Before people feel the need to tell us how streaming doesn't suit their needs, can I just jump in and say we already know that, and you can save your time.
Make cool shows, make money: Netflix's SHOCKING TV strategy
Netflix added 2 million US subscribers and made a profit of $2.69m (£1.77m) in the first quarter of 2013, buoyed by its critically acclaimed exclusive drama House of Cards. The DVDs-by-post company now bills itself as an “internet television network” and is edging up in US customer numbers - its subscribers now almost equal …
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Tuesday 23rd April 2013 14:27 GMT Steve Knox
Re: Game the system
No, "gaming the system" is decidedly not abusing the system. It lies exactly on the line between using and abusing the system.
"Gaming the system" refers to using a system's rules as written to generate an individual advantage that was apparently not the rulemakers' intent. In other words, it's following the letter of the law rather than the spirit.
In this case, the spirit of the free trial is that Netflix lets you use their system for a period of time and you perform an honest evaluation with the possibility of opting to pay for future use of the system. The strict rules of the trial, however, do not require you to actually consider continuing the contract for pay.
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Tuesday 23rd April 2013 14:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Steve Knox
"the spirit of the free trial is that Netflix lets you use their system for a period of time and you perform an honest evaluation with the possibility of opting to pay for future use of the system"
So they don't require your credit card details up front?
But of course they do. The whole point of free trials is to ensure that nobody is "opting to pay for future use". This happens automatically. They want your money without you ever quite deciding to give it to them.
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 09:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Game the system
" "Gaming the system" refers to using a system's rules as written to generate an individual advantage that was apparently not the rulemakers' intent. In other words, it's following the letter of the law rather than the spirit."
But ... the spirit was to offer you a free trial for a month, which you can cancel if you want... You didn't exploit a loophole in the rules that let you achieve that, when they didn't intend to offer you that chance. They intended to offer you a free trial. You took them up on it. Errr.... smashing
Even if we use your definition, that's not "generating an individual advantage that was apparently not the rulemakers' intent", is it?
???
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 12:14 GMT Tom 13
Re: Game the system
I've gamed the system in quite a few PC games. (an early Ultima game: create a party, go into town. everybody in party hands everything they own to one guy, save. Repeat with a fresh party 3 times. Delete all the critters with no money. Form a party from the four people who had everything. Go into town. Everybody hands everything to one guy. Repeat until you have 4 guys carrying as much as the limits allow. Now go on your first quest. Eventually find the gizmo that upgrades your stats for free. Since we've already proven gold is free, we now have stats for free too.)
This was gaming the system.
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 12:15 GMT Tom 13
Re: sad to lose a series which still had legs
And the absolute worst is to see a series with a defined set of legs compressed to less than it was designed for, then watch in shock and horror when they decided to expand it back out to its intended length, only to realize they don't have enough plot left. Yes TURNER I'm looking at YOU!
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Tuesday 23rd April 2013 14:27 GMT Pen-y-gors
One program isn't a network
I'm sure Netflix is a wonderful source of entertainment, but I think they need to go a lot further than spending $100m on a single drama series before they count as an 'internet tv network'. Out of interest, how much does the Beeb spend on commissioning original drama each year?
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Tuesday 23rd April 2013 20:32 GMT Dropper
Re: One program isn't a network
You're absolutely right, even if it is two shows it doesn't make them a TV network. However their claim is better substantiated by the amount of money they pour into studios and other TV networks, which totals in the billions of dollars per annum. They money directly funds new movies and TV shows, even if they only produce a few themselves. There are plenty of TV channels in the US that produces no content except maybe a breakfast/entertainment show or two, relying on repeats of syndicated shows for the rest of their programming. House of Cards alone puts Netflix well ahead of these in terms of quality, and their "repeats" (the rest of the content Netflix delivers) is far superior, delivered on-demand and isn't interrupted every ten minutes with commercials.
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 12:15 GMT Tom 13
Re: cancelled by the big networks for no good reason.
It's always canceled for a good reason: the money for the new contract wasn't available from the usual sources.
It was sad to learn Eureka had been canceled, but when I saw them at Dragoncon right after it happened, the cast were philosophical about it. The upfront costs are huge and the money simply wasn't there because the venture people were funding other things in which they had more interest. Remember most networks don't pay for shows, they rent them from the companies that made them. The money has to come from somewhere.
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Tuesday 23rd April 2013 19:43 GMT Serge 2
Standard TV Sucks
The days of standard tv is coming to an inevitable end. The service just doesnt make sense. Its ridden with ads and even pvr wont save it. It just makes a whole a lot more sense to watch what you want and when you want. We are entering the realm of 'universe revolves around me' and thats how it should be when it comes to my own personal time and money.
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 10:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Netflix v Love Film
You realise Amazon Cloud is just a load of (virtualised) servers and networking infrastructure out on the internet, right? Developers employed by the individual companies still have to build efficient apps / tweak server configuration / optimise performance themselves.
Amazon don't keep phoning you up going "You should really turn debug off in web.config you know, and enable compression.... back later with more tips!"
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