Hacking NetFlix

Netflix Canadian Expansion a Success; Expect More Countries in 2011

CBC News Canada reports that the Netflix Canadian service is already a success

"After a short period in Canada we're now talking about other regions in the world, so that's a good indicator," Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said in a recent interview.

Netflix, which launched in Canada in September, is already planning more international expansion. (Paul Sakuma/Associated Press)" We're extremely pleased with the reception in Canada and … based on the early success of Netflix.ca we're going to continue our international expansion next year and we're going to allocate significant dollars to it."

While the selection of titles for the Canadian streaming-only plan is more limited than the US DVD & streaming service, they're not seeing more cancellations.

"You'll see in the blogosphere and in chatrooms people saying, 'Yeah, but where's my Avatar or It's Complicated. So we've had to do a little bit of resetting of expectations," he said.

"There's a cross section of people that I think were expecting it to be all new releases and they were disappointed but … it hasn't hampered retention or acquisition of members, those who have come on and complained about it stayed on because there's a treasure trove of stuff to watch — even though it's not a lot of new releases."

What's interesting about the Canadian service is that is lacks a queue: "There's currently no way to build a queue of movies to watch in the future and Netflix has no plans to implement one."

via Engadget.

Netflix Customer Finds Lost Netflix DVDs, Gets Refund

If you lose a Netflix DVD they'll typically charge you $20 (they won't charge you if a DVD is lost in the mail), but if you find it they'll credit your account. Michael lost a Netflix DVD in 2008 and recently found it, and was pleasantly surprised by the automatic refund:

Have you lost a Netflix DVD? 

Netflix Faces Class Action Lawsuit from Wal-Mart Deal in 2005

When Wal-Mart retreated from the DVD rental business in 2005 and started promoting Netflix, I don't think either company expected to face a class action lawsuit 5 years later. Bloomberg reports that a class action lawsuit has been approved:

The plaintiffs charged that NetFlix and Wal-Mart conspired in 2005 to divide the market for selling and renting DVDs in order to reduce competition. The companies formed an agreement in which Wal-Mart.com would stop renting DVDs online and NetFlix wouldn’t offer them for sale. The agreement came after Blockbuster Inc. began offering DVD rentals online, according to the lawsuits.

“As a result, millions of NetFlix subscribers allegedly paid supracompetitive prices,” Hamilton said in her order.

So, a group of Netflix subscribers are complaining that they paid too little? It'll be interesting to see if Netflix fights or settles this one.

Roku & Apple Hitting 1 Million Streaming Devices Sold: 2011 Year of Streaming?

Apple already hit the 1 million Apple TV sold milestone, and Roku is expected to hit it soon (Roku sales doubled when the Apple TV launched), so will be 2011 be the year of streaming? There are more than 200 Netflix-ready devices available now, and streaming is on almost every major platform: phones, tablets, TV's, home theaters, set-top boxes, and game systems. With $8 streaming plans from Netflix and Hulu, plus video-on-demand from Amazon, Blockbuster, Vudu, and even Sears, will this be enough to enable cable customers to cut the cord?

What's the Best Movie You've Seen This Year?

So, what's the best movie you've seen this year in the theater, on disc (DVD or Blu-ray), or on Netflix Streaming? What movie are you looking forward to seeing next year?

What TV series did you like this year?

Netflix Hack Shows Netflix Currently Has 76 of IMDB's Top 250 Movies in Streaming

100ThingsILearned put together a cool hack using the Netflix API to see how many of the IMDB Top 250 movies are available through Netflix Streaming. Currently more than 

We wanted to know which of the IMDB Top 250 movies were available streaming on Netflix. Unable to find any sources online and unwilling to resort to manual searches, we built this page as a utility. Here it is for your benefit--free! This page works by scraping IMDB's Top 250 list and then querying each entry against Netflix's public API.

Some really great titles in the list, but it would be every cooler if they had a button or link that enabled you to add a movie to your queue.

New Movie & TV Show Rental / Purchase Site from Sears: Netflix Competitor?

TechCrunch reports that Sears & KMart have started yet another movie and TV show rental/purchase site called Alphaline Entertainment (was this named by a committee or are all of the good names taken?).

They're calling it a Netflix competitor, but I think its more of a competitor to Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, Vudu, and the dozen other sites selling and renting, while Netflix is focused on $8 per month subscriptions.

Thanks to FearNo1 and Metroxing for sending this in.

Netflix New Releases for December 28th, 2010

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

Interesting titles include Knight and Day, Going the Distance, Handsome Harry, Spin, Vampires Suck, And Soon the Darkness, Archer: Season 1,  Jersey Shore: Season 2, and United States of Tara: Season 2.

Netflix Pushing for HTML 5 Standard for Advanced Streaming

Christian Kaiser, Netflix vp of engineering, on the Netflix Tech Blog explains why Netflix wants an industry standard for advanced streaming:

But what if we could replace all these proprietary solutions with an industry-wide standard? Then Netflix, or any other video streaming service, could deliver to a standard browser as a pure HTML5 web application, both on computers and in CE devices with embedded browsers. Browser builders and CE manufacturers could support every OS and device they choose, leveraging the same implementations across multiple streaming services instead of building and integrating an one-off implementation for each service. Consumers would benefit by having a growing number of continually evolving choices available on their devices, just like how the web works today for other types of services.

The Netflix Tech Blog is a great read if you're a techie, and they recently posted two articles about the move to Amazon's Web Service (4 reasons We Chose Amazon's Cloud & 5 Lessons We've Learned using AWS).

How to Find the Best Episodes of Saturday Night Live on Netflix Streaming

Kelly Conaboy at the Splitsider has put together a comprehensive (and obsessive) guide to the 36 seasons of Saturday Night Live on Netflix to help you find the most interesting episodes, and save you from the awful ones.

With hundreds of episodes from each season of Saturday Night Live finally available on Netflix Instant Watch, we thought we'd put together a few of the highlights to help you get your bearings. Obviously, it's an overwhelming amount of material that's available, so this guide will help point you to interesting or historic episodes, notable guest hosts, and where the appearances are of classic characters.

It should be noted that a few of the seasons are still not yet available, specifically seasons 26-30. Netflix will presumably be adding those at some point, and we'll update this guide when they do. 

What's your favorite episode of SNL?

via Gizmodo.