DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Netflix reaches streaming deal with Epix

More streaming media via their website ..... and more media heading to my lovely new Roku box ....



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703435104575421192957705982.html?mod=googlenews_wsj


BY SAM SCHECHNER
Netflix Inc., beefing up its menu of movies that can be watched instantly over the Internet, reached a $1 billion deal for films and TV shows from Epix, a pay-cable channel backed by three big studios.

Under the deal announced Tuesday, Netflix subscribers will be able to watch Epix movies through the Internet-streaming service as of Sept. 1.

Netflix will pay Epix roughly $200 million a year during its five-year term, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new cache of movies adds momentum to Netflix's Web-streaming service, escalating the potential for a battle over subscribers with traditional distributors ...

Epix (pronounced "epics") is an American premium television channel that is operated by Studio 3 Partners, a joint venture among Viacom (specifically its subdivision Paramount Pictures), MGM and Lionsgate. Viacom handles operational support, including marketing and affiliate services for the service through its MTV Networks division.

LINK

I guess I'd have to do more research on what movies this means....and how many. We tend to watch more streaming movies than DVD's with our Netflix service (though most are for the 2-year old). It would be great to have more watchable movies to add to my instant queue.

I'll be interested to know, too. I'm not all that impressed with the selection at Netflix.

I've been using a Roku player too, I love it, but I would rather be using a PS3. Hopefully I'll be adding that soon.

I love streaming whole seasons of television programs on Netflix.

Just being able to instantly stream "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter", "Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace" and "Stan Helsing" have made having Netflix entirely worthwhile.
Getting the Epix library to boot is candy on top of the cake

Yes the choice of streaming movies is weak, but I figured that would change as their library grew.

Weak? I was viewing those as a strength!


Did you know that their instant streaming also has ALL of the Toxic Avenger movies?~!!

People like to rip on their quality and selection, but both have vastly improved in the last year. I watch more streaming then I do from dvd....

Indeed. Just the other day I watched "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog", and I watched several episodes from Season 3 of 30 Rock over the weekend.

Oh yes, I most definitely do

"Earth Girls are Easy" is as well.

Don't forget about "Surf Nazi's Must Die!"

Just to let you know ...... they just dropped the price on the Roku players .... with the entry level SD now only $59, their middle HD model (720p) for $69, and the highest XR model (Now 1080p) only $99.

They are also going to update all of the old XR models to 1080p.

I guess that I'm gonna buy another one for upstairs!

And speaking of Netflix, they just released an app on the iPhone to stream movies from your instant queue. There's no way to search new movies and add to your standard queue....but I think it's not really needed, eventually sure, but give me streaming movies!

And it works over 3G nicely. Flawlesly over wi-fi. I watch the Big Lebowski 3 times this weekend.

It's a little box that connects to your TV and to the internet (and can do so wirelessly if you have a wireless router) and streams movies from Netflix, Amazon on Demand, and a bunch of other stuff of differing levels of value.

I love mine.

www.roku.com

Basically if you have a PS3, then just log onto netflix to find out how to get connected. Why spend more money for something that is part of your service to begin with?

I guess you'd have to find a porn stream ...... if there are any.

Roku doesn't have a browser, it just plays the channels that are created and available for it to play. I know that you can build a channel ..... but that's beyond my patience.

I was referring to Kingdawg who specifically asked if it would stream to PS3

Netflix is $8.99 per month.

They include something like 5000 streaming movies and TV episodes as part of a paid membership. (plus DVDs by mail)

If you have a Netflix membership, you can stream Netflix streaming content to a Roku box (which also has Amazon on Demand content, and 48 other channels of varying value and/or interest)

You can also, with a Netflix paid membership, stream movies through an X-Box, PS3, Wii, internet connected Blu Ray players, and other devices shown here.

Whew.

You need a disc that you can get for free from Netflix to stream to the PS3 but, other than that, it can stream movies in your instant queue as a part of your monthly plan. The disc is needed because, at the moment, Microsoft has an exclusive deal with Netflix for "instant" streaming to gaming consoles, so the use of the disc is basically a loophole. It's the same way for the Wii. Biggest limitation of the Wii is that the Wii doesn't support HD video.

Does Netflix have blu rays? And can you download blu ray movies?

King

Yes they have blu rays. The blu ray rates are a little more. They have HD streaming. Quality is pretty good on the streaming.

The BluRays used to be $1 extra regardless of plan, but earlier this year they moved it to a tiered plan where, depending on what your subscription was (which is based on number of discs you can have out at once), you pay so much extra per month, starting at $2 extra for the one-at-a-time plan. I don't have BluRay on mine, but I've heard that their BluRay availability is spotty, and that they often take a long time to ship them out.

None of their services are downloading; rather you stream the video. As you might suspect, the HD streaming is pretty compressed. I'd say that its significantly better than DVD quality, but its not going to look as good as a BluRay will. HD streaming is based on availability as well as your bandwidth restrictions. Standard def streaming also looks pretty good if you have a good connection. When I stream on my TiVo I get a little series of bars indicating the video quality. Any more than a bar or two less than max and it starts to look less-than-stellar, and if that happens I usually restart the stream. FWIW, when I test my Internet speeds at Speedtest.net, they're usually not too great, and I will almost always get HD streaming if the program material allows for it.

Awesome! I stream to my 360 and I rarely watch the DVD's anymore. Their movie selection is weak ... but their TV selection is HUGE!! come on guys. The office, 30 rock, better off ted, weeds, arrested development, futurama, rockos modern life, just to name a few!

With the ROKU Box you can view flikr & facebook photo albums. The Flixr photos look awesome on a HDtv.

jc...

The new AppleTV that was announced today is pretty similar to the Roku boxes, it looks like. It'll stream Netflix, do movie rentals, view Flickr photo albums, stream content from your iTunes library and soon will be able to stream directly from an iPhone or iPod Touch. $99, just like the high-end Roku. Looks intriguing. HDMI only, though.

Hopefully more and more competition will bring better and better products.

I have a feeling that within the next 10 years the entire face of TV/Internet/Entertainment will have changed dramatically.

Oh ..... and RedBox is now looking at streaming media as a subscription based service ......

Could be really good.

http://newteevee.com/2010/07/19/redbox-readying-a-streaming-offering/

Redbox is looking to the web to augment its dollar-a-day DVD rental service, according to a report by Bloomberg. The streaming service, which is expected to be announced by October, could help boost revenues and position Redbox as another competitive threat against Netflix.

Earlier this year, Redbox reportedly surveyed its customers as to whether or not they would sign up for an ultra-cheap, subscription streaming service along the lines of what Netflix currently offers. According to a report from High-Def Digest in April, Redbox was floating the idea of a $3.95 subscription video service that would include unlimited online streaming and four kiosk rentals a month. Redbox rentals typically cost $1 a day, so users would basically get free streaming along with their four rentals.

At $3.95 a month, a streaming offering from Redbox would be less than half the price of the cheapest subscription offering from Netflix, who plans start at $8.99 a month for unlimited streaming and one mailed DVD at a time. But a lot would depend on what kind of content is available through Redbox; in the three years since Netflix first launched its Watch Instantly streaming service, the company has grown its library to 20,000 titles. A competing offering from Redbox would most likely be playing catch-up.

Before rolling out any new online video service, Redbox would also need to build or license the technology to do so. One option would be to license technology from Sonic Solutions, which operates the RoxioNow video platform. RoxioNow is used by Blockbuster, Best Buy, Sears and others to power their online video storefronts. In addition to being accessible through PCs, it is also embedded in a number of TVs, Blu-ray players and other connected devices, which could give Redbox an instant on-ramp to the CE device space. And while existing services from Blockbuster and Best Buy are based on a rental model, RoxioNow also supports subscriptions.

The news of a streaming offering comes at the same time that Netflix is facing a competitive threat from Hulu’s Plus premium subscription offering, which was announced late last month. But Netflix isn’t sitting still; it announced today that it would expand the availability of its own streaming service into Canada later this year.

Just look at how it has changed in the last 5, and then the last 10 and 15 years.

5 years ago, the thought of streaming HD quality movies was a pipedream.
10 years ago, the notion that you could get TV over the internet was, at best, a CEO's goal... not a reality - not even close. Even just voice would have been problematic.

15 years? DVD was an uppity new technology here to save us from VHS, and the internet was really just shedding its baby teeth.


10 years from now.... hell, its anyone's guess.

heh, to fuel the fire a bit:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD#5D_DVD

Quote:

---

5D DVD

The 5D DVD, being developed in the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, uses a multilaser system to encode and read data on multiple layers. Disc capacities are estimated at up to 10 terabytes, and the technology could be commercially ready within ten years.[

---

For the non-geek... 10TB is 400 times the capacity of a standard Blu-Ray disc.

That sounds awesome now, but in 15 years, 10TB won't be anything special. You can get a laptop today with a TB hard drive in it, whereas when I bought my first laptop 11 years ago (a $3000, top of the line Dell Inspiron with BOTH 3.5" floppy AND DVD, as well as an S-Video output), it came with a whopping 6 GB hard drive. Imagine where SSD drives will be 15 years from now. That is assuming, of course, that personal computers use anything similar in terms of architecture to what they have now.

The capacity of a hard drive vs the capacity of an optical drive have always been drastically different.


One (hard drive) is bulk storage while the other is portable, removable media storage.