Hacking NetFlix

The Fools Interview Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

Rick Aristotle Munarriz and Mac Greer from Fool.com asked Netflix CEO Reed Hastings a few questions:

Greer: I want to hit you with a few questions from our Motley Fool Twitter feed. The first question: With so many shows on DVD, why doesn't Netflix directly market the "dump your cable and save money" message?
Hastings: Well, no one dumps their cable. They expand to get the larger cable broadband package. Cable is the best provider of broadband out there, so it is not a realistic message.
Greer: Another question from our Twitter feed: Do you ever see Netflix moving to an ad-based model for streaming video to compete with services like Hulu -- the joint venture between News Corp.'s Fox and General Electric's NBC?
Hastings: No. We see that there is a big market in advertising-based video that Hulu and Google's YouTube and others will be very competitive in and we are going to focus on commercial-free subscription, which is not the largest segment, but it is a big enough segment for us to grow in for many years.

Suggestion Box: Organizing Movies on the Roku Player

Dan writes, "There's no way to organize the menu on the Roku, and you have to basically have to scroll through all of the titles with no real way to remember where they are (which is especially tough for people like me with a 300+ queue)."

I can understand that Roku and Netflix want to keep the user interface simple, but could they break the movie list into movies and TV shows? Sort by genre? Alphabetical order?

How would you organize titles on the Roku Player?

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Tops Tech CEO Survey

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings topped a GigaOm / Glassdoor list of top Tech CEO's, beating Apple's Steve Jobs.

CEOs are included on the list if and only if they have garnered 50 or more votes on Glassdoor’s web site. Reed Hastings, CEO of DVD rental service Netflix, ranks the highest, followed by Steve Jobs of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Google. The CEO list doesn’t surprise me — these companies are doing reasonably well despite a very bleak economy, giving their troops the confidence that comes from stability.

Blu-ray & Downloads Grow; DVD Sales Shrink

paidContent cites a Digital Entertainment Group report on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download sales:

Sales of Blu-Ray HD more than doubled in the first quarter, while digital downloads were up 19 percent, according to a report from the Digital Entertainment Group. Both formats are still a small piece of the overall pie—DVD sales were $2.9 billion in the quarter versus $230 million for Blu-Ray and $487 million for digital downloads. But Blu-Ray’s sales were up 400 percent last year, for a total of $750 million, and companies like Netflix and Blockbuster continue to make inroads against traditional DVD sales with digital delivery of home movies.

DVD sales dropped 14 percent for the quarter. 

Are you still buying DVDs? Blu-ray Discs? 

Redbox Using Free Codes To Get Customers?

Bernard sent in a WOAI story about the free movie codes, and I'm wondering if Redbox is using them to acquire new customers and retain existing ones:

The codes are not so secret. There are several websites where Redbox customers share them with the world. You might think there's something shady about this, that Redbox wouldn't want people splashing their free codes all over the internet. Well, there's no need to feel guilty because they don't mind at all.

A Redbox spokesperson told us, “We are thrilled that so many consumers are taking advantage of Redbox promotions.”

It's expensive to acquire new customers (it costs Netflix more than $25 for each new customer) and retain existing ones, so if the $1 coupons work, I would expect to see them continue the practice. 

Have you used a free Redbox code? InsideRedbox is one place you can find free Redbox codes.

New Releases for April 28th, 2009

Click here for the full list of new releases this week (120).

Interesting titles include  What Doesn't Kill You, Nothing but the Truth, Bride Wars, The Hit, Hotel for Dogs, The Terminators, The Univited, Rookies: Season 1, Alexandra, and JCVD.

Gamefly Files Complaint with Postal Regulatory Commission for Unfair Treatment

Gamefly has filed a complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission for "Preferential treatment for other DVD mailers." Gamefly is especially worried because Blockbuster is adding games to Total Access in Q2 of 2009, and will have an unfair advantage due to manual processing of discs. A 2007 OIG report said that "...70 percent of the two-way DVD mailers from one unnamed DVD rental company received manual processing for this reason."

GameFly is not the only mailer to experience significant DVD breakage  rates on automated mail processing equipment.  In response to this phenomenon, the Postal Service has adopted a practice of manually culling out the DVD mailers of two high-volume shippers of DVDs, Netflix and Blockbuster, for special processing. 

Tidbits from the filing: 

• Gamefly mails about 590,000 discs per month, and receives about 510,000.   
• Breakage rate is about 1% per mailing.
• 19 Postal workers have been arrested for allegedly stealing Gamefly discs.

You can view the full text of the complaint at the Postal Regulatory Commission website.

Letterman Commercial for Netflix with Dick Cheney

Huffington Post has posted a video of a David Letterman commercial for Netflix featuring Dick Cheney's Picks of the Week.

You'll have to go to the Huffington Post site to view it since they don't allow the embedding of videos.

via Netflix (Twitter).

Should Netflix Worry about Comcast?

During the earnings call this week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that $1 per night DVD rental kiosks would be their #1 competitor as video stores closed, but Rick Aristotle Munarriz on Fool.com wonders if Comcast should worry Netflix:

Fancast has been around for more than a year, but it hasn't become a video-sharing hub like Hulu or YouTube. That will change, once it evolves into an "on demand" hotbed for Comcast's 24 million subscribers later this year.

And this trend could very well disrupt the disruptors. Will you still need your Slingbox, if you can just log in to your Fancast account and stream your cable channels? Will you have time -- or a need -- for Netflix or Blockbuster, when Comcast is able to exponentially multiply its available content?

What do you think? Will Comcast become a threat to Netflix, or will Comcast become a victim of the change to online video?

Warner Offers HD DVD to Blu-ray Upgrade

I bet badly in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle, and wound up with about 25 HD DVDs. I have to give Warner a lot of credit for offering a low-cost way to "upgrade" to Blu-ray at Red2Blu.com. For less than the price of The Matrix Collection on Blu-ray, I was able to upgrade 7 titles including  Blade Runner, Matrix Collection, 300, Casablanca, and more.

Now if Universal would offer a similar program...

via Gizmodo.