Hacking NetFlix

Is Netflix Planning Ambitious International Expansion?

A reader tipped me off to an interesting job posting for a Quality Assurance Analyst -- note the language requirements:

This position will be based in our Customer Service Call Center in Hillsboro, Oregon and support a specific country / region outside of North America. We are looking for people fluent in English along with fluency in writing and speaking in one of the following languages: Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), and Spanish (Latin American and European).

With the success of Netflix Canada we knew that Netflix was planning on expanding to other countries, but could they be planning a massive rollout to a dozen countries or more in the near future? 

What Show Should Netflix License Next? Mad Men?

Reader John asked an interesting question: "Could Netflix buy the next Mad Men?" With Netflix starting to do exclusive licenses of shows and movies, it'll be interesting to see what Netflix buys next.

What show or movie would you like Netflix to buy?

Better Use Your Blockbuster Gift Cards Soon... Auction Starts April 4th

Consumerist reports that Blockbuster will not accept gift cards after April 6th, according to a notice posted at a Blockbuster store. 

In a related story, Erik Gruenwedel from Home Media Magazine reports that Blockbuster officially goes on the auction block on April 4th, after losing $68 million in the last quarter.

Separately, Blockbuster officially goes on the auction block April 4, with bids accepted beginning at 10 a.m. EDT. If no legitimate offers exceed the opening “stalking horse” bid of $290 million, that bid by a group of senior lenders dubbed Cobalt Video Holdings would likely be declared the purchase price at a post-auction hearing slated for April 7.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland overruled objections to the “stalking horse” bid, amid other concerns, in a hearing March 17.

Thanks to Bob for sending this in.

 

How Would You Rate Netflix DVD & Blu-ray Availability?

With 98% of Netflix's management attention focused on streaming, are they still paying attention to the DVD and Blu-ray side of the business? Reader Chuck writes, "I am seeing many more things go to waits, short and long and then unavailable.  These are not movies that are out of print.  Do you think Netflix is running off its inventory of DVDS in anticipation of degrading the dvd renting experience and pushing people to streaming which is cheaper for them but not nearly the quality for the viewer as it is presently done?"

Stephen Bowie on The Classic TV History Blog writes, "What does infuriate me is that Netflix is abandoning DVD before it should, and that it has not been honest with its customers in this regard.  The once-mighty stream of DVD releases has slowed to a trickle now.  Netflix could continue to stock every major disc release using only a fraction of the acquisitions budget that it once required.  Instead its leadership chooses not to devote even those meager sums to physical media – sums that account for the margin between profit and loss for many small DVD companies that still fight the good fight to put out rare films and TV shows."

How would you rate Netflix DVD and/or Blu-ray availability?

What Would You Ask Netflix CEO Reed Hastings?

Henry Blodget at Business Insider is going to interview Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, and he wants you to submit your questions.

We're going to have a truly excellent interview-of-the-week this week: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

Over the past decade, Reed has built Netflix from a tiny dotcom startup offering CDs by mail to an international behemoth with 20 million subscribers, $2 billion of revenue, 2,000+ employees, and a $12 billion market cap.

Most importantly, Reed has built one of the first viable alternative distribution channels for professional video content, and he has aimed this missile right at TV's wildly profitable incumbents.

Crackle Channel Streams Ad-Supported Movies to the Roku, PS3, Sony TV's & Blu-ray Players

Crackle announced that the free ad-supported channel would would be available on the Roku Player, PS3, and Sony TV's & Blu-ray players. The selection consists of mostly older movies, but includes hits such as the Da Vinci Code, Ghostbusters, 21, Mr. Deeds, A Few Good Men, and Ultraviolet.

It's great to see more options for streaming movies and TV shows, and it'll be interesting to see how fast Crackle grows the selection of movies.

Thanks to Noor for sending this in.

Netflix Dramatically Lowers Canadian Streaming Bandwidth To Fight ISP Caps

Netflix's Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt announced a new feature for Netflix's Canadian subscribers that enables them to dramatically lower the bandwidth used by streaming.

Now Canadians can watch 30 hours of streaming from Netflix in a month that will consume only 9 GBytes of data, well below most data caps.

We made these changes because many Canadian Internet service providers unfortunately enforce monthly caps on the total amount of data consumed.

In the past, viewing 30 hours of Netflix could consume as much as 70 GBytes, if it was all in HD, and typically about 30 GBytes. While there is some lessening of picture quality with these new settings, the experience continues to be great. 

Hunt also goes into detail about the new streaming settings:

We've created three settings:

1. "Good" - The default setting with good picture quality and lowest data use per hour (about 0.3 GBytes/hour)
2. "Better" - Better picture quality and medium data use per hour (about 0.7 GBytes/hour)
3. "Best" - Best picture quality and highest date use per hour (generally about 1.0 GBytes/hour - or up to 2.3 GBytes/hour when streaming HD content)

I can see how this feature would be useful for Netflix customers in the US on capped or mobile plans. Do you think Netflix should add this feature for US customers?

@Instant_Netflix Makes Time List of 140 Best Twitter Feeds

The excellent @Instant_Netflix Twitter account that recommends streaming titles made Time Magazine's list of 140 Best Twitter Feeds.

If you're like us, and prone to the occasional lame Friday night at home, @Instant_Netflix is a godsend. The feed recommends and highlights the latest additions to Netflix's ever growing film library, removing the need to have one of those "What's on tonight?" conversations ever again.

It's interesting to note that @Netflix or @NetflixHelps or @HackingNetflix did not make the list (sorry about the shameless plug). 

Netflix UI Change for Streaming TV Shows Makes It Harder to Rate Individual Seasons

We've discussed the new single-view for multiple seasons of a TV series, but Jonathan discovered that the ratings are now for the entire series, "Have you noticed how Netflix is now combining the ratings of different series of a TV show? For example, Californication now shows that I have rated seasons 3 & 4 the same as I had rated seasons 1 or 2, even though I haven't even seen 3 or 4 yet.

I feel like this is a major downgrade, as a series can change drastically in quality over its run (example: Weeds & Scrubs). If people want to be able to alert other users about this quality change, shouldn't we be able to do this? Also, it's harder to keep track of which seasons we have watched if all of them are marked as rated.

I noticed also that on streaming they are grouping all of the seasons of a series, which is actually kind of nice, since sometimes you don't realize more seasons are available. I just wish that this didn't also mean that the ratings are also grouped."

It looks like you can rate each season separately on the search page, but not on the movie detail page that shows all seasons of a series.

What do you think? Should Netflix allow you to rate each season separately?

Netflix Adds 350 Paramount Titles for Streaming in Canada

Fenot Tekle from Netflix PR announced on the Netflix blog that they will be adding 350 new Paramount titles for streaming (press release):

Canadians can now watch popular titles like “Iron Man 2" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and over time, we will add fan favorites like "Titanic" and "The Last Airbender," comedies like “Zoolander” and “Wayne’s World,” and beloved classics like “The African Queen,” “Sabrina” (1954) and “Terms of Endearment.”

You can view the entire list of titles available for streaming in Canada on InstantWatcher (about 1,348 titles).