To me, Netflix streaming is like some alien technology from the future. I live in a rural area with terrible broadband (miniscule monthly cap). However, I have an unlimited data plan for my phone and with a composite video cable I can plug my phone into the television and stream movies from the Netflix app. We've never had cable TV, and with Netlix and iTunes there's no point. Even over 3G, we get surprisingly good video quality.

If you're interested in how the sausage is made, I believe Netflix uses Microsoft's Smooth Streaming[1] to accomplish that (I know they use it for the in-browser client, but am not 100% positive about the native mobile apps). Smooth streaming is an under-appreciated tool, IMO. Given its power, you might reasonably assume it would be complex and expensive to set up, but it's a free extension to IIS if you have any recent edition of Windows Server and is amazingly simple to get up and running with your own video.

[1] http://www.iis.net/media

Smooth Streaming is certainly a great piece of technology, and thanks to the guys at Code Shop, it now works on several devices and using nginx, Apache and lighttpd: http://smoothstreaming.code-shop.com/trac

Netflix streaming is like the bittorrent protocol (lots of participant hosts and lots of chunked fetches). See this: http://labs.mudynamics.com/2011/04/07/mommy-netflix-is-eatin...

When I want to watch a movie, the first place I go to is netflix. I won't tell you the second place I go to.

I'd pay an extra 5 bucks a month if it could increase the rate at which netflix lets me "play now" movies. Yes, some movies I specifically want to get on bluray, but there are plenty of others that video quality matters very little to me.

When I want to watch a movie, the first place I go to is Netflix Canada, half of what I want is unavailable and it doesn't update very often (at least not this month) so the second place I go to not too hard to figure out.

But you're supposed to wait patiently while the studios' marketing strategy of segmentation plays out. Just like how people in rural areas of the US aren't allowed to form municipal ISPs to get internet service that the big players won't provide to them.</sarcasm>

There are way too many people behind desks in large companies that develop marketing strategies that don't really take their customers into account, and if their customers behave in a way that breaks their model, the general reaction is to get angry at their customers for not playing to the tune of their flute.

This is the biggest problem in Australia, unless you allow everyone to access things on the same day the hardcore fans are of course going to be getting there hands on it any way possible. If I was running a TV show I'd release the show worldwide for download at the same time or just after the initial US(or wherever is local to the show) TV run.

Only issue being networks syndicating the content probably won't want to pay as much for the rights, really though they are getting the same thing, the people buying on ITunes same day weren't going to wait weeks for the local network to get around to playing it anyway.

Similar to when big companies violate the GPL. Way too many developers sitting behind desks getting angry when their licensing model gets broken because big companies don't play to the tune of their flute. </devil's advocate>

That's actually why the GPL is ingenius, it uses copyright against itself (or at least against the normal interests of copyright)

My DVD player broke right around the time that I got Netflix/AppleTV (I'm in Canada). I was planning on getting a new one, but turns out I can watch all the movies I want between Netflix and iTunes.

Now I have a giant box of DVD's I spent $1000s on and aren't worth a fraction of what I paid.

Same here, I'd be totally cool with paying more for more content and more HD.

Especially more HBO..

In the future, you can edit your responses. That way you can modify typos and, like this case, make addendums to your comments.

When I want to watch a movie I want to have a copy of it in some fashion.

So the first thing I do is type "purchase mp4 <movie name>" into google. So far I have not been able to acquire a movie in that fashion, so the second attempt is usually obtaining an .mp4 through other means (which do not involve paying for it).

I want an .mp4 because that works on more-or-less on all of my devices. xbox360 from usb-stick, sync it to the ipod, etc..

The article doesn't actually offer any evidence, apart from the fact that Netflix has doubled its subscribers.

Exactly. If anything I'd bet the opposite might be the case. After all, Netflix streaming and Hulu have both been an enabler for a lot of folks to drop their cable subscription altogether(my wife and I have, for one).

The only problem is that there are still a few shows we really want to see (like Game Of Thrones) that we can't find a way to legally acquire. Without cable there is no HBO.

I bet more and more people are going to be turning to piracy to get the content they want when they cut that cable cord.

HBO on a cable subscription is still 15 - 20 clams. Even if it was available streaming or unbundled, that's still a lot more than the cost of netflix.

But I'd be much faster to pay 15-20 than 65+(15 to 20)=80+ and watch 5 channels + HBO.

I think cable misses an opportunity by forcing you to have a heap of channels you don't want just to get the stuff you do. I'd pay somewhere around $20 a month to get the probably 5 or so channels of any interest.

So.. what opportunity are they missing? The opportunity to get less money from their customers? Doesn't sound like much of an opportunity to me.

The opportunity is that they could have more customers. Many people are canceling their cable subscriptions because the price is too high for the value it offers. If cable companies allowed customers to have only a few channels that they cared about for a lower fee, many of these people would keep some level of cable subscription.

The correlation is relevant.

Compare to claims that piracy decreases sales.

But they don't highlight any correlation. A correlation requires two trends, but they only describe one. Is piracy going down? They don't say.

TorrentFreak's content tends to be either really good or really crappy. This article falls into the latter category. Without data to back their claims up it's worthless speculation.

That's one of the reasons I've never liked torrentfreak as a news source. A lot of their writing is also just focusing on worst-case scenarios. If you read torrentfreak daily you'd probably believe the internet is about to collapse as we know it any second.

Thanks pdubroy for finally pointing this out. There is no data to back up the author's hypothesis, so it's just that, a (why-not-plausible) hypothesis. Any discussion further should start with "If this is true, then..."

And yet, there's still nothing in Europe that has "all you can eat" streaming, just $7.50 movie rentals for movies from 2006...

Well, we can access everything through http://www.unblock-us.com/ for $55 a year and the US has been kind enough to provide an USD:EUR exchange rate of almost 3:2 so for the price of a single movie you can get a month long subscription to Netflix.

I wish there was more than one upvote button to click.

If I could rely on a streaming movie from Netflix to play uninterrupted and without flaws from beginning to end, it would be wonderful.

That, and if I could find the movies I want to watch, of course.

The reality for me, at least, is that I cannot watch two hours of streaming video from Netflix without the picture freezing or skipping at some point, even if it's just a little bit.

I love film, and that's unacceptable. I need to either go to the store and get the DVD, rent a download (not streaming) from iTunes, or hit the high seas. I need to watch movies when I want, and I need them to play perfectly.

That rules out Netflix, at least for me, at least for now.

This sounds like a network issue – though that doesn't take away from your point.

In my case, I can Watch Instantly for an entire movie, in HD, without any trouble at all, and it does start almost instantly.

If you're getting the bone, though, that points to the limitations any bandwidth-intensive business has to contend with as they scale. A decent number of potential customers are stuck with sloppy internet. I wonder at what point Netflix's growth becomes inhibited by the shitty state of US ISPs.

More interestingly, I wonder what moves they'll make to get around those limitations. They are a crafty company.

There's really only one answer to that problem: full downloads.

I would tolerate a fair amount of DRM for that functionality. I have to compare it to Steam, where streaming a game isn't an option. Steam's convenience simply leaves no reason for complaint.

> There's really only one answer to that problem: full downloads.

I hope you're wrong.

The real answer should be world-class broadband, instead of the nonsense we're dealing with now. Full downloads are a bandaid but there's no technical reason why streaming can't work perfectly for the people who want it. Telcos are just lazy and have built-in monopolies.

In the meantime, what you're describing isn't a bad bandaid, but waiting for a whole movie to download just isn't as fun as picking then watching instantly.

I agree that adequate broadband would solve this, and so many more problems.

I don't think that will happen for years at best, and then only for urban areas. For the bulk of the population, downloads are the only long term solution.

Let's be honest though, there's no real justification in ignoring the option to download. Again I compare to Steam and their model.

IMO, the short term solution is for Netflix to let you buffer more of the movie. There is a lot to be said for instant play, but if they reserved a reasonable slice of your bandwidth to an ever larger buffer they could all but eliminate stuttering after the first few minute of a movie. I mean they already have adaptive quality based on bandwidth, so I see no reason they can't do the same thing while trying to build up a 10+ minute buffer by the middle of the movie if that's more important to people than a minor change in quality.

Right now I see at most a four minute buffer. That's one thing I would like is the ability to change. Or the ability to specify my bandwidth settings so that I could allow a HD movie or tv show to buffer at higher quality for longer if my connection wasn't good enough and then start watching when there was enough of the show buffered.

It could be a network issue - but one that has followed me through two apartments, three routers, and four computers. The only constants in the equation have been Time Warner Cable and me.

No matter what the cause, however, the fact is that streaming media is vulnerable to network issues, and downloaded media is not. It may take longer to get, but once you have it, you know you have it.

I think your point about sloppy internet is so true. American ISPs are in a sorry state overall.

Well, Time Warner Cable is a terrible network. So I think his point still stands. It might not seem like a big deal but IMO, the difference between occasional High speed internet and Actual High speed internet is huge. I am literally willing to pay several hundred a month extra to have an apartment connected to FIOS on top of what FIOS actually costs.

My favorite (and I do mean my favorite) part of Time Warner is that to connect to my servers at CWRU a 5 min walk away I have to go through an public exchange node in DC. Seriously, Time Warner you and Level3 need to get that peering thing sorted out!

I've got TWC (Milwaukee area) and only very rarely have I had a movie hiccup on Netflix. If I do, refreshing the page usually fixes it.

I watch Netflix using the 3G connection on my phone, sometimes from ridiculous locations. I rarely have issues. I've been really impressed by how reliable it is, actually, and by how effectively it handles unpredictable connections. Amazon Unbox is not as reliable, though it does provide the ability to download it to watch later from hard disk, which is a win over Netflix which has to stream.

But, it sounds like you have higher standards for your movies than I do. I'm surprised a rented DVD provides a better experience, though...the forced previews, the likelihood of scratches leading to skips and freezes and such, make DVDs less valuable to me, even without the pain of having to go get them and return them.

I wonder if that has something to do with your home network or isp? I stream HD netflix constantly through my bluray player and xbox and never have so much as a hiccup.

My girlfriend reviews two movies a day over Watch Instantly for her blog and over the past six months I don't think we've had a single issue with the streaming. For what it's worth, we stream via the PS3, and it works flawlessly.

That's funny. I haven't watched many dvds in awhile because I mostly watching streaming on Netflix. The other day I watched a brand new dvd on my roommate's dvd player. It skipped/stuttered several times during playback and I realized how nice my experience with streaming has been. My memory of watching dvds over the years is littered with such problems or worse (though there were also plenty of movies that displayed without a hitch). I have an occasional problem with Netflix, but they have been pretty far between.

I don't find this surprising. "Piracy" is the expression of a market that is unserved, which is to say that a product is offered at price X, the consumers price is Y which is < X and the risk of piracy is Z which is <= (X - Y).

The MPAA and RIAA and a bounty of plaintiff lawyers are trying to increase the cost of the risk, and people like Netflix are getting the price paid by the consumer below X.

When the inequality ceases to hold, people switch into being paying customers.

Actually, I dont buy this due to the fact that piracy is largly around fresh content, where netflix movie library is fairly old.

Sure, it is getting better titles all the time - but given the fact that hollywood thinks that paying $30 to see a movie at home after it has been in the theatres for 60 (or was it 90) days is a viable price - You will always see piracy of the latest content.

Further - given the quality of many of the movies that get released it is even more reasonable to expect this to continue.

What will be interesting is when we see the first ever movie exclusively made for netflix streaming.

That will denote a new era.

Are you sure the 'fresh content' head dominates the aged long-tail?

The fresh content will dominate top-N lists, sure. It will also dominate headlines, because it will more often be the subject of newsworthy early-leaks and enforcement actions.

But there is so much more old content, and the collection/completist/sampling motivations so important for unauthorized sharing, that I could easily see the old content swamping the new in terms of total copies or total bandwidth.

This is HN, hopefully someone smarter than I could come up with an algorithm that could model content bandwidth activity.

Content creates a spike of activity when it is "born" on the internet.

Content maintains activity over the life of its availability.

Activity may be a function of the contents [age, quality, rating, medium, popularity, relation to other content, etc]

\It is a sequel, part of a set, etc.

It would be interesting to be able to utilize the rating from netflix/imdb to predict how much total activity a piece of content might create.

I could see Netflix's library of older content taking the place of some fresh content pirating. There was a theory that the iPod dropped sales of new music because people now had an easy way to listen to their entire music library and "rediscovered" old songs. This lead to not purchasing new music for a period. Netflix could inspire much the same phenomena with the added bonus of newer content being added.

This I could see, there is an interesting phenomena that happens when you have your entire music collection on your portable device where suddenly you have lots of stuff to listen to without going to new sources. I know I'm personally stuck in the 70's :-) but sites like Pandora help expose me to artists I wouldn't listen to on a whim.

This seeding effect was once the property of radio stations but more and more often I don't listen to the radio.

If a similar effect occurs in video then I would guess there is a market opportunity for a video 'exposure' service ala Pandora for video customers. I wonder if any of the new streaming players are looking at that angle.

"Actually, I dont buy this due to the fact that piracy is largly around fresh content, where netflix movie library is fairly old."

Do you have a citation for this? All of the places where people put numbers to piracy that I've seen (like the lawsuits against various anonymous folks) seem to span a whole range of content from older stuff to newer stuff.

My citation is that I am a Netflix subscriber -- and I have seen content available on the Tubes which is still in the theatres.

I have a tough time finding new, contemporary content in the streaming lib of netflix.

Fair enough, so in context your piracy is all about fresh content :-)

I try to be strictly legit in my digital content. The areas where I skate the line would be when I use the photocopier at the library to make a copy of a paper from a journal which I'm unwilling to pay $50 for a reprint for but I want a copy in my files. That being said, there is money being left on the table. If the reprints were $1 I would definitely buy them, if they were $5 I would still buy the ones I felt were seminal. Just another example of price elasticity in the digital economy.

In my research on this topic most studies posit a more uniform distribution. Some specifically call out first sale doctrine issues like reselling last years version of AutoCAD on ebay. Perhaps our different understandings may be that I'm not thinking specifically of movies.

Makes sense to me.

If you torrent a movie, you have to find it from a decent place (otherwise it could be a completely different movie, shitty release etc) then you may need to find captions for it, if you need them. This kind of thing isn't actually easy for non-technical people.

However I think it comes down to the fact: most people want to pay but shit is just so expensive otherwise.

I don't have a hard time with most of these obstacles anymore. It seems that good quality rips of movies are pretty easy to find. However, I think torrent clients are just slightly beyond the scope of most people's technical expertise.

Indeed. Peer review of files available will notify you of any problems. You only need one person with the technical expertise to set it up.

I used to have my mother set up with torrents. All her tv shows were downloaded automatically. Often times she would watch it live and then delete the file, but if she missed watching it live then she had that file waiting for her. Also if she wanted a movie or older tv show, then all she had to do was click on a link on her desktop and search the website for what she wanted. Click on the torrent and it would download to the proper folder.

These days it's the same except she clicks on something she wants and it is a nzb file. As well newly aired tv shows download for her automatically. I've noticed she doesn't watch as much live anymore. Though she is using Netflix more often now as well.

With netflix streaming you generally can't get captions at all -- unless that's changed recently?

(I'm hard of hearing and their streaming is useless to me except for foreign movies, which do get English subtitles.)

The article fails to establish any causal link between Netflix subscriptions and decrease in bittorrent use. It is just as likely that an increase in Netflix subscriptions is evidence of a renewed interest in movies; and this renewed interest will also produce an increased demand for movies not yet available on Netflix.

Netflix is not significantly killing BitTorrent directly. For one, mainstream BT users are afraid of using BT. Non-mainstream BT users are using usenet 'cause it's just so insanely fast. People's favorite trackers are being shut down left and right and then there's the people who're now streaming legally.

As much as I love Netflix, I still DL for any content it doesn't have (HBO and such), currently airing seasons, and new releases. I just can't justify $5 a movie rental or $1 an episode rental.

On a side note one thing I really need is a way to stream the playoffs. I would pay $$ to stream the playoffs in HD, not just season games.

There are plenty of non-mainstream BT users that use private trackers. Private trackers are superior to Usenet.

I didn't rule out private trackers, I just failed to mention it.

In any case, I personally find Usenet superior to private trackers but I can see it from the other side. They both have pros and cons.

My main gripe with private trackers is that it's not as fast and I have to constantly worry about my ratio and seed. Granted, I pay for Usenet so it's a trade-off.

If you pay for a seedbox, you shouldn't have to worry about ratio. Torrent speeds from a decent tracker and seedbox will be insane (as in maxing out the seedbox's 100 or 1000 megabit pipe), and then you just FTP/SSH the files to your home.

A decent seedbox costs around the same as Usenet access (cheaper if you split a dedicated seedbox with other people). Seedbox speeds will be comparable to Usenet, pre-times will almost always beat Usenet, and you can easily make requests through the tracker (this might also be possible with Usenet communities too).

Also, good trackers have strict uploading and file naming rules, so you don't have to sort through crappy filenames or worry about corrupted files. Granted, there are probably Usenet communities that also address these problems.

There were only a few things torrents were better at when I switched away from them for usenet. Where as usenet was only better for privacy reasons and speed. Now for me it is better in almost every aspect.

Really obscure things. Torrents with such things will have very few seeders/leechers and take a long time to download anyway and never max out bandwidth. With usenet older things were deleted and had to be uploaded again. (Anything older than a few weeks) These days the retention is getting close to three years.

Release times were in favor of torrents. Now the time difference is but a few minutes, some first via a torrent and other via usenet. The fastest of course would be via IRC/FTP.

I spend around $100 a year for usenet access and am unsure the costs of a seedbox. I never have to worry about upload ratio and am not sharing files with anyone else. The primary means of people getting caught for copyright infringement. I also download at the full speed of my connection at all times. Also that connection is encrypted so the ISP can't even see what I am getting. I often get about 500GB a month. I pay about a penny and a half per gigabyte.

One feature that wasn't available to me when I switched was what utorrent had which others may have had as well. RSS downloading of torrents. Was very handy with setting up tv shows and acted very much like a internet tivo. Now I use sabnzbd and sickbeard for such things.

The only thing I still like about torrents is the way it handles errors. It will check the data as it downloads and discard and redownload a section of data needed. With usenet, my client will download all of it and then verify the parts and if there are any errors, it'll auto download the needed par files to repair the damage and then extract the file. Such things aren't needed with a torrent.

One good thing about usenet is that if you have the proper client you can basically stream from it. As the .rar files are downloaded and extracted one by one in order. With torrents parts of the file are downloaded randomly and does not lead it self to be streamed.

For me it's the comfort factor. I stream Netflix through my Wii, so when I watch movies that way I get to sit on my couch and watch my big screen TV.

When I watch stuff on my computer I have to sit in my uncomfortable desk chair and view my small-ish monitor. Getting my whole computer hooked up to my TV seems like a hassle at the moment. On the other hand, Netflix is always ready to go and that usually wins.

There are many devices cheaper than a Wii that will stream video over a network, allowing you to watch your downloaded movies without connecting the computer directly to a TV.

Exactly. I have a WDTV Live Plus that allows me to stream netflix and other services. Also watch any HD movie or tv show downloaded from the internet or a local drive/NAS. There are many such affordable devices out there offering that ability.

From personal experience, this is only partially the case. Netflix IS more convenient and the cost is minimal, but their library is limited. I can download any movie/show I can think of via "alternative" means. That's not the case with Netflix, especially when dealing with foreign media that requires subtitles. Netflix still has a long way to go before I no longer have uTorrent running 24/7.

It will forever be "only partially the case", no matter how successful Netflix becomes. It's only a matter of proportions.

This is true for me personally. The Zune store, which is an all-you-can-eat music service has completely removed the need to download music from torrents/emule. I can just pay 10 bucks a month and enjoy all the content I want.

Netflix follows the same approach and is even more successful at it.

The Zune store is missing so much music that I want to download, so I wouldn't pay for it at any price. Torrent sites always have the best selection.

I'm not sure that "killing" is the best word to use here. I would say that it is definitely making a dent. I've been using Netflix (and hulu) more and more, and torrents less and less.

Being able to instantly watch is a huge incentive for me. I also like to think that my views help the show stay on the air. Realistically, Hulu and Netflix viewcounts probably don't count much, but better than nothing right?

When oh when will I finally be able to become a Netflix customer in Germany without having to deal with proxys, VPNs, etc?

Us Netflix users should do everything in our power to show that Netflix reduces piracy. Then, the studios, which own all of the IP, will work out a reasonable deal and we will have a larger streaming library. I don't care if it's true or false, i'm just tired of the MPAA not getting with the program!

No, reducing piracy actually means nothing to studios. What they care about is making money. If piracy disappeared tomorrow but revenues did not go up, that is a worst-case scenario for the studios. They actually like having an scapegoat for their flagging sales, especially when it's illegal and opens up the opportunity for legal recompense.

The truth is that the content companies are willing to play ball with Netflix because they make money, but they are also scared of Netflix's market power and the fact that they make much less per unit than they do from cable or DVD sales. The fact is Netflix is already capable of slashing someone's cable bill by 90%, and the effect on DVD/Bluray sales is potentially even more dramatic for certain consumers.

"I don't care if it's true or false, i'm just tired of the MPAA not getting with the program!"

I would much rather be honest; and I hope there is accurate, honest, unbiased evidence that can reasonably support the claim.

They just need a better distribution model for new movies and they would kill it completely. If I had to pay, say, 10c for a 24 hour new rental on top of the monthly I'd likely be using it all the time.

Yeah, and the studios just gave up 60% of their profit. They'll never sign that deal.

20c then.

That is still more than they get if we just forage the movie.

You're forgetting to factor in how much money they lose if the people paying $200 a month for PPV and premium channels just switch to paying $15 a month for Netflix.

Correlation != (causation || identity).

For all we know, bittorrent rates could be falling for another reason and American consumers could be responding to this by opting for netflix.

Come on... everybody should know this...

You're right that there could be other reasons for BT rates to be falling, but for me, personally, it's exactly what the article says: I prefer to use Netflix over BT.

Interesting (& not surprising)that Netflix has proven to be a larger deterrent to piracy than anything the studios or government has come up with

Private industry!

People often give reasons such as "Movies are too hard to acquire" to justify pirating movies. And Netflix solves them. Good for Netflix.

The article isn't saying that netflix is really killing torrents but rather that it has the potential to do so.

It's impacting torrent usage. Likewise after I got netflix, I use usenet much less for movies and tv shows that they have available for instant streaming. Or want to download something much higher quality than what netflix offers currently.

Perhaps the studios should consider letting it expand to Europe as well...

Grr. Piracy is still dominating down my way in NZ.

Easy trumps free.

Flat rate also trumps free. That's why Netflix is better than Comcast on-demand (at $1 to $5 per movie) -- I want the ability to turn off a movie after 20 minutes if it is junk, without feeling like I just wasted a couple Washingtons or a Lincoln.

Since the headlines the other day about Netflix overtaking Comcast, I predict that price is going to change very soon (but not so soon that it's seen as a proximate cause).

exactly. it lowers the risk associated with watching new things.

That is a bad news. If the movie industry succeeds in getting rid of privacy, the prices of Netflix subscriptions, BR disks, movie tickets, etc. will go way way up ... And those money won't go anywhere near the artists and other content producers. Plus ppl will be unable to use free software like Linux and Firefox to watch movies.