their lack of content is more noticeable all the time, and I think there will be a swing back to cheaper services with at least different content, if not better.

The numbers disagree. Net income and profit margin was doing great even before password sharing crackdown.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/net-i...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/profi...

I don't follow that closely but I hadn't heard anything either way about how things were going.

Everyone decided "I can cut out the middleman and keep the money in my pocket" and they all lost hugely on that strategy.

I got free apple tv+ with an ipad I bought and I couldn't find a reason to keep it after the free trial ran out.

I roam different video services, switching every month or two. I don't have time to need all the services at once anyways.

Also, apple has the problem where they have more money than they know what do with - if they can figure out a profitable movie and tv studio then it would be an honest to god diversification.

And it appears to be working. I was telling this girl the other day about why I canceled Netflix years ago, because they frequently didn't have whatever I searched for. She insisted that "no, Netflix has everything!" So we proceeded to search for various things with her account, including the final straw that made me cancel. Netflix proceeded to not have a single thing we searched for.

Examples are: Exit to Eden, The Others, and Baccano!

How does this happen? Why do rights holders want movies killed?

Yes.

> including their talent strategy

No.

It only means they're doing one thing right: income > expenses. Beyond that, revenue tells us nothing about how they're increasing it.

That would be profit, not revenue. Still, in terms of profit they went from $25M to $4.5B.

Currently following some interesting permaculture projects. I find the type of work these people do so useful and clever really.

Netflix compensation is fucking bonkers.

Isn’t this ideal? Find out if it’s for you quickly? And if it’s not move on to something that you actually will like doing?

If you knew you were going to stay there 9 years and make a tractor trailer load of money and love the culture you’d take the offer.

If you’re not sure which is more likely and you really like the maximum upside then you should take the offer and get out in 9 months if it’s not for you.

And yes, if I knew that the average new hire at Netflix lasted 9 months, I’d still probably take it. I think I’m much better than average and I’d want to test myself at a place that is challenging to work at. If I’m good enough to get a Netflix offer I can probably get another offer in the future.

The average person should do what the average person wants but the upside of a long career at Netflix seems pretty darn high and might make an average person an above average person.

I know I don’t, having worked at places where I barely recognized the company from the ridiculous things people said about it on the internet.

Or maybe I’m the problem, wherever I go.

(The following is a tangent.)

To put it another way, using a slightly different kind of situation, I don't want BigCorp's AI watching everything I do to "serve me better", but I'm very interested in the idea of a local AI that watches everything I do and helps me be N times more efficient, while I maintain full control. I don't care if the local AI uses the same data-gathering, data analysis, etc. concepts as BigCorp's AI to accomplish the goals I want it to accomplish.

Caveats include:

- The local AI is Skinner-boxing you or similar. This isn't about the AI having conscious malicious intent; it could be a design defect. Also, a local, offline, open source video game can still be addictive.

- The risk of the system being compromised / manipulated, and all that data on you being exfiltrated.

By comparison, several years ago, I was regularly streaming Netflix content without any trouble. One day I streamed a show on the HBO app on mobile data and it ate up almost all of my month's data usage. I guess it's behind the scenes work, and not so exciting, to e.g. stream a smaller resolution for a mobile phone, but in moments like that you realise there are a substantial amount of things to think about when making such an app.

I just assumed that Netflix had different video formats on its' servers, ready to go, and when the app requested the video it also sent the screen size/resolution to get the smallest file size, that would also look good on my phone. If that was 480p then all well and good, it was fine to watch.

It was a while ago now, but IIRC the amount HBO used was pretty horrendous, like a GB for 30 mins or so of video, so I guess they just downloaded a big file and let the player on the phone handle that.

Like a say, a few years ago now so the situation may well be better with HBO now.

Changing the way Hollywood and content licensing works is trivial? https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/arts/how-netflix...

Yeah, it's not rocket science to build a streaming service using AWS or GCloud lego blocks in 2024, but remember that Netflix started streaming in 2007.

Mainly they are used for recruiting, new ideas (simpler versions get implemented), and proof of concept (if we did this really really well, what would it look like, should we spend 2 engineering years on it?)

You really cannot trust anything anyone says, especially large companies. They basically always lie and manipulate and are at a constant advantage to those of us who find dishonesty morally wrong.

I don't think they ever said they would use it necessarily either? I feel like it was obvious that it wasn't going to capture all of their actual requirements - your algorithm could be slow or expensive or difficult to adapt to new requirements or difficult to adapt to new data etc etc.

I was just an outsider, but I guess at least I learned about passive levitation.