How did Netflix end up with massive delivery delays? "Because of massive database corruption in their Oracle cluster caused by a botched upgrade," according to a tipster. But don't blame Oracle (or Microsoft), necessarily. The tipster believes Netflix's own database adminstrators who bungled the upgrade. Why not just roll back the system?
Woe be unto Netflix if my parents don't get the latest installemnt of Foyle's War. In an email sent out to customers and a notice posted to the site, the DVD-by-mail company says it is having problems with its shipping system affecting around a third of the company's customers. It has now persisted for two days. So if your friendly mail carrier doesn't show up with a red envelope or three today, don't blame it on a Postal Service "blue shorts of death" error. Graciously, the company has preemptively offered a credit for any delays. Why not tout its online-video offerings, like Watch Now streaming on its website or the Roku set-top box? Oh, right, website outages and inventory problems. But hey, at least if your request gets returned "404 Not Found," it won't cost you a stamp. Netflix's alert, after the jump:
Vudu, a startup which sells a set-top box for downloading HD movies over the Internet, has finally added adult content to the mix through a partnership with AVN. Neither Netflix nor Apple will let you watch folks bump uglies — in stunning 1080p resolution, no less. Vudu rival FyreTV won't let you download anything but porn, so it's certainly a differentiator. But is it enough to save Vudu's business model? Unlikely. At $299 (marked down from $399), the box is pricey, the selection of videos still limited, and the premise that viewers will spend up to $20 to virtually "own" Ashlynn Goes to College 3 questionable. And of course, the real competition isn't other paid services — it's the millions of hours of free porn available on the Internet.
The independent-film slaughterhouse revved back into action this morning with news that Red Envelope Entertainment, the acquisitions and financing division of Netflix, shut its doors after three years. The division helped underwrite and/or release titles including the Maggie Gyllenhaal drama Sherrybaby, the Oscar-nominated documentary No End in Sight and Julie Delpy's directorial debut Two Days in Paris; it's last film appears to be the psychosexual Ben Kingsley/Penelope Cruz drama Elegy, opening next month.
The $99 box from Roku that allows Netflix customers to watch videos on their televisions streamed over the Internet is all sold out, and there won't be any more shipped until at least July and possibly August. Which could be a deliberate strategy — underproduce the initial batch, sell them out, and look for the business press to bite on the hype. At least, that's what Scott Kirstner at Cinematech suggests. I just think that if Netflix has any shot at making this box ubiquitous, partnering with a company that can't sustain a supply line for six to eight weeks at a time isn't going to help. But then, such are the woes that have bedeviled all potential IPTV providers — thanks to the mysterious curse of the set-top box.
The trade in DVDs by mail that Netflix pioneered will be a business in decline within five to ten years according to CEO Reed Hastings. But he's bullish about online delivery, not surprising considering the recent release of the Roku set-top box. "Our key challenge is growing earnings per share and subscribers while funding streaming (online video) which should give us years of subscriber and earnings expansion." [Reuters] (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
What makes Netflix's new living-room box for Internet video downloads different from all the other set-top flops? Everything. The price is low: At $99, it's much cheaper than the $229 Apple TV. It connects to regular TVs as well as HDTVs, and can stream video in variable quality depending on your Internet connection speed. And you can eat all you want from the buffet of available titles on Netflix, with movies available online that happen to be in your Netflix queue already lined up and ready to go. Hardware partner Roku has introduced it with a chipset that other manufacturers can license, and Netflix has a huge domestic subscriber base as potential customers. So what three things could doom this product to the same fate as every other Internet-video set-top?
Former Gawker Joshua "Joshy" Stein, ever-enamored of his new 'hood of Williamsburg, points out that a new Netflix feature allows people to see what films others in their zip code are renting. For 11211, he's found that the top five movies are La Jetée, The Holy Mountain, Blow Up, Do The Right Thing, and Solaris. (As Stein puts it, "Despair, pretension, easy sex, pop music, violence, hate, photography, isolation, trouble.") We put this search function to the test. What are they watching in Bridgeport, Connecticut? San Francisco? Do they conform to regional stereotypes?
What makes for an appealing workspace? The envelopes they leave in your mailbox every two weeks. But after that, it comes down to design and amenities. Also, we like windows and brick. Lots and lots of brick. After spending some time on Office Snapshots, we present the ten best-looking offices in tech, below.
In a conference call yesterday, CEO Reed Hastings of Netflix explained to analysts that the company's profits were down partly due to investment in the online delivery of movies. He also revealed that the company has signed deals with four manufacturers, including LG, the large Korean conglomerate. Netflix's partners have agreed to build the ability to watch movies downloaded from Netflix directly into their hardware, and promised to deliver these products by the fourth quarter — just in time for the holiday shopping season. Netflix customers wouldn't have to pay for individual titles, just their normal monthly subscription fee, similar to Netflix's current Web-based movie distribution service. What he didn't say, but we're wondering: Will LG and the others get a cut of the fees, as Apple does from AT&T for the IPhone? (Photo by AP/John Todd)
When not bawdlerizing movies or trying, and failing, to kill Netflix, Blockbuster has been busy planning to develop and ship a set-top box that will allow customers to download movies at home. The company purchased online movie download service Movielink for $6.6 million last August. But it still hasn't integrated Movielink into Blockbuster.com after seven months. The chances they can come out with an inexpensive, easy-to-use hardware device in the foreseeable future seems slim — look for the company to partner with or acquire an existing manufacturer, such as struggling startup Vudu. (Photo by AP/Ron Heflin)
"The malfunction... began at about 7 a.m. PDT. The site came back online about 12 hours later, but the malfunction caused Netflix to miss the deadline to mail a large number of shipments scheduled to go out on Monday—affecting customers across the United States." How am I going to finish re-watching season 3 of the Wire by the end of the month now, you monsters?? [CNET]
If you made plans to watch something that Netflix was scheduled to deliver to you tomorrow (probably Perfect Strangers: The Complete Second Season, Disc Four), now might be a good time to find something else to do. Seems that Netflix has been undergoing some major technical issues all day, issues that have prevented customers from accessing Netflix.com since 7 a.m. this morning. According to the AP, the undisclosed issues have also had a ripple effect that resulted in problems at their distribution centers nationwide. So tomorrow night, we guess this means that you'll just have to watch something on your DVR instead. Don't worry, you'll live. That is, unless you're a stock owner — in that case, be prepared for a bumpy tomorrow. [AP]
Stock traders weren't blown away by Steve Jobs's Macworld announcements, sending Apple shares down 5 percent. Rivals faired even worse, however. From the numbers, they expect Apple's movie-rental service with support from all of the major studios to pummel brick-and-mortar competitor Blockbuster, and to a lesser extent Netflix. Blockbuster is trading down more than 15 percent in after hours while Netflix is down 3 percent.
