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Unlimited streaming is already included in all but the cheapest DVD plan

Instead of 1000 copies of a dvd, they need 1 to rip. = cost savings
and there's nothing to ship any more = cost savings


In all seriousness, I would hazard a guess that netflix's bandwidth bill is somehwere around 5-10k a month... silverlight is compressed pretty good.. Most big bandwidth providers sell in 95% blocks.
Burstable billing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
B said:
Unlimited streaming is already included in all but the cheapest DVD plan

Instead of 1000 copies of a dvd, they need 1 to rip. = cost savings
and there's nothing to ship any more = cost savings


In all seriousness, I would hazard a guess that netflix's bandwidth bill is somehwere around 5-10k a month... silverlight is compressed pretty good.. Most big bandwidth providers sell in 95% blocks.
Burstable billing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Click to expand...


Well, B, understand that currently the plans CAN BE unlimited. There's only 16,000 titles that are capable of streaming.

There's 100,000 titles that are on hard copy.

When they convert those 100,000 titles all to streamable media, there will need to be a change in price structure.

Now, it doesn't matter how many people stream because they're only streaming a fraction of your media. Once there's no time lag and all titles are available to stream, you're going to have millions more requests to stream.
 
That's where the CDN cloud layer comes in :) It's really basic... i see going to 100% streaming as a more profitable solution, by far at the same price levels.
 
at my VERY VERY VERY low bandwidth buy for HS, my OVERAGE charge is .10 /gb. my regular charge is something in the area of .02 /gb.

Let's assume 1 movie is 1gb in size. (probably a VERY high estimate... probably closer to 500mb) If i watch on average 1 movie a day, thats 30gb of transfer, or $3 in cost at MY price. at netflix bulk price, its probably $1.50.

thats nearly 400% increase in profit margin from shipping DVD's.

The hardware the needs to support the data will be a wash against the dvd media buys, the paper envelopes, and the people to ship/receive them can be laid off.

if they end up charging more for it, they are scamming. it's FAR more profitable to stream than to ship.
 
B said:
at my VERY VERY VERY low bandwidth buy for HS, my OVERAGE charge is .10 /gb. my regular charge is something in the area of .02 /gb.

Let's assume 1 movie is 1gb in size. (probably a VERY high estimate... probably closer to 500mb) If i watch on average 1 movie a day, thats 30gb of transfer, or $3 in cost at MY price. at netflix bulk price, its probably $1.50.

thats nearly 400% increase in profit margin from shipping DVD's.

The hardware the needs to support the data will be a wash against the dvd media buys, the paper envelopes, and the people to ship/receive them can be laid off.

if they end up charging more for it, they are scamming. it's FAR more profitable to stream than to ship.
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Forgot all your programming and R&D costs.

You just laid off $8/hr workers and hired more techs that earn $80k/yr.

There's trade offs throughout all of this but transportation certainly will be a huge savings - however, some of this savings may be given up in licensing/copyright fees depending on the deals the major labels negotiate with Netflix.

Not as simple as most tech people would like to think.
 
What R&D do they need to do? it's already built and running. the only increased costs is storage and delivery, both of which are dirt cheap.
 
I think we've come to the consensus that netflix needs to get. Off their ass and broaden their library of streaming titles. I'm guessing the reason they haven't is the studios are holding on to their old business model like charleton heston to his guns.
 
B said:
What R&D do they need to do? it's already built and running. the only increased costs is storage and delivery, both of which are dirt cheap.
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You think that sophisticated of network is already built?

...

Tons of programming and security issues. Soft launches to test the platform, etc., etc.

You don't take to market distribution of your core competency without testing and developing the service to perfection.

Try this one on for size.
I've had AT&T service for years. Service has always been excellent. I've also had the iphone since the 3G debuted. I never had any issues with drop calls until AT&T finally allowed the iphone to send picture messages. Apple built the software patch and released the patch approximately 3-5months in advance of AT&T allowing the ability to MMS through the iphone. Other users have reported the same sort of problem with dropped calls since the launch. Had I not been locked into the service or the iphone itself were not such a good product offering, I would have certainly dumped the service and solely used my work BB storm.

Now do you think that a company the size of Netflix would want to undergo those sort of operational problems?

Its different when you or another small business launches. We're talking about a multi billion dollar company here. Netflix is the market leader and putting their name and reputation on the line. This isn't a cheap endeavor that people on here seem to be making the transition out to be - their CEO wouldn't have put a 4-9year time stamp on the transition if this was a simple flip of the switch that would save millions.

Thats my .02cents.
 
totalburnout said:
You think that sophisticated of network is already built?

...

Tons of programming and security issues. Soft launches to test the platform, etc., etc.

You don't take to market distribution of your core competency without testing and developing the service to perfection.

Try this one on for size.
I've had AT&T service for years. Service has always been excellent. I've also had the iphone since the 3G debuted. I never had any issues with drop calls until AT&T finally allowed the iphone to send picture messages. Apple built the software patch and released the patch approximately 3-5months in advance of AT&T allowing the ability to MMS through the iphone. Other users have reported the same sort of problem with dropped calls since the launch. Had I not been locked into the service or the iphone itself were not such a good product offering, I would have certainly dumped the service and solely used my work BB storm.

Now do you think that a company the size of Netflix would want to undergo those sort of operational problems?

Its different when you or another small business launches. We're talking about a multi billion dollar company here. Netflix is the market leader and putting their name and reputation on the line. This isn't a cheap endeavor that people on here seem to be making the transition out to be - their CEO wouldn't have put a 4-9year time stamp on the transition if this was a simple flip of the switch that would save millions.

Thats my .02cents.
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Its actually a helluva lot easier than you think it is. Put it this way. Alone I've built (using some prior art from open source projects, but improving on them) a backend server platform that runs 60 video streams using the equivalent of what youtube HD runs now (it was better than youtube until their last backend upgrade) on commodity hardware (think $500 a server). Me alone with no help from friends debuging and it's written in C and I am NOT a low level programmer; or at least i wasn't till i started working on this project.

I finished the backend in about 6 months and then right now when I put up the server for demos i run flowplayer for demos just because I haven't had the drive to develop my own player. I was a flash developer in a previous life, so in all reality it wouldn't take me all that long to do.

What I'm getting at is this is really not as difficult as you're making it. Multiple commodity servers with fiber channel HBA's, a multishelf san for the rendered video. nginix hosts for load balancing (you could use LVM if you're planning on doing a little more work than nginix handles in it's stock form) and Linux HA to negate a single point of failure. Realistically, that much work alone would take me about a year from begining to end. If I had my choice of 3-4 people (web and backend developers and moving myself to system engineer) I could have that entire system running in under 6 months (assuming funds are unlimited).

Now. As B said, it doesn't really take all that long because netflix already has most of the infrastructure in place to handle this kind of traffic, they'd just need to add more servers to the cluster to handle the increase in traffic. If they took even a day to plan their cluster for expandability from the start then really its not all that difficult. You're basically rebuilding a cloud architecture that so many companies have already implemented.

</sysadmin>
 
Like I said, the copyright issues and backwards studio execs are the most likely stiflement of developing technology.
 
totalburnout said:
Netflix is an extremely intelligent company when it comes to business strategy. As one of the articles pointed out, Netflix doesn't appear to be the next America Online where they lose their edge when the industry changes. By scoring enterprise agreements moving to set top boxes and gaming consoles, Netflix will always be looking at solid revenue generated through licensing sales.
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Netflix doesn't follow the industry, they MAKE the industry follow them...Blockbusters closing everywhere.

totalburnout said:
Forgot all your programming and R&D costs.

You just laid off $8/hr workers and hired more techs that earn $80k/yr.

There's trade offs throughout all of this but transportation certainly will be a huge savings - however, some of this savings may be given up in licensing/copyright fees depending on the deals the major labels negotiate with Netflix.

Not as simple as most tech people would like to think.
Click to expand...

And for most companies, payroll = biggest single expense.
 
netflix is investing a HUGE amount into their streaming. I have a good friend there who spends his life on this streaming infrastructure buildout they're doing.
 
B said:
Let's assume 1 movie is 1gb in size. (probably a VERY high estimate... probably closer to 500mb) If i watch on average 1 movie a day, thats 30gb of transfer, or $3 in cost at MY price. at netflix bulk price, its probably $1.50.
Click to expand...

What format are they streaming in? How does the streaming work from them? Is it software doing transcoding on the fly? Or are they streaming a re-encoded version?
 
to hell w/ Netflix.. torrent, stream directly from Vuze w/ file converted to HD .. :D

thats how i've watched Weeds for the past 2-3 seasons..
 
I have no interest downloading movies/shows when i can get them evenutally. I only have 1000 other things in queue i could be watching while i wait for the netflix release.
 
Netflix is so much easier for streaming to your TV. Hook up xbox, done.
 
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