Hacking NetFlix

NY Times on the Netflix Prize

The New York Times has a story about the genesis of the $1 million Netflix Prize, and the author lamented the lack of prizes to spur innovation today.

So on the Ides of March last year, Reed Hastings, the company’s chief executive, and three other executives were meeting at their Silicon Valley headquarters to talk about making the system better. They had just finished discussing one failed effort — a promising algorithm designed by a hotshot computer scientist from Stanford (since lured to Google) — when Mr. Hastings threw out an idea.

“We should run a prize,” he said, an open competition challenging people to come up with a better version of Cinematch.

One of the other executives asked how much the company should offer, recalled James Bennett, the vice president who oversees Cinematch.

“A million dollars,” Mr. Hastings said.

With that, Netflix unwittingly started down the path of proving that today’s economy doesn’t have nearly enough prizes.

Can Cable Be Replaced?

Alan Graham from ZD Net replaced $50 of his cable bill by using Netflix and iTunes.

I'm currently interested in about 6 shows, all of which it turns out I can get on iTunes. Plus, Netflix handles all of my movie needs. If I'm generous with my iTunes figures, it adds up to about $300 in purchases each year, versus the $600 I pay for all of the "variety" that Comcast provides me. The old model of just piping junk into my home simply doesn't make sense to me anymore.

I recently added HBO for series like Rome and The Sopranos, but if HBO offered online viewing (free or subscription) I would also consider cutting cable back down to the basics. The few TV shows we really enjoy are now available online for free, so I wouldn't pay for them through iTunes.

What mix of services would you select? Netflix, Blockbuster, YouTube, etc?

via Blogging Stocks.

ChoiceStream: A Different Approach to Recommendations

Boston Magazine has a story about ChoiceStream, the developers of Blockbuster Online's movie recommendation software.

Basically, the ChoiceStream recommender breaks down every bit of content, from movies to TV shows, books to video games (and other retail products), into its attributes. For example, a movie like Casino Royale is tagged with attributes that go beyond just “James Bond,” “thriller,” “Daniel Craig.” It might include descriptions you’d use if you were telling your friend about the film: “violence,” “witty,” “sexual banter,” “cool cars,” “betrayal,” “explosive,” “performance art” (like parkour, the breathtaking artistic style of vaulting over obstacles, employed during one of the film’s chase scenes). Choice-Stream editors predefine these general attributes. Then the company’s software crawls through online reviews, blogs, press releases, and myriad other sources to figure out which content has what attributes. By examining the content itself in real time, rather than waiting for user input, ChoiceStream eliminates the cold-start problem: When a new movie comes out or a new TV show comes on, it has an equal opportunity to be recommended. Same with back- catalog and niche content.

How would you rate Blockbuster Online's movie recommendations?

Gadgetaholic Reviews Hybrid LG HD / Blu-ray Player

Gadgetaholic has posted a review of the LG BH100 hybrid HD DVD and Blu-ray player (about $1,199).

First off, we would like to commend LG for being the first to offer a player that can play both hi-def formats. It is quite an engineering feat. The player plays discs from both formats flawlessly, sans HDi.

On the other hand, we couldn't help but feel that LG had rushed this player out in time for CES. Yes, it received the “Best Of Show” award from c|net. But it is no excuse not to offer HDi functionality and HDMI 1.3 support. Also, MP3 playback and JPEG file viewing would also be nice since most $30 DVD players can now perform these tasks.

via Engadget.

Hollywood Experiments with Watermarking

Red Herring is reporting that Hollywood will be using watermarking to protect downloaded content.

The movie industry also believes that watermarks—unique digital stamps embedded into each file—would enable content producers to fend off movie pirates without having to rely on digital rights management software provided by groups such as Apple and Microsoft. But analysts and privacy rights advocates argue that watermarking will not prevent internet piracy and could give rise to a number of thorny privacy and legal issues.

Thanks to Richard for sending this in.

Netflix Gets Weinstein Movies Despite "Exclusive"

Video Business is reporting that Netflix and video stores are acquiring copies of Weinstein Company movies for rental, despite an exclusive deal with Blockbuster.

Netflix is allowing subscribers to add School for Scoundrels to their rental queues. Spokesman Steve Swasey declined to reveal the source of Netflix’s TWC title inventory, other than to say “we’re obtaining the titles lawfully, and we are free to rent them to our subscribers.”

The story reports that some retailers are buying the movies through distribution, and some are even buying them at Wal-Mart. Please take a photo if you see someone from Netflix in line at Wal-Mart with 4,000 copies of a movie in their cart.

Thanks to Al for sending this in.

George Bush's Netflix Queue

DVD Dossier scored an interview with President George Bush about his Netflix account:

"I thought it would be good," he says, "because they use the United States Postal Service to deliver the movies. I appreciate that. Dick says they have these 42 undisclosed locations around the country where they ship the movies from and that if Americans can't get next day delivery of their favorite films, then the terrorists have won."

What else does he like about Netflix besides the large selection?

"They don't charge you late fees," he explains. "I try to leave no DVDs behind, but you know, sometimes it don't always work out. And I've already racked up over $360 billion in late fees on another project I'm working on, so the no late fees thing is big."

You can view the presidential queue here.

Queue Transfer Program?

Todd asks: "Have you encountered any program that allows you to transfer your queue between services? I have considered writing such a program, with the only real challenge being how to move a title if there is not an exact match between services. For example, one movie is named A B C D E at BB and A A B C D E at Netflix.."

Does anyone know of a program that will transfer movie queues between Netflix, Blockbuster Online, and other services?

Vista DRM Hacked, too?

Boing Boing: "Vista launched this week, and it's already broken. As with previous multi-year DRM development efforts, this one disintegrated like wet kleenex on contact with the general public. Now that Vista, HDCP, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are all broken, it seems like the millions of dollars and thousands of work-hours sunk into these systems was mis-spent. The only benefit that these anti-copying systems confer to the companies that developed them is the right to sue competitors -- and that benefit could have been had by shellacking a one-atom-thick layer of token DRM onto their systems, just enough to be able to invoke the DMCA. Everything else was just gold-plating, wasted money."

Here's how it was done: Alex Ionescu’s Blog.

Why do they even bother?

Another Dedicated Netflix Mail Slot

Wendy writes: I was quite amused recently when I visited the Fort Sutter branch of the US Postal Service - that's zip code 95816, in Sacramento, CA. They have one of their slots assigned to Netflix only. I asked the postal clerk about it and he said they estimated one-third of their branch's volume is Netflix movies, so he decided to set aside a slot for it.