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Thursday, March 17, 2011

TV / Film / Teh Internets Netflix Streaming Gets Some Competition

Posted by David Schmader on Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 11:09 AM

Like many people, I have a rich and complicated relationship with Netflix Streaming, wherein a large and arbitrary collection of films and TV shows are available for streaming to your computer/TV.
When you want to watch what they have and your internet connection if functioning at prime level, it's futuristic heaven. But when the intertubes are clogged, the streaming can be interrupted by an unacceptable amount of buffering (this happens about once a week), and the large and arbitrary collection of films/TV shows is hindered by the viewer's inability to access any special features (subtitles*, director's commentary).

So here comes Zediva, which apparently aims to right all the flaws of Netflix Streaming. In addition to a vast, up-to-the-minute collection of films (as opposed to Netflix Streaming's cinema rummage sale), Zediva, as the NYT reports:

"...lets you listen to the director’s commentary, turn on subtitles and change languages. It lets you enjoy your movie for two weeks instead of 24 hours, starting and stopping at will. It offers the 100 biggest movies for streaming on the very same day the DVD comes out. It sidesteps any meddling by the movie companies, HBO contracts and studio lawyers. And here’s the best news of all — are you sitting down on your favorite movie couch? The price is only $2 for one movie or $1 if you buy a 10-pack. There’s no signup fee, no monthly fee, no hardware to buy."

Zediva's magical secret?...

At its California data center, Zediva has set up hundreds of DVD players. They’re automated, jukebox-style. You’re not just renting a movie; you’re actually taking control of the player that contains the movie you want. The DVD is simply sending you the audio and video signals, as if it were connected to your home with a really, really long cable.

The problem, as MetaFilter points out:

Instead of converting movies to files on a hard drive, they're renting out actual DVDs being played in actual DVD players-remotely. That means if the movie you want is being watched by someone else, you're gonna have to wait.

Here's Zediva's "Rented Out"-packed page of New Releases.

There's gotta be some way to move beyond one-DVD-player-to-one-TV situation, but maybe not. It'd probably be easier for Netflix Streaming, et al to figure out a way to make special features available to streaming customers. Get on it, techies.

*-Non-English films on Netflix Streaming come with English subtitles. But if you're the type of person who occasionally likes to enable English-language subtitles on English-language films (because you don't want to crank the TV while your husband's asleep, or just want to showcase the dialogue), you're out of luck.

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Comments (18) RSS

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Heh. "...steaming customers..."

Posted by rob!

on March 17, 2011 at 11:13 AM

does not scale.

Posted by doceb on March 17, 2011 at 11:21 AM

It's also illegal. It would probably be illegal if they were transmitting the exact output of the DVD to you. However, there's no way they are actually doing this. The only way that this makes sense is if they are encoding the video into another format before transmitting it. Most likely they are using some version of MPEG-4. Just by re-encoding it, they are technically making a copy and distributing that copy.

Posted by arbeck

on March 17, 2011 at 11:27 AM

There was an online music site a couple years back (MP3.com, maybe?) that did something similar to end-run copyright/licensing. You inserted a CD into your drive to verify that you owned the physical content. You could then access the online files that they produced with a giant CD-ripping operation. If they didn't have the bits, they said that they would try to buy the CD and rip it.

I think they were trying to exploit the looser licensing model that audio CDs had in the "old" days; but obviously since they're not around anymore it didn't work. Not sure whether they were shut down by legal action or market forces.

I'd be surprised if Zediva has the ability to fight Hollywood anymore than Apple, Netflix, MS, Real, etc., etc., etc.

Posted by Mr. Happy Sunshine on March 17, 2011 at 11:29 AM

This sounds like it's aimed at cinephiles, so my question is will they only be offering region one disks or will I be able to watch disks from any region. For instance Emir Kusterica's masterpiece "Black Cat White Cat" (hitherto unavailable on American formated DVD) as a region 2 formatted disk through this new service?

Posted by stuck in boston

on March 17, 2011 at 11:42 AM

This is not in any way a technical problem. It is a legal problem.

Posted by Don't you think he looks tired? on March 17, 2011 at 11:45 AM

If the service is as described in the article, I could certainly make a pretty good argument that what they're doing is legal. But that's not really the issue, is it? The question is "can the afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting the inevitable lawsuits?" I doubt it.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty

on March 17, 2011 at 11:47 AM

I'm not qualified to comment on the legal aspects of any of this, but I am qualified to speculate on the product development.

What I'd suggest to them to get around the "one DVD player per person watching" scaling problem is to split signals. If twelve people want to watch Schindler's List, create twelve streams based on that one running DVD, similar to how you can split a signal in your house to show a movie on two or more TVs. Sports bars and night clubs do this all the time.

Of course, people won't want to jump into an already playing movie, so let the first person who wants to watch a movie enter a five minute queue. Then put a notification on the main page saying "The following movies are starting soon:" with a countdown for each one. Folks who get there in time can join in from the beginning. Folks who don't mind missing the beginning of a movie they've seen before can jump into the movies that are listed under the "Now Playing" header. It's not quite as convenient as on-demand, but it's close, and the right design might add some of the fun/inspiration of going to a multiplex on the spur of the moment and choosing what you see based on what's going to start playing. And more decisive folks can wait in the queue for exactly the movie they want. It's not perfect, but it's a decent compromise with some potential upsides, and it scales a lot better.

There are ways to make this even better. Allow people to schedule movie viewings in advance. Add a chat room capability so people can add live commentary to the other people watching the movie who want to see it, so that Schmader can do his Showgirls thing online. The feature list writes itself. Sounds like a fun product to work on.

Posted by Mike on March 17, 2011 at 12:00 PM

Good god are people fucking cheap.

Posted by Urgutha Forka on March 17, 2011 at 12:11 PM

just work on my 10.4 powerpc please. fuck silverlight

Posted by aardvark on March 17, 2011 at 12:26 PM

In spite of the convenience Zediva offers, their content consists of much of the commercial pap that Blockbuster offers rather than the large collection of eclectic foriegn, independent and exploitation films that Netflix rents. Netflix's bigger enemy is Comcast's ability to paywall and or slow streamed content.

Posted by neo-realist on March 17, 2011 at 12:28 PM

Look at the list of offered movies. Do you really need the commentary for any of them? And notice most are not available, you have to wait for somebody to finish.

@9 - For people who will wait hours for Jackass3 or Grownups to be available so they can save $1-2 over PPV or Amazon or Itunes.

Posted by SoSea Resident on March 17, 2011 at 12:37 PM

Yet another service that gets it completely wrong. Think TBS not HBO.

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on March 17, 2011 at 12:49 PM

There's a growing number of Netflix movies with subtitle options in English.

Posted by JPR on March 17, 2011 at 4:17 PM

Seems like this would scale OK, or at least as well as Netflix's old snail-mail model.

* As with Netflix's old model, if someone else is watching it, you have to wait.

* The physical media cost is less than Netflix's old model: since the DVDs are not handled by the public/mail carriers, they would seldom get damaged or lost. Plus, without the days lost in transit, the same media can be turned over more often.

* Bought in bulk, they're probably paying less per DVD player than they are for each DVD disk. Even if they had one player dedicated for every DVD (which would be ideal, automation-wise), that cost seems easily recoverable. Storage/heat would the biggest issue.

Yes, the idea sounds like something the Onion would come up with, but is seems like it could work. I doubt it holds legal water, though, for the reason @3 points out.

Posted by Free Lunch on March 17, 2011 at 4:18 PM

@11: BINGO.

Posted by Casual_Observer on March 17, 2011 at 6:02 PM

11, 16, The WHOLE POINT of Zediva is that they carry the top 100 movies that you can't get on Netflix because of embargoes. Since they're not broadcasting (@8's suggestion to stream to multiple customers simultaneously would be broadcasting) Zediva can avoid the embargo entirely. They're technically not streaming since you are connecting remotely to a DVD player, so the embargo doesn't apply.

Posted by SPG on March 17, 2011 at 7:00 PM

You know, people want English subtitles for more reasons than just wanting to watch a movie quietly - which is why Netflix is being sued by deaf people. So I suppose more of Netflix's catalog may have closed captioning soon.

Posted by thryn on March 20, 2011 at 8:28 AM