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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-show-what-you-ain't-got dept.

Netflix is raising another $1.6bn (£1.2bn) from investors to finance new shows and possibly make acquisitions.

The video streaming service plans to spend up to $8bn on content next year to compete with fast-growing rivals.

Netflix will issue bonds to investors, although the interest rate it will pay has yet to be decided, the company said in a statement.

Netflix plans to release 80 films next year, but some analysts are wary about its cash burn and debt interest costs.

The company's latest debt fundraising is its largest so far, and the fourth time in three years it has raised more than $1bn by issuing bonds.

Earlier this month, Netflix said it would raise prices in countries including the UK and US for the first time in two years.

Has Netflix added enough original material to make up for the licensed content they've dropped and the price increase they mean to enact?


Original Submission

Related Stories

Netflix Burns More Cash, Set to Spend $8 Billion on Original Content in 2018 26 comments

Netflix burns cash at a record pace, but investors love it

In its third quarter earnings statement on Tuesday, the company reported negative free cash flow of $859 million, the biggest figure in its history. Netflix continues to increase spending on original content as it seeks to compete with other players like Hulu, HBO and planned streaming services like Disney's, scheduled for next year. Netflix will reportedly spend at least $8 billion on content in 2018.

It would be a shame if someone were to pirate or illicitly stream that content.

Netflix has criticized the EU's local content quotas:

Netflix used its third quarter earnings report to criticize the European Union over a new content quota for streaming services. The EU, writes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in the report, is "currently rewriting its audio visual rules" that will demand streaming services like Netflix "devote a minimum of 30 percent of their catalog to European works." Netflix's report acknowledged that catering to a specific audience encouraged more regional original programming for international audiences, but suggested that enforcing quotas on a streaming service could have unwanted negative effects.

Netflix is already set to spend $1 billion on European content this year.

Also at MarketWatch.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:17PM (37 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:17PM (#587152)

    Society is going to shift away from passive content. At best, society will give up consuming fake people's stories, and start making their own by living; at worst, people will become absorbed in immersive interactive content.

    My reasoning is that there are only so many stories; the entertainment industry relies on new experiences—which is why there's a lot of content geared towards children. However, with so much content available now, it's very easy to max out on all of the experiences; after a while, there's just nothing new to observe or learn or experience; the content becomes the same ol' thing with slightly different costumes. When the adults move on, they'll take their children with them.

    So, unless this billion+ dollars gets put into new kinds of interactive technology, I doubt there's much more room to grow.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:31PM (12 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:31PM (#587156)

      That's not what's gonna kill Netflix short-term.
      The end of Net neutrality, bringing low-low caps on anything not rubber-stamped by Comcast or ATT will, at least in the US.
      Netflix will have to raise their prices to pay off the ISPs, until they're just one more cable-like choice...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:39PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:39PM (#587161)

        It will free people to search for new ways to pass data around.

        Email, wikipedia reading, txt messaging, etc., doesn't need 10 Gbps down/up links, or even wired last-mile networking.

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:49PM (4 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:49PM (#587166)

        I don't think so.

        People are slowly but steadily leaving cable TV as the oldest generation dies out, and younger generations don't see the value in something where they can't skip the commercials (without a DVR), can't pick what to watch when, it has an utterly archaic UI, etc. But people are showing that they're perfectly happy to spend good money on streaming services: Netflix, Amazon video, iTunes/Apple, and now with Star Trek: Discovery, CBS has found people are perfectly willing to sign up in hordes for a $6/month service just to watch a single big-budget TV show with angry, unlikeable characters that are at each others' throats (STD is such a success that CBS has already renewed it for a 2nd season).

        There's a lot of leeway for Netflix to jack up its prices: it could cost just as much as a premium cable subscription and lots of people will stick with it, because it still offers a level of service that you'll never get with cable TV: a convenient web interface that even keeps track of which episodes you've watched, for instance, with descriptions, suggestions, etc., and truly on-demand viewing at very high video-quality levels. You just won't ever get that with cable TV; the technology is archaic and obsolete and can't be changed. Now that people have had a taste of this, they don't want to go back to the old concept of "channels" and "timeslots", and they sure as hell don't want to watch commercials. So Netflix has a lot of room to raise prices, and people have shown that they're willing to spend a lot of money on digital services billed monthly: XM radio, Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, etc.

        Personally, I canceled my Netflix sub a while ago because I just wasn't using it much, and didn't appreciate stuff constantly coming and going, and so much stuff being DVD-only, but apparently most people are still happy to subscribe.

        • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:53AM (1 child)

          by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:53AM (#587195)

          I love Netflix, except for how small their library is. When something new comes out that I find I like I'll binge the whole series, then there's nothing else worth watching until something else good comes out.

          --
          The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
          • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:23PM

            by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:23PM (#587378)

            There's a new season of Stranger Things on friday. Resub!

            --
            SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
        • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:02PM (1 child)

          by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:02PM (#587473) Journal

          ...and didn't appreciate stuff constantly coming and going...

          Of course, if they make their own content, it doesn't need to come and go anymore.

          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:03PM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:03PM (#587497)

            Right, but it's silly to think that one production company is going to make all the stuff I'll want to watch, so instead we'll wind up with lots of different, incompatible streaming services, and you'll have to have subscriptions to all of them just because there's one (and only one) show on each you want to watch (CBS All Access, HBO Go, etc.).

            The whole point of Netflix was that they'd have pretty much everything you wanted to watch in one place, for one monthly price.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:57PM (4 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:57PM (#587172) Journal

        Netflix's per-subscriber bandwidth costs are lessening over time.

        Bandwidth is still getting cheaper, equipment gets better although you have to buy it, and new video standards [wikipedia.org] lower the bitrate.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:01AM (3 children)

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:01AM (#587175)

          None of which matters if the big ISPs want you dead and throttle you, with the FCC's blessing.
          Anticompetitive practices are not delusions, conspiracies or speculation, but proven historical facts.

          • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:28AM (1 child)

            by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:28AM (#587230)

            Take your net neutrality shilling elsewhere. Netflix made peace with big cable years ago, which is why they no longer care about the issue. They colocate "Netflix in a box" appliances in all the ISP central offices. Cable boxes are building in Netflix support so you don't even need a third party device (i.e. Roku/XBox) to watch so they can keep you in their UI. Soon enough Netflix won't even count toward your bandwidth cap. And of course that means the cable co can see what you watch. Netflix is well on the road to becoming another HBO and the cable companies are all too happy to assist that transition. They know how to monetize that. Soon you will be able to subscribe to Netflix through the cable company like you do HBO and have it all on one bill.

            People think the cable company is obsolete. Nah, they own the pipe most people would use to watch any replacement with, as any of them get big they will partner up with them as just another content outlet, exactly like they carry HBO, Showtime, NICK, CNN, FNC, etc. Netflix will eventually just be another tranche of on demand programming merged into their menus. And if you have the Tivo co-branded cable box / DVR it will even look and work nice. And to make the convergence complete, don't be shocked when a NetFlix channel pops up on your channel grid snuggled in with the other premium channels.

            • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:22PM

              by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:22PM (#587438)

              You're looking at it backwards, unsurprisingly.

              Netflix wants to go straight to the consumer, not be just another HBO.
              Big cable can't prevent it under Net Neutrality rules, so they Embrace for now, to reduce cord-cutting. Big cable owns HBO, showtime and the others. Netflix is an annoying competitor threatening the oligopoly and its fat margins.
              As soon as your ISP, who wants to sell you their own overpriced video service, is no longer required to treat Netflix packets fairly, why the fuck would they?

              Netflix would need to be as profitable for the ISPs as their own service, then the bean counters would point out that not investing their own money is better. But being as expensive as HBO without getting the newest Hollywood blockbusters? Why would the customers watch?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:14PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:14PM (#587376)

            I can't remember who it is but someone on SN has this sig: "It's not a conspiracy, it's a plot!"

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:38PM (15 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:38PM (#587160)

      Hahahaha!!! That's pretty funny. Seriously, you are really deluded. Have you not noticed how popular reality TV has been for the last 10-15 years? No, society is not going to become like ST:TNG where people no longer sit around watching mindless garbage like Honey Boo Boo and The Kardashians, and instead entertain themselves and each other by playing classical concerts and re-enacting detective novels on the Holodeck. (What made ST:TNG such a great show is that it showed humans as *we wish they were*, not as they actually are.)

      Just look at Hollywood movies these day: it's all sequels, remakes, more installments in decades-old franchises, etc. You probably decry this, as do I. Yet look at the revenue numbers: Hollywood is making an absolute killing by following this formula. People just can't get enough of comic book movies, or remakes of comic book movies, or sequels to remakes of comic book movies, etc. Despite a huge number of people complaining about how bad the theater experience has gotten these days, they're selling more box-office tickets than ever before. So obviously, people like you and me are not the target audience, and they really don't need our support. All evidence shows that the general public really is happy to pay high ticket (and concession) prices to watch the "same ol' thing with slightly different costumes".

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:43PM (14 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:43PM (#587163)

        All of that eye-popping revenue is flowing out of third-world countries, like China. They're like the small children of the civilization, stumbling upon consumer entertainment for the first time, and finding it magically absorbing.

        Eventually, their societies too will mature, and that's when the shit will hit the fan; it may take 3 decades, but in relatively short order, Netflix and its ilk will be gone.

        Make your easy money while you can!

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:49PM (3 children)

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:49PM (#587165) Journal

          You have people out there paying for Netflix, putting something on, and then working on a computer or falling asleep. Netflix gets their cut all the same. They can even measure and manage this behavior [soylentnews.org].

          Netflix must have more than 3 decades left in them because they are doing just fine with English speakers right now. They aren't even relevant in China. [fool.com]

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:14AM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:14AM (#587181)

            Try again.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:19PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:19PM (#587402)

              One person has supporting links, and you have your opinion. "Try again" is a pretty lame response, maybe yiy should try again!

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:02PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:02PM (#587427)

                Try again.

        • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:59PM (9 children)

          by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:59PM (#587174) Homepage Journal

          Instead say "Developing Nation".

          --
          Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:06AM (8 children)

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:06AM (#587177) Journal

            Nah, "Third World" is the right term to use. It means "backward," and that ought to sting. If it doesn't sting, then they have no reason to strive to better themselves. After all being poor and backward because they cannot curb their corruption or cooperate long enough to build their country up has failed thus far to spur them to progress. Shame. They need to feel shame, too.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jelizondo on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:33AM (3 children)

              by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:33AM (#587185) Journal

              Third world does not mean ‘backwards’. I’m sure you are old enough to remember when there was the West (1st world), the Commies (2nd world) and yes, the third world, which were all those countries not in the “west” or “commies”.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:04AM (2 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:04AM (#587196)

                Clearly, if it ain't "First World", then it's backwards.

                • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:13AM (1 child)

                  by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:13AM (#587222) Journal

                  Clearly, the current "First World" is going backwards.

                  --
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:27AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:27AM (#587229)

                    There. Settled.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:43PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:43PM (#587448)

              Pretty sure they would be second world:
              http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/third-world.asp [investopedia.com]

            • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:07PM (2 children)

              by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:07PM (#587498)

              Actually, it's a somewhat stupid term to use, because you'd have to be a complete idiot to think that Switzerland is a "backwards" country, yet it absolutely does qualify for "third world" status because it was never aligned with either the USA or USSR. Same goes for Norway.

              • (Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday October 26 2017, @01:54AM (1 child)

                by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 26 2017, @01:54AM (#587664) Journal

                But it gets better, Japan was considered to be in the “West”… Never trust politicians or ideologues, they twist words so they can twist your mind.

                • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 26 2017, @02:14AM

                  by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday October 26 2017, @02:14AM (#587669)

                  In many way, Japan *is* part of the West. In case you forgot, it was occupied by the US for some time, its Constitution was written by the US, and it's one of the US's strongest allies now, and the US is their biggest trading partner. Their modern culture borrows heavily from American culture. Politically and militarily, they're very much aligned with "the west".

                  No one's trying to "twist your mind", these labels exist for a reason. The first/second/third-world stuff is really just obsolete, and became that way the day the Soviet Union collapsed. It was just a way of designating which countries were aligned with either side, or neither side. These days it just doesn't make sense because there is no more "second world".

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:43PM (4 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:43PM (#587164) Journal

      Passive VR content: the ultimate laziness from a consumer standpoint (although not a creator standpoint).

      Taking full advantage of 360 degrees requires a new standard in cinematography and direction. Multiple things may be happening at once within "the frame". Subtle details add to the illusion or distract if absent.

      Adding interactivity morphs it from film to game development. Powerful AI/computers will be needed to create an entire virtual world that responds to the player's actions, unless everything is very narrowly scripted with only a few choices.

      Graphics still has a long way to go to make open world video games look as good as pre-rendered CGI films (pick whichever one you think looks the best for the comparison, maybe an Avengers film, since they will only be getting better).

      But back to your assessment of Netflix. Netflix is doing just fine [soylentnews.org]. If Netflix runs into trouble in the next 5 years, it will probably be because of its many competitors (Amazon, Hulu, Apple, Google/YouTube, Disney, etc.) rather than the societal shift you identify. Society will not give up consuming "fake people's stories". What might happen is that niche content and curation (sifting through all the content to find the things someone is likely to enjoy) becomes more important. We aren't living in an era where 121 million people tune into the season finale (M.A.S.H.). We are living in an era with hundreds of channels, streaming platforms like Netflix tailoring content for narrow and binge-y audiences, and every bit of foreign content being subtitled within hours of release.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:58PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:58PM (#587173)

        The 1960s hippies represented the first attempt, but their lifestyle was too unproductive to catch on.

        In the coming years, we'll see first world societies' tear down the War on Drugs, and people will begin experimenting once again with their states of consciousness, especially by using psychedelics. I think we'll see the Church of Consciousness spring up, where people not only investigate what it means to be sentient, but also engage in drug-related rituals that are scientifically proven to enhance visceral spiritual experiences.

        Go onto YouTube and binge watch discussions about psychedelics, especially about DMT breakthroughs and microdosing. The productive people of the world are starting to get interested in this stuff, and that's what will lead to humanity finally launching out of its hollow, spiritless malaise.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:43AM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:43AM (#587191) Journal

          Maybe. I doubt that much will happen other than getting DMT, LSD, et al. onto Schedule II down from Schedule I.

          Can people have visceral spirtual experiences when using psychedelics while Netflix/mindless entertainment is playing in the same room? Or does Netflix make it an invalid and "unproductive" use of psychedelics? What about smoking dank weed while watching Netflix?

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:02AM (1 child)

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:02AM (#587176) Homepage Journal

        I've only seen one. It was like something out of dungeons and dragons.

        3-D works well if it is used subtly, but what we actually find is the one I saw, in which a rope is lowered down a whole, but appears to be horizontally appearing out of the screen then through my forehead.

        I have a 3D pr0n magazine. They're not Playboy shots. It's all women with freakishly huge breasts pointing at the camera.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:55PM (1 child)

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:55PM (#587170) Homepage Journal

      Hollywood refers to its insatiable demand for new scripts as The Monster.

      I expect that's why there are so many remakes.

      --
      Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:06AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:06AM (#587178)

        Why do you think Hollywood is such a soulless cesspool of former human beings?

        They were binge watching fake people's stories before Netflix made it mainstream; for them, there's nothing new to experience, and so they seek out unspeakable debauchery as do the centuries-old vampires.

        What do you think will happen when most of the U.S. and then the Third World reaches that point? I shudder to think about it.

        Maybe a New Religion really will be the result and the solution. [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:33AM

      by anotherblackhat (4722) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:33AM (#587206)

      Society is going to shift away from passive content.

      Seems doubtful, society has been consuming passive content for over 2000 years, and it shows no sign of going away.
      We've had interactive content for a long time too (hookers and blackjack come to mind), and it's not going to go away either.

      Americans watch "TV" an average of 33 hours a week.
      The average "share" is less than 10 million, so one estimate of demand is 33 shows * 52 week/year * 300 million people /10 million people per = 50,000 episode a year.
      At an average cost of $3 million an episode that's $150 billion.
      We're not even saturating demand yet.

  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:53PM (2 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:53PM (#587169) Homepage Journal

    I listen to music.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:10AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:10AM (#587179)
      I play music.








      ... and thereby listen to it. Alone. Like a loser.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by fishybell on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:39AM (11 children)

    by fishybell (3156) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:39AM (#587189)

    As apparently the only one here willing to admit they watch Netflix, I guess I'll add my two cents:

    No. They need to stop dropping non-original content. Their original content can be great (see Stranger Things), but I subscribe for mostly non-original content.

    I don't mind waiting a year for the content to arrive on Netflix, but I am annoyed when a show I've been watching for years just up and leaves.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by goodie on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:09AM (5 children)

      by goodie (1877) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:09AM (#587197) Journal

      Yep, same here. If the stuff I want to watch was not being removed in a regular basis, then I'd be much happier (my kids would also like to know why suddenly entire seasons of their cartoons disappear, leaving me trying to explain a 3 and a 5 year old that I'm not the one responsible for this :D). Yes they are increasing rates on a regular basis but we are still ways behind standard cable fees for a lot of ad-free content.

      I speculate that eventually Netflix will have ads, except for premium customers or something like that. Then premium customers will have fewer ads than others etc. As far as I am concerned, their original content is, in most cases, not that impressive. There are exceptions that have been really successful (Stranger things, House of cards etc.) but there is also a lot of stuff that sucks in my opinion.

      A few years back they had a lot of lesser known movies and series that I loved to watch. I discovered Scrotal Recall this way and really dug that show. Same with Korean and other ASian movies. A lot of the good stuff has been removed and is replaced by mainstream crap that most Netflix viewers probably don't watch after seeing the preview image.

      Anyway, still miles better than cable. Every time I travel and turn on a tv in a hotel, I am baffled by the level of the crap they show and the amount of ads and their frequency. I am very happy I moved out of that 5 years ago :).

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:30PM (4 children)

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:30PM (#587406) Journal

        Yep, same here. If the stuff I want to watch was not being removed in a regular basis, then I'd be much happier (my kids would also like to know why suddenly entire seasons of their cartoons disappear, leaving me trying to explain a 3 and a 5 year old that I'm not the one responsible for this :D). Yes they are increasing rates on a regular basis but we are still ways behind standard cable fees for a lot of ad-free content.

        That's partly why we dropped Netflix, too. It wasn't expensive, but pulling it up every other day to find the thing the kids wanted to watch had vanished produced caterwauling to wake the dead. We had Amazon Prime on the Roky by default, so switched to that. It, too, has been completely mined out now so we tell the kids to go read books or do crafts.

        A few years back they had a lot of lesser known movies and series that I loved to watch. I discovered Scrotal Recall this way and really dug that show. Same with Korean and other ASian movies. A lot of the good stuff has been removed and is replaced by mainstream crap that most Netflix viewers probably don't watch after seeing the preview image.

        We had this experience as well. It was fun seeing productions from cultures that you usually don't get to see in the US. But all that content kept inexplicably vanishing, too. We would have kept Netflix had they kept that sort of content around.

        All in all it feels like passive entertainment has reached its limit, though. Gaming, VR may step in and fill the entertainment void, but there's also an outside chance people may switch all that off and go outside and have real adventures instead.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:11PM (3 children)

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:11PM (#587499)

          It wasn't expensive, but pulling it up every other day to find the thing the kids wanted to watch had vanished produced caterwauling to wake the dead.
          It, too, has been completely mined out now so we tell the kids to go read books or do crafts.

          These are all good and well, but you do seem to be forgetting one fairly reliable way of getting video content where you don't have to worry about it disappearing: BT. Of course it's not nearly as convenient, but once you have it, you'll always have it unless your HD crashes and you didn't bother doing backups.

          • (Score: 2) by goodie on Thursday October 26 2017, @12:29AM (2 children)

            by goodie (1877) on Thursday October 26 2017, @12:29AM (#587636) Journal

            See as much as I agree, this is one area where Netflix managed to do a good job at making me stop doing BT. Back then, I bought a Roku 3, hooked it up with my universal remote, put the Netflix channel on it, and done. I also have a pi that I use to store my ripped DVDs and it's all good and well but curating a library takes time when you have a backlog of stuff. So it's not really pretty. And I haven'T had the time to set up the remote because I don'T have a dongle for USB-IR. 10 years ago I would have loved to hack it up. Now, with work, kids etc. this is not where I want to invest my time. But BT, newgroups etc. I haven't touched that stuff for 5 years at least. And I don't miss it. My download cap would not allow me to download real blu-ray rips on a regular basis anyway.

            • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 26 2017, @02:18AM

              by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday October 26 2017, @02:18AM (#587671)

              I don't disagree about the convenience that Netflix offered. But it just isn't as good any more; too much content has disappeared, and they're focusing more on their own in-house stuff. So for some, that could very well drive them back to BT.

              Also, I'm not sure how "curating a library" takes much time. Finding stuff and downloading it takes some time, but once it's downloaded, you just stick it on your media server or whatever and you're done with it. But yeah, setting up a fancy system with remote to view that library would take some time to set up. Surely a Roku or something like that could connect to a NAS and give you library access that way?

            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Thursday October 26 2017, @10:08AM

              by Aiwendil (531) on Thursday October 26 2017, @10:08AM (#587747) Journal

              USB-IR isn't really necessary on the RPi unless you want to do something fancy. My RPi w Kodi is controlled with the unused buttons on my TV remote* (or via the Kodi smartphone app (kodi official remote, used to use yatsee until its UI downgrade a year ago).

              * = lirc and an ir-reciever is enough, I used this guide [alexba.in] and it took me less than half an hour (via ssh from smartphone) to set it up (actually used an IR-kit fir arduino, similar to the Adafruit kit [adafruit.com]).
              (Ok, I really have it set up for four remotes: tv, my old dvd-player remote, one of the programmable modes on the hifi-remote and the crappy remote that came with the reciever [copied it into a better remote] (takes 2-5minutes per remote you want to set up after the first))

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:35AM (#587209)
      The dropping of original content is in many cases not even Netflix's fault either. A lot of the time this happens because the bastards they license the content from get too greedy, and Netflix can't afford to keep the license.
    • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday October 25 2017, @10:29AM

      by Aiwendil (531) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @10:29AM (#587318) Journal

      Another thing they should do is to add public domain movies

      (In case anyone wonders if this will matter - in parts of the world* world this will cover the silent movie era, and for that matter quite a few Akira Kurosawa** movies, and also pretty much all german movies made before 1945 (spoils of war, however restoration and such are a different matter)

      * = in usa the cutoff before it gets flakey is 1923, so most of the era covered even there
      ** = japan considers the cutoff to be 1953 so for instance Roshomon is in PD there.)

    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:21PM (2 children)

      by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:21PM (#587479) Journal

      Disagree. Most of what I watch these days are either Netflix originals or Amazon originals, and I know the Amazon stuff wouldn't be hitting Netflix no matter what since they're in pretty direct competition. There's one or two decent shows on major networks still but not much. I watch more original content from either Netflix OR Amazon than from every traditional network combined.

      What I'd really love is for Netflix to drop the TV mimicry. It's not a television network, people are binging entire seasons at once, so what exactly is the purpose of dividing into segments of exactly 23 or 48 minutes? Gimme a 6 hour chunk of video with embedded tags marking what the director considers to be natural stopping points. You could even have different kinds of tags -- so I can tell it "Play until 9pm and end on a cliffhanger" or "Play around 50 minutes and stop somewhere with fewer loose ends". Plus that would probably help Netflix make piracy a bit more difficult...existing media library software wouldn't be able to break those files up, the stopping points wouldn't be as easily copied as the video itself, you'd have to download the entire season at once instead of getting individual episodes OR you'd have different and incompatible pirated versions splitting things at different points...I really don't understand why nobody has tried that yet...

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:19PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:19PM (#587501)

        I think there's a reason TV shows are usually 30 or 60 minutes, and movies are usually 90-120, and it's not just because of business efficiency. For evening entertainment, an hour is frequently about as long as people want to sit down and watch something, or perhaps 2. For a shorter story, an hour is a good amount of time to tell the story without being too rushed, and 2 hours is good for longer stories ("movies"). Notice that not that many movies push far past the 2-hour mark, and when they do, they're usually some kind of big-budget epic like LotR, not some kind of comedy. Most people just don't want to spend that much time watching a movie.

        I don't think you're going to see a substantial change from the easily-digested 1-hour episode format any time soon. It's not too short, not too long, and makes it easy to remember where you were.

      • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday October 25 2017, @10:10PM

        by Aiwendil (531) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @10:10PM (#587591) Journal

        The "stopping points" would just be mapped out as timestamps (kinda like how dvd-chapters are - see mkv).

        Also, since most movies (with the exception of an Andy Warhol all the movies I've seen are) tend to be divided into natural chapters this will be the natural point to split it.

        And it wouldn't take long until files got named with timestamps and players parsing it and just preload the next file to switch over when reaching the time indicated by the next file (this practice isn't that uncommon if you split and merge movie-files and good players don't even shut down the video out in between [so with a fast enough drive (or smart buffering) this is seamless]).

        So, no issue for pirates.
        -

        But the suggestion has three other advantages [in addition to the flexible playmodes] 1) only one intro to skip. 2) fewer "in previous epusode" 3) fewer "in next episode"

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