To the commenters above who are disappointed with their country's catalog and plan to cancel their trial: sorry to see you go, but we did the best we could for launch. We make sure canceling is easy, just go to the account page on the website.
As you can imagine, buying the rights for titles in a new region is expensive, so we start off with a giant loss on the balance sheet. But as we get more members we'll be able to buy more content in each country. Here's a list of a few dozen big-name titles that are coming later this year [1]. So we hope you come back soon.
About the patchwork availability - that's not what we want, it's just what was for sale. In the recent past the only buyers of TV shows were just buying for their own country - like country-wide TV networks. For each show, that left a random set of regions where the license was still available. We're trying to get global licenses for everything, so it'll gradually become consistent country-by-country.
> buying the rights for titles in a new region is expensive, so we start off with a giant loss on the balance sheet. But as we get more members we'll be able to buy more content in each country
Sorry to pick on your comment, but I resent (maybe a strong word) businesses telling me things like this: Unless you'll give me something extra when you make massive profits (a discounted subscription? shares?) then don't expect me to make sacrifices for you when you have losses or cash flow problems. Why should I fund your business? Am I an investor? Where is my return? You're selling a service for a price; if the service has problems, the reason why generally is not the customer's concern - that's an internal issue.
I agree with you that businesses shouldn't excuse themselves, but I don't see that happening here. Let's not mistake a personal post by an employee with official communication - at least I like that one can still talk about the company we work for without speaking on their behalf.
Please don't be offended. HN comments regularly discuss startup business models, so I thought it might be interesting to point out to my fellow entrepreneurs how we are bootstrapping our streaming TV business in new countries.
Thanks and I'm not offended at all. It was interesting to hear what Netflix is doing. I was just using your post as an example of a larger issue and addressing that issue; as icebraining pointed out, one post by one employee doesn't signify an official policy of Netflix.
You should look at options for charging per movie/show. Then hopefully the copyright owner wouldn't care where the paying customer is living. I realise that a large portion of the public wouldn't pay for it, but I suspect there's a substantial market for it: A lot of people are still going to cinemas these, which I personally fail to understand, but it makes me think that a lot of people will pay per movie from the comfort of their home if charged at a reasonable price.
I don't understand why you were downvoted. I actually think this is a valid point.
But: isn't that what Google Play and Apple's iTunes are doing already - pay per show / movie? How would Netflix differentiate itself by offering such a service?
But you have to first pay for there basic service, and then their catalog is very restricted. The attraction of Netflix + VPN are the very significant catalog, and the price. I'm ready to pay a bit more, but basic cable fee + rental fee is not reasonable. Also, I do not want to sponsorise the garbage on basic cable.
I suspect iTunes require an Apple device. As far as google Play (and Amazon) goes, I had assumed that they have a fairly restricted catalogue with only newer shows/movies, but will take a look.
If you want to be able to rent things, use Amazon Instant Video instead. Personally between a Prime subscription and the odd rental of new titles I don't feel like I'm missing much after cancelling my Netflix subscription, although I'll probably renew when they release a new season of one of their originals.
Unfortunately, this would destroy Netflix's subscription service. Why? Because the moment you start having titles that are "exclusive" to pay-per-view, your subscription users would riot, seeing this as just a way to raise fees (see: the uproar when Netflix tried to spin off the DVD business) on "exclusive" titles. It also goes against / dilutes the whole addictive nature of Netflix.
As an aside, the HN guidelines mention you should avoid complaining about being downvoted.
What this is showing is how geographically slicing up the rights to movies is highly damaging to not just Netflix, but to any movie or series owner. Every time that this occurs, it just means that to watch that series you need to subscribe to anything up to 3 services. Regardless of the validity of this, it just leads to piracy.
Once you get global distribution rights to major series, then piracy will probably fall greatly. Until then, either piracy will increase, or folks will bypass geoblocking. I think that the hope should be that people will bypass geoblocking, because the rights holders at least get some money. With piracy, they get absolutely nothing.
Netflix didn't actually "make" House of Cards despite that being the popular public perception. Netflix simply financed the production by buying the streaming rights to all the countries Netflix operated in. TV rights internationally were sold to a patchwork of local TV stations in exchange for exclusivity. Now, Netflix is in those countries, it has to reacquire streaming rights after the exclusivity window has closed.
It's actually not Netflix making the series directly; it's being made by a separate company and Netflix is paying for US rights.
Sony has the international rights, if I am not mistaken, and they sold it to different companies across the globe, that now want exclusive rights, so Netflix doesn't eat from their table.
To the commenters above who are disappointed with their country's catalog and plan to cancel their trial: sorry to see you go, but we did the best we could for launch. We make sure canceling is easy, just go to the account page on the website.
As you can imagine, buying the rights for titles in a new region is expensive, so we start off with a giant loss on the balance sheet. But as we get more members we'll be able to buy more content in each country. Here's a list of a few dozen big-name titles that are coming later this year [1]. So we hope you come back soon.
About the patchwork availability - that's not what we want, it's just what was for sale. In the recent past the only buyers of TV shows were just buying for their own country - like country-wide TV networks. For each show, that left a random set of regions where the license was still available. We're trying to get global licenses for everything, so it'll gradually become consistent country-by-country.
[1] https://pr.netflix.com/WebClient/loginPageSalesNetWorksActio... (sorry for the PR link but it's the most complete list of 2016 releases I could find)