Friday, August 07, 2009

Netflix is secretive

Netflix is secretive, article. Pretty interesting, finding one of their sorting warehouses is like Finding Waldo for adults. Really well hidden, on purpose.

Netflix (and, I imagine, the UK equivalent, LoveFilm) is a huge business. And I can understand why. So far I have not been tempted to replace my DVD rental with over-priced and time-limited online rental services (I've watched exactly one rented movie via my Apple TV). But it's hard to imagine this will not have changed dramatically in ten years time. One way or another. The PO and scratched discs are simply unnecessary expenses.

5 comments:

Alex said...

At the moment Netflix on-line delivery, to the best machine in our house, no wi-fi, is very watchable on a traditional TV, but below DVD standard. No subtitles are delivered, except on foreign language films. Chapter searching is great on-line, and only a 30-60 second lag to start on my oldest laptop.

Blu-Ray is probably a pipe dream for on-line delivery, unless it's downloaded in advance and buffered on your player.

In the last two years I've only had one unwatchable DVD, cracked from center to edge. The replacement was sent as soon as I emailed them, not as soon as they received the damaged disc.

One film had to come from another hub (they have some rare films), and to offset the delivery delay they sent me an extra list from my queue.

I'm glad Netflix is so popular, it must be helping to support the post office, a resource that I want to have, though I use it less often than I used to.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yeah, it's nice to have a mail box.

I can play HD films in real time on my Apple TV on my pipe.

Alex said...

I'm assuming you're not using the economy cable package ;-)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Strewth.

And also, Apple's Akmai servers tend to be amongst the fastest.

Patrick said...

Love netflix, use it both through the mail and over the 'net. Thanks for the behind the scenes (hope you don't mind---twittered it.)