Netflix’s Move Onto the Web Stirs Rivalries

Just a side-note.. I actually went through christiancinema dot com for dvd rental as I was never interested in netflix, but I realized that the wii has an app for that :) and I signed up for the free trial.. turns out netflix streaming selection sucks as the selection is minimal. Now concerning dvd's they have more than enough. netflix: I'm still not switching.

Seeing as canonical/ubuntu makes good use of amazon perhaps they'll break into the streaming video business soon? Would be nice + convenient.

Our DVD player broke a couple weeks ago. I got a good deal on a DVD player with built-in Netflix and Blockbuster, but I still paid more than for a regular DVD player. What a load of garbage. I had assumed that I would not find everything online, but I did expect that much of the recent stuff would be available. Nope. What a joke. If not for the Pandora streaming, I would really have been upset that I blew $30 for features I don't use.

Ubuntu really stands a chance if they offer streaming video to "the other 95% of the world" which NetFlix neglects currently.

I think NetFlix isn't to blame, and the reason is Hollywood though. If so, screw them; I think you can reach lots of people if you work with Bollywood instead. In contrary to Hollywood, Bollywood doesn't care about "making profits", so probably it's easier to make a deal. Less money for sure, but a market that's up for taking! IIRC, after Hollywood, Thailand was the biggest movie-market in the world, may be interesting as well. Moreover, those countries are easier to reach with Linux, and when selling Android in such countries, I think it's easier to do so "without paying $10 ransom to MS" than in 'our' Western countries.

Problem would probably be 'micropayments' again, otherwise such an idea might work, given rampant piracy in those countries (so 'local' movie studios will be happy if they can sell their vids for less than a dollar I guess).

Agreed about NetFlix and their abominable movie search function. The trick I used was to put the movie I wanted to see at the top of my streaming queue, then it would show up on the wii relatively easy to find.

> I think NetFlix isn't to blame, and the reason is Hollywood though.

When I wrote to NetFlix asking why oh why they used Sternlight for their streaming, they said it was because it was the only Copyright enabled system their suppliers would trust.

NB, Disney has taken to making their DVDs unplayable in anything but a "standard" DVD player. They have serious file system problems, reporting 50GB on the DVD and other mistakes. A regular DVD player simply skips the errors and moves on.

But when I tried to make a fair-use backup of my daughter's "The Great Fairy Rescue" for example, choke-sputter-gasp, cannot read disk.

So much for "Oh, you scratched the heck out of it and it won't play any more? Good thing that's a backup rather than the original. Throw that out, I'll go get the original and you can watch it this afternoon."

And I fully expect the "legal vs pirated dvd" was inspired by what Disney does to their so-called "movies".

http://humorpix.com/pictures/Legal_vs_pirated_DVD

> Disney has taken to making their DVDs unplayable in anything but a "standard" DVD player.

For DVD's at least, the "analog hole" is still an effective. Simply feed the video out from the DVD player into a video capture card. A pain, yes, but...

Of course, the simplest solution to that problem is simply not to buy anything from Disney.

> For DVD's at least, the "analog hole" is still an effective.

I'm sure that's how the same movies show up on the open 'Net, regardless of what it does to legitimate purchasers.

If all I wanted was to "make a copy", I'd hardly be complaining about it. What I want is access to the product I bought.

I know, I know, I didn't "buy" anything, I merely licened it under whatever restrictions they care to put in the middle of their unreadably long EULA.

@ jdixon:

You can try saving the video stream in VLC... Has to be done in real-time, but you should be able to transcode the result to what you want.

JaseP,

That is if VLC will play it. With the disk errors deliberately built in, my computer DVD drive sits there reporting disk errors, rather than ignoring/skipping them and moving on.

For DVD's at least, the "analog hole" is still an effective

You know what else is effective? Waiting a bit and getting the rip from BT Junkie.

Not that I would EVER condone such an activity...

BTW...there's a great quality cam of Disney's "Tangled". My nieces watched it played through a small media center I built for them.

Ahem, I mean, they would have watched it on a small media center I built for them...had I actually broken the law and downloaded it.

Scr#w Sony and Disney.

Of course I mean that in a loving and supportive way.

h

Quoting:When I wrote to NetFlix asking why oh why they used Sternlight for their streaming, they said it was because it was the only Copyright enabled system their suppliers would trust.

I call BS on netflix. My roku box which streams videos from netflix runs - TA DA! (drumroll...) Linux!

I feel no love for netflix, and will dump them as soon as I get around to selecting a replacement.

I had forgotten about the roku box. Now to roam the blogs searching for real life reviews of this device!

Any other similar devices + netflix streaming alternatives feel free to /reply and post.

@klh -

I like the roku box - it's always on, and just works. While I've used it only for netflix so far, I see on the menu that there are several other potential sources of streaming video including amazon and others. My only gripe with netflix streaming is that there are no subtitles available.