Hacking NetFlix

NBC & Netflix Announce Exclusive SVOD Heroes Deal

Netflix and NBC issued a press release to announce that they have signed an exclusive subscription video-on-demand partnership for the TV series Heroes.

In addition, Netflix also offers prior season episodes of other popular NBC series including "30 Rock," "Friday Night Lights" and "The Office." For these shows, Netflix subscribers will have the option of enjoying them on DVD or watching them instantly on their PCs at Netflix.com.

"We are pleased to expand our relationship with NBC Universal Domestic Television Distribution and be part of their innovative distribution strategy," said Robert Kyncl, Vice President of Content Acquisition for Netflix. "We have a shared interest in granting fans expanded access to and strengthening the network's key franchises."

All 4 of the NBC shows are currently available via Netflix's Watch Instantly feature.

While I'm against exclusives, Netflix has to find ways to offset competitive deals like Blockbuster's exclusive Weinstein DVD deal. The problem is that customers will have to use different services to find the content they enjoy, instead of the shows and movies being widely available from a variety of services with different features and pricing.

USPS Says DVD-by-Mail Costs Taxpayers Millions

The Washington Times reports that DVD-by-mail envelopes are costing the U.S. Postal Service millions of dollars each year because the unusual envelopes require manual processing.

Rentals of DVDs from companies such as Netflix cost U.S. taxpayers tens of millions of dollars each year because U.S. Postal Service sorting machines can't process millions of return envelopes, government inspectors say.

The government incurs more than $20 million per year in labor costs to hand-sort DVDs. And costs are expected to total as much as $30 million per year by 2009.

"Because these mail pieces are not machinable, the Postal Service pays significant additional labor costs to manually process them," auditors wrote in a recent report issued by Tammy L. Whitcomb, the deputy assistant inspector general for revenue and systems.

Netflix's business is so closely tied to the cost of mailing a DVD that even a small increase could wreck havoc on profits.

via Delusional Duck.

BorrowLenses: Yet Another Camera Lense by Mail Company

BorrowLenses is another company that uses the Netflix business model to enable you to rent camera lenses by mail (we covered RentGlass last year).

Since the Netflix vs. Blockbuster debate is always interesting to watch, why not discuss your preference: Nikon vs. Canon?

Netflix Website Down for "Scheduled Maintenance"

The Netflix website will be unavailable until 5:30am (ET) because of "scheduled maintenance."

Should Netflix announce scheduled maintenance in advance?

Anonymity of Netflix Prize Data Cracked?

Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov have submitted a paper that details a technique that might be able to break the anonymity of the Netflix prize data.

We apply our de-anonymization methodology to the Netflix Prize dataset, which contains anonymous movie ratings of 500,000 subscribers of Netflix, the world's largest online movie rental service. We demonstrate that an adversary who knows only a little bit about an individual subscriber can easily identify this subscriber's record in the dataset. Using the Internet Movie Database as the source of background knowledge, we successfully identified the Netflix records of known users, uncovering their apparent political preferences and other potentially sensitive information.

Franchise Amends Lawsuit Against Blockbuster

Memphis Daily News reports that Southern Stores Video, a Blockbuster franchise, has expanded a breach of contract lawsuit against Blockbuster to include the Movielink acquisition.

Southern Stores contends that by preparing to pipe video rentals directly into its customers' homes, Blockbuster has undercut its local franchise agreement. In other words, if customers are given the option of downloading movies straight to their home computers or televisions, there's less of a need to make a trip to the video store to do the same thing.

Already, Blockbuster has instituted programs and promotions over the past few years that have had a negative effect locally, the Southern Stores lawsuit claims. In 2004, for example, Blockbuster began selling and renting videos via the company's Web site, www.blockbuster.com.

The local company pays Blockbuster $2 million a year under an exclusive license agreement.

Have Your Reviews Been Rated "Not Helpful?"

Kathryn writes, I write a lot of reviews (I'm up there in the top 500). One day, it seems, I got what I can only describe as dogpiled with Not Helpful on dozens of my reviews, including innocuous ones I had written over a long period. It seems as though I wrote something that annoyed someone and he/she got lots of friends to click Not Helpful of a lot of what I had written. I happened only once, and I get plenty of Helpful and Not Helpful clicks on what I write.

Have you felt that your reviews were unfairly rated "Not Helpful?"

Blockbuster Wants To Add Stores & Mobile Deals

Reuters reports that Blockbuster is considering adding stores:

Blockbuster Inc (BBI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Chief Executive Jim Keyes said on Tuesday he would consider expanding the video rental chain's base of 7,800 stores worldwide if his turnaround plan goes as expected over the next 12 months.

Outlining plans to return the ailing No. 1 U.S. movie rental chain to profitability, Keyes said he will reinstate an annual earnings forecast in the first quarter, simplify membership and pricing plans over the next 12 months and reconfigure stores. New stores should be smaller, added Keyes, a former 7-Eleven CEO who was brought on board in July to turn the company around.

Blockbuster wants you to rent movies and watch them on your phone, Blockbuster in talks with mobile phone makers:

Movie rental chain Blockbuster Inc (BBI.N: Quote) is in talks with all the major mobile phone makers about partnerships aimed at making it easier for consumers to watch movies on the go, Chief Executive James Keyes said on Tuesday.

He told the Reuters Media Summit he started watching movies on his BlackBerry after some help from a technical expert at Blockbuster and from Jim Balsillie, the co-chief executive of Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd.

Do you watch movies on a phone or PDA now? Do you enjoy the experience?

Netflix Hiding New Releases From Some Customers?

Emily writes about a missing link to the Netflix new releases page:

I've been a netflix subscriber since about March 2007 (1 out at a time, unlimited, $8.99) and my folks signed up about 4 months earlier. In short, I was saying that I wished Netflix had a "New Releases" section and they said that they did and that is was right on the main screen. I thought, hmmm - odd that I don't see that from my acct page and even when I search for it, it comes up as "file not found"???? I contacted nextflix and spoke w/ a cust service rep (she was pleasant enough) and she confirmed that my acct was part of a test group and that this facet of the site was disabled, with our only recourse to look at other sites for the info. I requested to be removed from said test group so I could get the "full" functionality of the site that I was paying for (my folks are on the same monthly plan) and was apologetically told this was not possible after speaking w/her supervisor. She did offer to compensate me (2 movies out at a time for 1 month - no added charge for a period of 1 month), but said there was nothing else I could do. I asked if I closed my account, then opened a new one (pain in the arse if you aks me) would this be rectified - she had no clue...

Are you missing the New Releases page?

Is The DVD Rental Market Saturated? 50 Million Have Tried It...

The Motley Fool has an interview with Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes, where he talks about how big the dvd-by-mail market might be:

"How big will it be? The numbers say that we have already reached a lot of the potential customers. Between us and Netflix, 50 million American families have tried it, and most of them said it wasn't their thing so they dropped the subscription. Less than 10 million kept it, and the remaining upside is anyone's guess."