Hacking NetFlix

Watch Instantly Has Wrong Version of Bladerunner?

Jirah noticed that the Watch Instantly version of Blade Runner: The Director's Cut is not the "Director's Cut:"

The version of Blade Runner available on "Watch Now" isn't actually the Director's Cut. It's the original cut with the narration and the happy ending and no unicorns. I've just called Netflix to report the error, but who knows how long that will take to fix. I'd sure hate for the movie to be spoiled for anyone just because they watched the inferior first cut edition.

I've watched part of this version, and it has Harrison Ford's narration and the "happy ending." Can anyone confirm that this is the wrong version?

Second KDD Workshop on Netflix Prize August 24-27, 2008

The Second KDD Workshop on Large-Scale Recommender Systems and the Netflix Prize Competition will be held in Las Vegas on Agust 24 - 27.

Recommender systems have emerged over the last several years as an important area of research spanning the boundaries of such diverse set of disciplines as data mining, machine learning, information retrieval, human-computer interaction, marketing and operations research. Interest in recommender systems was further enhanced when Netflix announced its $1,000,000 prize competition in October 2006 that attracted over 20,000 participants from 167 different countries. One of the sub-fields of recommender systems that benefited very significantly from the Netflix Prize competition is the area of large-scale recommender systems, which deals with scaling recommendation methods to large datasets. Many Netflix competitors came to realize that some of the well-known recommendation algorithms would not scale well to the Netflix dataset. In addition, some of the most popular and well-regarded methods would perform poorly on the Netflix dataset — maybe because the asymptotic performance of these methods is quite different from their performance on smaller datasets.

via Geeking with Greg.

Netflix Employees Get Free 8-Out Plan

One of the perks of working at Netflix is a free 8-out plan, according to former employee Michael Rubin: Netflix employees automatically get on the 8-out plan, which is really really fun, even if you never have time to watch all those movies....

The 8-out plan costs $47.99 per month, or $576 per year.

Netflix Looking for Senior Software Engineer, Personalization Research

The Analytic Talent blog has posted a Netflix job opening for a Senior Software Engineer, Personalization Research.

As a key researcher for our web application development team, you will be working on data mining and algorithm development to build the world’s best movie finding software with some of the brightest people in the E-commerce arena. Our goal is to know our customers’ movie tastes well enough to create the perfect store, always presenting amazing titles just for them.

We are looking for a very experienced engineer who can take the lead, researching, modeling, presenting, designing and building algorithms that run in a service oriented architecture to support millions of customers. The successful candidate will be a self-motivated, intellectually curious individual. A Doctorate or experience working in a research environment, work with personalization algorithms, machine learning, adaptive systems, and statistical analysis would be a bonus.

New Watch Instantly Releases on Dyers.org

Jon Dyer posted a list of the 230 Netflix Watch Instantly titles released in the past few weeks.

Maybe I can understand the reasons for adding three seasons of The Incredible Hulk, and maybe I think the demand for two more seasons of Adam 12 and three more seasons of Emergency! may be a little questionable, but there is no logic that can get me to believe that adding two more seasons of both Charles In Charge and Gimme A Break was a good idea.

That said, I picked out what I could from what was made available. There are a few documentaries, some mindless entertainment, and even some ladies’ mixed martial arts fighting. If I missed something noteworthy, be sure to drop it in the comments.

The Netflix Settlement Appeal Analyzed

The UCL Practitioner takes a look at the Netflix Settlement, New class action objector opinion: Chavez v. Netflix, Inc. If you're part of the settlement, you'll get a service-level upgrade or free month, depending on your status. The article takes a look at the argument over class-action "coupon" settlements, such as this one:

The Court of Appeal rejected all of the objectors' challenges to the settlement and the notice provided to class members. Id. at 8-18. The opinion is noteworthy for its discussion of coupon settlements. The Court took pains to explain that the settlement before it was not a pure coupon settlement and, what's more, it was fair, adequate and reasonable:

Only one objector, Ellis, continues to argue that the settlement is unreasonable. Ellis makes no claim that any of the factors supporting a presumption of fairness is not present in this case. Instead, Ellis bases her entire argument on the premise that this is a coupon settlement and that such settlements are, in general, inherently suspect and improper. In fact, these premises are neither entirely accurate nor particularly useful for evaluating the fairness of the specific settlement terms before us. Although the settlement reached in this case may be classified as a variant of the coupon settlement, it does not in fact share all of the attributes of the category. In a pure coupon settlement, the class members would receive a coupon, voucher, or discount that would partly defray the cost of making a new purchase of goods or services from the defendant. In many cases, the coupon might induce the member to make a purchase he or she would not otherwise have made, which may actually produce a net benefit for the defendant. That is not the case here. The Netflix class members are not being offered a discount that requires them to make new purchases. They are being offered an opportunity to obtain a limited number of rentals at no charge.

Thanks to Davis Freeberg for sending this in.

Who Are The 3 Mystery Hardware Partners for Netflix's Watch Instantly?

Netflix announced that they now have 4 companies working on Watch Instantly devices, but only LG has been announced. Three of the partners sell "millions of devices," and the third is a smaller company.

Brent Evans is guessing Microsoft, Sony & TiVo.

Dave Zatz thinks it might be Microsoft, Toshiba and Netgear (or D-Link).

Who do you think the 3 mystery partners are?

Keyboard Shortcuts for Netflix's Watch Instantly

A reader writes, "I was wondering if you were at all aware of a way to control the Netflix Movie Viewer using only key strokes, as opposed to clicking on the given icons. I’m totally blind and would love to be able to adjust volume, rewind, etc."

"C" tipped me off to a few known keyboard shortcuts for Netflix's Watch Instantly:

"Space" = Pause
"Esc" = Exit fullscreen
"F11" = Fullscreen
"Ctrl +/-" = make text bigger or smaller (standard browser function)

It would be great if Netflix officially offered a remote control that worked with Watch Instantly, but there is a hack.

Have you discovered any additional keyboard shortcuts that work with Watch Instantly?

Netflix Promotes New Releases to New Customers; Hides Some Titles From Existing

Steve writes, "Netflix provides a different new releases list for those responding to online ads for new subscribers than for existing subscribers." Steve cleared his cookies so he'd look like a new subscriber, and followed a Yahoo! link to Netflix, where they showed the following new releases:

The Netflix New Releases section for customers (below) doesn't include Juno, an Oscar-winner, in the "Popular New Releases." To be fair, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Enchanted are listed, but so is The Painted Veil which was released almost a year ago.

Netflix has slowly de-emphasized hot new releases to help with allocation of popular titles to more than 7.5 million subscribers. There were a lot of customer complains when Netflix removed the link to the All New Releases page earlier this year, but they haven't restored the link (the page still works).

What do you think? Has Netflix increased availability by de-emphasizing hot new releases?

Netflix's Watch Instantly Has Movies Not Yet on DVD

Scott from Cinematical discovered that Netflix's Watch Instantly has movies that have not been released on DVD, Netflix Has Movies That Aren't Even On DVD! Like 'Rolling Thunder'!.

So while that was a juicy enough find, I thought to myself ... why not do a little more digging to see if Netflix has a few other "unreleased online exclusives." And I found some! Anyone out there dying to see Burt Reynolds in Malone (1987)? Tom Selleck in Daughters of Satan (1972)? The 1967 ensemble farce Eight on the Lam or the 1969 Jacqueline Bisset sex comedy The First Time? How about the 1959 exploitationer Diary of a High School Bride or Mario Bava's (now out-of-print) Planet of the Vampires? Also available on what I'm now calling the Netflix VHS Stack list: Michael Keaton in (the pretty terrible) The Squeeze (1987), The Glory Guys (a 1965 western written by Sam Peckinpah!), and the Oscar-nominated nympho-drama A Rage to Live (1965). Netflixers who want some of these flicks can start on this page and work backward.

Sure enough, Rolling Thunder only has the "Play" button instead of the "Add" or combined "Add Play" button.

Thanks to Gustav and Scott for sending this in.