civvver
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 5,855
Netflix lost ~100,000 subscribers in the US for the first time ever last quarter. They have taken on about $7B in debt to finance all of their new content with an annual profit of around $1B per year. Their user interface has gotten worse with each iteration as it 'hides' a lot of content on the service, their original programming is hit or miss (to be generous) and they are losing movies and TV shows left and right as other services yank their content.
The cable subscription model is poised to make a come back as all of these content houses are setting up their own streaming services and in the early stages of bundling them together. Does anyone think Netflix is in real trouble or can they turn it around? Anyone use their DVD-by-mail service?
They have such strong brand recognition it's hard to see them ever totally going away, but you're right, they got there simply by being first to market. I haven't used their dvd by mail thing since like 2012. My internet got faster and their catalog expanded, it costs so much more to get 3 discs at a time or whatever but with 1 disc at a time it just didn't make sense. With the turn around of sending it back and getting a new movie it was like 3-4 days between movies so you end up paying close to red box prices for a month of movies anyway. Or I'd just go to the library and get them for free. And then with prime and more cable on demand stuff, hbo on demand, it was less necessary to order dvds as well.
I think their content programming is basically throw a bunch of mud at a wall and see what sticks. Their whole goal is to just keep you watching. That's why episodes just begin 3 seconds after the credits start rolling. They don't care what you watch. They have a couple flagship series and movies they want to win rave reviews but the rest I honestly don't think they care.
I think most people will keep it cus it's still cheap comparatively. Yes it's more than prime and more than base hulu and more than disney's expected price, but it's still like $12 a month. When people have phone and internet bills in the $100s of dollars $12 is nothing.
Anyway I actually came here to say I finished season 4 of Peaky Blinders. It was a really great season until the end. Adrien Brody is awesome. The story is pretty good, actually felt real tension, unlike season 3 which I thought was a stretch. But the ending kind of jumped the shark a little. The scale is just growing a tad too big. I wonder when season 5 is.