Click here for more information about this Website and a full disclosure statement.
Investors: Please do not use the information on this site to buy or sell stocks. I don't want to have to explain to your spouse how you lost a huge amount of money based on advice from a site called "Hacking Netflix."
The contents of this Web site are (c) 2003 - 2007 Briki Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
A reader participated in one of Netflix's many customer surveys, and one of the questions asked "...how likely would you or someone in your household be to a Netflix Instant Streaming Disc for the Nintendo Wii (available for free) in order to instantly watch movies & TV episodes on your TV?"
Netflix has posted a series of new photos from a shipping center on Facebook.
Thanks to Sam for sending this in.
Update from Netflix: "All is well again. Images are loading properly."
Netflix is currently experiencing a strange website bug: no images. Netflixhelps on Twitter: "Some users reporting no images on the website...we're hard at work on it. Thanks for your patience."
An "inventory free" approach for managing rental items across a plurality of distribution locations includes sending at least some rental items that are not needed by two or more distribution locations to a designated distribution location. Rental items sent to the designated distribution location may be permanently stored at the designated distribution location, returned to the distribution location from which they were sent, or sent to other distribution locations, depending upon where the rental items are needed. In situations where particular rental items are not currently needed by customers at a distribution location, but there is a high likelihood that the particular rental items will be needed by the customers within a specified time, the particular rental items may be maintained at the distribution location as "float" and not sent to the designated distribution location. The float is re-processed as returned rental items prior to being again rented to customers. The determination of whether customers need, or do not need, a particular rental item may be made based upon a wide variety of criteria such as time criteria, actual and predicted customer demand for rental items, actual and predicted returns of rental items, Net Ships and predicted loss and breakage of rental items.
Dear Mark,
In order to deliver your DVDs to you as quickly as possible, we routinely update our shipping information. Your shipping information has recently been updated by the U.S. Postal Service. Using addresses validated by the U.S. Postal Service ensures the fastest possible delivery of your DVDs. Please verify that the new address listed below is correct.
(My correct address is listed here in the email)
If this address is correct, you do not need to take any further action as our records have already been updated. If this new address is NOT correct, please update your address information as soon as possible to avoid interruptions in your service.
-Your friends at Netflix
Netflix is now letting users know when streaming titles will be available by adding "Instant" dates or "Coming Soon" in the Queue.
But the product's early 2008 public unveiling neared, several senior Netflix executives began to express misgivings about straying into the unfamiliar hardware business. The box would never have mass appeal if it was limited to accessing Netflix's movie services, some argued.
Barry McCarthy, Netflix's chief financial officer, was one of the skeptics. "Are we out of our f- minds?" Mr. McCarthy recalls thinking about the hardware plans. "We don't even know what we don't know about this business." He describes Mr. Hastings's infatuation with the project with two words: "Apple lust."
Mr. Hastings concedes that he "fell in love with building boxes" and that part of the inspiration was watching Apple Inc. use its hardware to sell online content. Apple, too, is seeking to bring Internet video to TV sets through its iTunes Store and a box called Apple TV. "Every entrepreneur is a Steve Jobs wannabe," he says. "I was as guilty of that as anybody."
The Associated Press takes a look at Redbox and the threat it poses to Netflix, Redbox's Machines Take on Netflix's Envelopes. On a recent quarterly earnings call, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said DVD kiosks would be his #1 competitor by the end of the year.
The number of DVD kiosks is growing quickly: Redbox now has 15,400, and Blockbuster plans on rolling out 10,000. Another reason he might worry: one of Reed Hastings key people is now president of Redbox:
Mitch Lowe, Redbox's president, came to the company after six years with Netflix, where he was vice president of business development. While at Netflix, he managed one of the company's competitive advantages: a popular system that recommends lesser-known movies to subscribers based on ratings for films they've already watched. That helps Netflix's 10.3 million customers sift through 100,000 movie titles.
Tidbits from the story: More than 4 million people used a Redbox kiosk last month, and there are now more DVD rental kiosks in the U.S. than video stores.
paidContent reports that U.K. Netflix clone Lovefilm is in discussions regarding a sale: A spokesperson told us: “We can confirm Lovefilm has received approaches and the board is considering options on on behalf of the group and its shareholders.” Netflix competitor Amazon is a shareholder in Lovefilm.
Wired has written an update on the Netflix Prize contest as the teams get close to the finish line, "$1 Million Netflix Prize So Close, They Can Taste It."
Team Pragmatic Theory’s most recent submission, posted in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, shows a current improvement of 9.78 percent, giving the pair a slim lead over last year’s leaders, BellKor in BigChaos, a team that includes AT&T engineers, with Netflix’ seven-figure prize tantalizingly close to being won.
“For a long time, we weren’t sure if 10 percent was even achievable,” said Piotte by e-mail. “Now that we’re getting closer, it seems highly probable that it can be done. Right now, we’re feeling very motivated and excited. The focus for us is no longer ‘if’ someone will make it to 10 percent, but rather ‘when.’”
Recent Blockbuster news on HackingBlockbuster:
William and Kevin report that Netflix is now receiving and shipping discs on Saturday at the Chicago and Flushing, New York shipping centers. Is Netflix shipping on Saturday in your area?
A reader sent in an interesting "reminder" they received from Netflix, asking them to read and agree to the Netflix Terms of Use.
Neil Hunt, Netflix's Chief Product Officer, on the Netflix blog explains why it's so hard for Netflix to add closed captions to the streaming titles:
"You might be asking how it could be so hard, since we already subtitle foreign language streams with English subtitles. These subtitles are "burned in" to the video stream at the time of encoding - they are so-called "open captions" that cannot be turned on and off by the viewer. The majority of viewers would object to English captions on English content, so we have to figure out how to let individual viewers turn them on and off.
Encoding a separate stream for each title is not an option - it takes us about 500 processor-months to make one encode through the entire library, and for this we would have to re-encode four different formats. Duplicating the encoded streams is prohibitive in space too.
So we are working on optionally delivering the SAMI file (Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange), or similar, to the client, and having it render the text and then overlay it on the video at playback time. Unfortunately, the tools for rendering SAMI files in Silverlight, or in CE (Consumer Electronics) devices, are weak or non-existent, and there is some technology development required.
I would expect to deliver subtitles or captions to Silverlight clients sometime in 2010, and roll the same technology out to each CE device as we are able to migrate the technology, and work with the CE manufacturer to deliver firmware updates for each player."
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is on the road and is looking for movie geeks for a Netflix-sponsored show. They're auditioning this morning in Charlotte, and will be visiting Indianapolis (6/17), Tampa (6/19) and Houston (7/1). If you're interested in being on the show, you have to be over 18, pass a test, and an interview (more info on requirements here).
Perry writes, "How about some new watch instantly Sci-fi movies with more spaceships or planet landing movies they are getting old to us long time users."
