The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: pmcd9 on September 28, 2011, 12:02:41 am
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I think that Netflix has tired of being successful. They seem hell bent on killing the goose that laid the golden egg. I was thinking about dumping them before this bs. Can anyone suggest an alternative?
Dear Paul,
I messed up. I owe you an explanation.
It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.
For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn't make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.
So here is what we are doing and why.
Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.
I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.
So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.
It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.
Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.
There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.
For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.
I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.
Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.
Respectfully yours,
-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix
p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments.
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blockbuster?
amazon on demand?
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Books?
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blockbuster?
amazon on demand?
I don't know, I'm asking you.
Books?
Oh, a wiseguy. I have been reading lots of books I'll have you know. Comic books count, right?
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I buy a lot more books now that I can get them immediately on my Kindle. And the Tech Staff watches a lot more movies now that he has discovered Netflix Streaming. We are going to cancel the mail service when they split, because I can live without the thing where I get a disc in the mail and it sits around for a couple of months before I watch it. We do still have a Blockbuster in the neighborhood for things that aren't available for streaming. I wonder if their business will get better now or if we are an exception.
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Their DVD service is still viable because so much is still unavailable on streaming. I don't know why this is. If you could obtain their entire library via streaming I would cancel the DVD service. And the Blockbuster up the street is no substitution. They do NOT have the movies I want to see. But it's probably a good solution for someone like you who hardly watches any movies.
I don't like the price increase, but I would support it if they bulked up their instant library. Just a guess, but of all the items they have available I'd say that only about 15-20 percent is available streaming. Do the other services have such huge gaps in their streaming library?
I don't even know if this is Netflix fault. But as the industry leader in this type of service they should be leading the way to solving this basic problem. And I'm not seeing it as that being the case.
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I've looked into the other services, and even after the price increase, Netflix is absolutely the most content for the money, based on the shows I want to watch. But I also don't watch many movies, I mainly stream TV shows, and usually older ones at that. Netflix really seems to cater to nerds -- lots of sci-fi and documentaries -- which suits me fine. But I've looked into Amazon VOD (since we have prime) and they don't have as much of the stuff I want to watch as Netflix. They have very little, in fact, that isn't duplicated on Netflix, and they don't (yet) stream to my xBox, so they're of little use to me.
We seriously considered Hulu Plus -- we got a free trial and everything -- but we'd basically be paying $8/mo for 30 Rock, which we do get (just barely) over our antenna, but the picture is pretty bad. And last season, Netflix started adding 30 Rock episodes to streaming 3 days after they aired on NBC, so we were able to keep up with it that way if we missed it on broadcast.
I'm irritated enough about the queues not being integrated that I'll probably drop DVD services, though the game rental portion does give me pause. But we do like Wombat, movies sit around here for ages when they do come, so I'm thinking RedBox is the better option, on the rare occasion we do want to rent something. And, of course, we can rent movies through Zune on the xBox for a few bucks a pop, and we don't even have to get off the couch for that, so now that I think about it, screw RedBox, we'll probably just do that. Bigger selection anyway.
But yeah, physical media....ppphhhhhhhhhhhhttttttttttt. Who needs it*.
*Not applicable to old, dusty books
P.S.: How much you wanna bet Quickster gets sold off within a year?
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When I logged into Amazon today there was a long message about a whole bunch of new stuff they'd just gotten rights to on their streaming service.
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I will have to re-evaluate this, then.
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I read a guy somewhere explaining that this split will be really good for their streaming service, because now they can negotiate contracts with the studios separately from the physical media side. I forget the whole reasoning, and conveniently cannot find the reddit post.
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Netflix doesn't like the profit margin on the physical DVD thing and is trying to figure out a way to kill it without admitting that they did it on purpose.
Making it look like a massive miscalculation instead of a purposeful tactic is an attempt to piss off less of their customer base along the way to killing the act of actually mailing DVDs.
There is no other logical conclusion I can wrap my mind around.
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Just posting because I want this to show up later but I'm not even going to read this now.
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I'm sticking with Amazon. I'm paying for Prime anyway so I might as well use their streaming service through my Blu-Ray player. If it ever integrates with Tivo, all the better.
I read the same thing tI did. Apparently studios were realizing nobody buys DVDs and were strong-arming Netflix, trying to delay things coming out until well after the DVDs' sell dates. Doing things like "if you want this movie on streaming you have to carry the rental-only DVD with no special features. You get the DVD 3 months after it's on sale and the stream 2 months after that. Otherwise no deal." Because legally, Netflix could just buy the real DVDs wholesale and rent them if they wanted but they have to negotiate streaming rights. Splitting the companies up makes it harder for the studios to do this kind of negotiating.
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If that's the case it makes sense, since the only reason anyone needs both mail and streaming is that things aren't all available on streaming. There's no reason to be mad that the mail service isn't part of the deal anymore if you can get anything you want on streaming. Assuming this is how it eventually turns out.
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If that's the case it makes sense, since the only reason anyone needs both mail and streaming is that things aren't all available on streaming. There's no reason to be mad that the mail service isn't part of the deal anymore if you can get anything you want on streaming. Assuming this is how it eventually turns out.
That may be the case eventually, but it's not the case right now. And I'm not mad, I'm just a consumer looking for a better deal
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It's funny, but this letter reminds me of the sort of thing you get from someone that makes you realize that it is time to break up with the person and move on. It's TL/DR, it's full of low self esteem and ultimatums... We only have streaming Netflicks and the picture quality and selection is shitty. I have no idea why my husband insists on having it. It sucks.
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It's funny, but this letter reminds me of the sort of thing you get from someone that makes you realize that it is time to break up with the person and move on. It's TL/DR, it's full of low self esteem and ultimatums...
Yes, exactly. I think it may be time to tell Nexflix it's not them, it's me.
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I feel like lately I am contrary mary on here, but I have never had a problem with my Netflix coverage, quality, whatever.
What is unbelievably stupid is that I have an account, and each of my roommates have an account. THREE ACCOUNTS IN ONE HOUSE, WITH ONE TV.
My subscription was a gift from my family, and it runs out in a few months. I guess I'll see then whether I should cancel my account and rely on theirs.
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I'm generally happy with the quality of the picture on netflix.
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My understanding is that licenses for things like that will vary across countries-- so maybe Mel is not getting the selection we get, at the quality we get?
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My understanding is that licenses for things like that will vary across countries-- so maybe Mel is not getting the selection we get, at the quality we get?
Don't Candian ISPs have ridiculously low bandwidth caps? I swear I read in Wired that Canadian accounts have a setting in their account where they can voluntarily lower their quality to save bandwidth.
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Nah, we have ultra high speed, and definitely no Bandwidth cap. I do wonder about what Inev's saying though - I'm thinking Netflix Canada's selection is likely different and poorer than in the US. It's mostly stale old stuff that can all easily be found on torrent sites, and nothing in HD as far as I can see, so the appeal is nonexistent for me. It's clear that hubby likes the laziness factor though, as he was most recently watching season 1 of Ren and Stimpy off Netflix and the picture quality was terrible. We own season one of Ren and Stimpy. It's in the drawer below the TV. And the picture quality is considerably better on the DVDs. But that would mean getting up and opening the drawer and putting the DVD into the player, so... yeah.
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Nah, we have ultra high speed, and definitely no Bandwidth cap. I do wonder about what Inev's saying though - I'm thinking Netflix Canada's selection is likely different and poorer than in the US. It's mostly stale old stuff that can all easily be found on torrent sites, and nothing in HD as far as I can see, so the appeal is nonexistent for me. It's clear that hubby likes the laziness factor though, as he was most recently watching season 1 of Ren and Stimpy off Netflix and the picture quality was terrible. We own season one of Ren and Stimpy. It's in the drawer below the TV. And the picture quality is considerably better on the DVDs. But that would mean getting up and opening the drawer and putting the DVD into the player, so... yeah.
We do this. Mostly for kids' programming -- they change their minds so frequently that it's easier to teach them how to use the remote and find it their damn selves.
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It's funny, but this letter reminds me of the sort of thing you get from someone that makes you realize that it is time to break up with the person and move on. It's TL/DR, it's full of low self esteem and ultimatums... We only have streaming Netflicks and the picture quality and selection is shitty. I have no idea why my husband insists on having it. It sucks.
It is, quite possibly, the worst letter a CEO of a visible company has ever sent to his customers. Didn't the shareholders sell like crazy after that? It was an incomprehensible move.
I just got one from the CEO of Barnes & Noble because they acquired the customer email list from Borders. It's like 6 or 7 paragraphs and the only important details included are that you can opt-out and must do so before October 15th, and then it provides the link to opt-out. But yeah, it's got nothing on the Netflix letter.
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Yeah, I just read that Barnes and Noble letter. It was nothing at all like the Netflix letter. They are a vulture swooping in to pick the bones of Borders then they're letter was like giving a eulogy at their best friends funeral then trying to seduce his wife at the wake.
In a word, it's the kind of letter that Netflix's conqueror is gonna write, be it Blockbuster or maybe a new service from Google or Amazon, when they drive them out of business.
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Oh by the way, Netflix streaming was down for about an hour last night at my house.
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Netflix was down again for hours on Saturday night. They were working enough to provide a small list of available movies, maybe 100 in total. So instead of watching Star Trek as hoped I was watching They Live with Roddy Piper.
And then this morning I got this in my inbox.
Dear Paul,
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster.
While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.
We're constantly improving our streaming selection. We've recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we've added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.
We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.
Respectfully,
The Netflix Team
I like how it's signed "The Netflix Team" and not by Reed Hastings like the last letter. I'm imagining him being restrained in a back office pumped full of sedatives. After attempting to implement his evil plan to split Netflix into two separate companies resulting in a total meltdown of Netfilx servers. The board of directors burst into to the control room to find him standing on a table laughing manically. Holding a DVD with the code in one hand, wearing a long lab coat for some strange odd reason. "Once I insert this final disc the transfer will be complete and Qwikster will be born and it will be all mine. Bwah ha ha ha..." "You fiend, you will never prevail!" A voice was heard as the ghost of Steve Jobs appeared in the room. "There is no Qwikster, this is all part of your evil plan to kill Netflix. Hand me the disc Reed..." Distracted Hastings didn't notice as his personal secretary dropped him with a karate chop to the neck. "You too, Valerie?" He was heard saying as he fell into unconsciousness.
So yeah, hopefully the trouble at Netflix is past now.
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I like how it's signed "The Netflix Team" and not by Reed Hastings like the last letter. I'm imagining him being restrained in a back office pumped full of sedatives. After attempting to implement his evil plan to split Netflix into two separate companies resulting in a total meltdown of Netfilx servers. The board of directors burst into to the control room to find him standing on a table laughing manically. Holding a DVD with the code in one hand, wearing a long lab coat for some strange odd reason. "Once I insert this final disc the transfer will be complete and Qwikster will be born and it will be all mine. Bwah ha ha ha..." "You fiend, you will never prevail!" A voice was heard as the ghost of Steve Jobs appeared in the room. "There is no Qwikster, this is all part of your evil plan to kill Netflix. Hand me the disc Reed..." Distracted Hastings didn't notice as his personal secretary dropped him with a karate chop to the neck. "You too, Valerie?" He was heard saying as he fell into unconsciousness.
So yeah, hopefully the trouble at Netflix is past now.
your imagination is the shit. have a can
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You picked the wrong week to stop dropping acid.
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The HetLiPar asked me this morning, "So Netflix... did we just get New Coked?"
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They rotated in the first few seasons of Mad Men recently.
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also, Breaking Bad. Catching episodes of that on and off when my roommates watch... can't afford (time-wise) to get sucked into another long series.
...on the other hand, they also just added Star Trek: DS9. Big fan.
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Have I already said this elsewhere? Breaking Bad is so fuck*ng good.
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Looks like maybe now we are just talking about stuff on TV? Friend of mine has been talking up Fringe a lot. I think I gave it the old college try - I've watched maybe 8 episodes. I don't really like it.
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Have I already said this elsewhere? Breaking Bad is so fuck*ng good.
Have I already said that I love it and hate it at the same time. The payoffs are sick, and the slowness doesn't really bother me, but there will be like 3 episode runs that aren't super good, then boom, that was the best thing I have ever seen. It sounds like I am just complaining about the slowness maybe? It goes a little deeper than that.