Netflix

I'm just going to say it. I love Netflix.

Recently, Marc Canter brought to my attention via Facebook a recent outage where Netflix clients were refunded or credited a certain amount. That was really nice of Netflix and only galvanizes my opinion of the company.

Marc's point of view here on broadbandmechanics.com

PC Mag's less point of view here


This might have something to do with an observation Alex Borsi's saw or brought to my attention where streaming has increased on what I think is a logarithmic scale even thought the graph I'm going to show you looks more like exponential growth. It doesn't so much matter at this point because both models skyrocket in the beginning which is where we are currently at. Coupling that with better streaming selection and access results in decreased DVD rentals despite growth in user base.

Graph likely based on actual hyper users
Disclaimer: This data is provided by a group that allows a more finely tuned Netflix experience. It's good because they are actual users like myself and most of my friends, but really think about the kind of people that think the standard interface is not good enough... I am just saying the results may be a bit skewed.

I don't know as much about the recent outage last week when the Netflix stock hit an all time high. Well, few people do.

Digital Home Post on cnet Regarding Outage

I think it all makes sense though. Streaming movies is awesome. The data shows that demand is growing. It is only logical that demand has reached a point where supply is beginning to be strained and the results are a slight degradation of quality of service.

It is as much my fault as anyone else's if you look at it the right way. When I contact the company to let them know what I wanted, I told them I wanted them to focus on getting more selections in the Watch Instantly section. --This time I had a pile of people that agreed with me and Netflix listened to us collectively. I should have also asked for paying attention to make sure the hardware could keep up with the demands. Demands that we only spurred higher by successfully asking for the service to be better in conjunction with a few other things like interactivity with many devices; specifically, making it compatible with devices like TiVo and game consoles.

The service has been slow lately, it is not rocket science to figure out why. It is probably pretty close to rocket science to fix it though and that is really all I am looking for.