glojam vaytafe genevieve
Agata Schweiss
Over the weekend, without telling users, Netflix decided to stop displaying all titles from users instant watch queue if the rights to stream the content has expired. In the past, these titles remained in the queue and if they were to expire soon, they would also list the date when they would no longer be available for streaming. While Netflix took to their blog on Saturday saying they made this change to, "make the instant Queue easier to manage", clearly all they are trying to do is hide the fact that so many titles are expiring.
Even though Netflix says they didn't actually remove any of the titles from the queue and that they will reappear once again if they get the rights to stream the title, the fact is users can no longer see them, or manage them. And since most of us probably don't remember what all those titles were, how are we suppose to add them to our DVD queue since they are no longer available for streaming? Not to mention, the titles that we can longer see in our queue, count towards the limit of 500 titles you can have in your queue at any one time. So if we can't see them, how are we suppose to delete them so that we can add more titles to our queue?
What Netflix has done is take the problem of too many streaming movies becoming unavailable and turned it into two problems; we can't keep track of them to add them to the DVD queue and hidden movies count toward our queue count but we can't see them to delete them. How dumb. Not to mention, Netflix says while it "looks like some titles are gone", they didn't "remove" them. Really? So we can no longer see them and we have no way to manage them yet Netflix says it only "looks like" the titles are gone? The titles are gone if w can't see them! I am getting so tired of Netflix's blog posts lately which are starting to sound like they are written by a bunch of lawyers being creative with words.
Netflix can try and spin this any way they want but the bottom line is that the Starz contract is due to expire in about five months and at that time, a lot of users would have a bunch of titles showing up in their saved queue and would starting realizing just how many movies are becoming unavailable for streaming. And some Netflix users would reconsider keeping their account active or not. This is simply Netflix's way of trying to make sure we don't notice what's expiring, by not letting us see all the movies in our queue. Brilliant job Netflix. You just made your service harder to use and you announced the change only after people noticed it and started complaining. You may be in the driver's seat now, but I can't wait till Amazon eats your lunch.
This article describes how to enable plan enforcement in your Preseem device. The difficulty level for this task is intermediate. If you are not comfortable with Unix shell environments, feel free to contact Preseem for help and we will be happy to assist. You need to log in to the Preseem device via SSH or console to proceed. Changing the configuration file and restarting the service requires sudo / root access.
One of the most common causes of poor subscriber quality of experience (QoE) is the subscriber utilizing their full plan bandwidth. That is, the subscriber self congests their own "link". Examples of this include a large game or OS update which saturates the connection or video services such as Netflix negatively impacting the latency sensitive experience of gaming and VoIP applications. The reason that the customer experience degrades rapidly as the link approaches congestion is because most devices employ simple FIFO buffering schemes which add latency and eventually loss across all flows.
Preseem plan enforcement (shaping) is based on modern active queue management (AQM) techniques which keep latency and loss low even when the link is near its full capacity. This is accomplished by providing isolation between flows so one flow cannot negatively impact another flow and by more intelligently managing the packets that do need to be queued.
Another very common source of poor QoE in fixed wireless networks is at the access point (AP). Just like other network devices, most APs employ simple buffering schemes which provide a bad subscriber experience when the link is near its capacity.
To maintain a good subscriber experience even when the AP is near its capacity, Preseem has AP shaping. This enables the operator to set a bandwidth limit just below the point when the AP becomes saturated and delivers a bad experience. This enables Preseem's AQM techniques to optimize the experience. This approach also has the benefit of more fairly sharing the AP's bandwidth between the subscribers on the AP.
The Running and Healthy columns should contain Yes for each service, except for the Bypass services that only initialize the system when it starts. It is normal for Telegraf to have N/A in the healthy column. Here is a typical good output:
In the Preseem configuration text file (/etc/preseem/config.yaml), under each interface of interest, we have a qosTransmitPolicy ("policy") section defined. Inside that section, you can find these parameters:
IMPORTANT NOTE: As sudo / root user, change the parameters of interest, pay particular attention to the spacing, do not use tabs, and read about the YAML format if you are interested ( ). Then, save the file. The instructions provided are subject to change, so please refer to this page often.
The qosTransmitPolicy line has 4 spaces at the beginning. The name, rate and twoLevelConfig lines have 6, and the default lines have 8. Veering from this requirement will prevent the configuration from being loaded.
We got this letter today from Netflix - part apology, part revelatory explanation of their recent price increase and plan-separation between DVDs-by-mail and streaming movie services. Turns out, Netflix has a lot more up its sleeve than we thought, though it all makes sense given recent moves and the rumors that have been cycling of late. Here is the letter in full:
It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.
I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.
So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.
Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.
For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.
Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph as a DVD-by-mail service. The idea came after Hastings was charged a late fee for a movie rental. Customers could subscribe to receive DVDs by mail. The company later expanded to streaming and now has millions of subscribers.
The company at the time struggled with two fundamental problems in their business model. One was that because the DVD was sent via mail, it would take anything between one day to 4 days for the shipment to reach the subscriber. Even though people were likely to try Netflix, conversion to repeat rentals was low. Secondly, people would far more inclined to rent out the latest releases. For the company to break even on the cost of purchasing a DVD to rent-out, they would have to generate 15-20 rentals for each DVD.
Secondly, to enable maximum utilisation of their DVD content catalogue, the company created their movie recommendation system. Through Cinematch, Netflix would recommend shows for their subscribers to watch. The point for this was to alleviate pressure for DVD rentals away from new releases, to a more uniform renting out of their content library. This solution has over the years become considerably sophisticated, and drives how customers experience Netflix and how the company makes decisions when acquiring new content.
Netflix put further pressure on competition when they announced the launch of their streaming service in January 2007, as Watch Now. At the time the streaming service was expected to be of use only for power users with broadband internet connections, which were not all that common at the time. Users were required to have a 1 mbps internet connection to be able to stream movies, with a 3mbps connection required for streaming DVD-quality films. Subscribers under the $17.99 plan had access to 18 hours of streaming content. Video delivery was through a special browser applet that subscribers would have to install. By 2008 however Netflix had given access to unlimited video streaming for subscribers to its biggest plan .
Prioritising building a robust technical infrastructure has helped Netflix keep their first-mover advantage. Oftentimes the first-mover advantage is squandered by technology companies who have to make way for businesses that solve the problem more efficiently. Netflix, however, by relying on a solid content and technical team, has managed to keep its competitive advantage since the launch of its streaming video service.
90f70e40cf