Ted Sarandos
Netflix Chief Content Officer
He lives in Los Angeles with his two kids.
-- http://www.lafilmconference.com/ |
-- http://www.lafilmconference.com/speakers07.html |
-- http://www.hidef.com/netflix/790-netflix-watch-now-review.html |
-- http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/01/netflix_debuts_.html |
-- http://www.netflix.com/MediaCenter?id=5384 | press release
Netflix, Inc.
100 Winchester Circle
Los Gatos, CA 95032
United States - Map
Phone: 408-540-3700
Fax: 408-540-3737
Watch Now
We introduced a new feature in January 2007 that allows subscribers to instantly watch movies and television series on their personal computers. We expect to roll out this instant-viewing feature to all subscribers within six months from the date of launch, and we will continue to improve its quality, content and functionality. We intend to broaden the distribution capability of this service to multiple platforms over time.
Gave the audience a look into the future of the home video market. In spite of all the hype around web video, he said that legal downloading is not going to replace the DVD business anytime soon.
“Today the consumers overwhelmingly choose DVDs over downloading, but they are becoming more and more net savvy”, Sarandos said.
If you are one of the 6 million Netflix subscribers you might have noticed a little “Watch Now” button on top of their website.
This button represents a strategically important step towards instant viewing and Internet distribution of home video. However, Sarandos is very quick to point out that this does NOT mean that the DVD format is in any way dead.
Sarandos pointed out that the money generated from downloading music singles on any site was smaller than the VHS rental business last year - which shows that legal downloading of content in any form is still a business very much in it infancy.
However, Netflix is slowly moving to a hybrid model
where downloading is part of the business in order to satisfy those customers
that wants to have the option to watch a movie instantly and not wait for
the postman.
“Change is coming, but it is evolution, not revolution”,
said Sarandos.
Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, Netflix
Ted Sarandos has served as Netflix chief content officer
since 2000. With more than 20 years of experience in home entertainment,
Ted leads the content acquisition efforts for the company and is recognized
in the industry as an innovator in film acquisition and distribution.
Ted oversees strategic content acquisition for Netflix and manages the company's relationships with studios, networks, film makers and producers.
Since 2000, the Netflix library has increased tremendously, from 2,000 in 1999 to 70,000 in 2007.
As Netflix has grown to over 6 million subscribers this year, Ted has established Netflix as a successful film distributor within the entertainment industry.
Ted has also spearheaded the company's original content initiative, Red Envelope Entertainment, creating a national platform for films and entertainment programming through unique partnerships with filmmakers, networks and studios, including IFC, HBO, ThinkFilm and Sundance Channel.
These unique deals enable Netflix to provide the broadest variety of films for consumers as well as offer an alternate distribution method for smaller and independent films that might not otherwise be seen.
Ted ensures that the more than 70,000 titles in the Netflix DVD library satisfy the more than 6 million Netflix subscribers who rent about 1.4 million DVDs per day.
From 1983 to 1988, Ted began his home video career managing a metropolitan retail chain. He then moved to video distributor ETD, where he served as Western regional director of sales and operations. Until March 2000, Ted was vice president of product and merchandising for Video City, where he negotiated the industry's first DVD revenue sharing agreement and reduced the cost of content from all studios.
Ted is a former chapter president and board member for the Video Software Dealers Association. He also serves on the Film Advisory Board for Tribeca Film Festival, the retail advisory board for the Digital Entertainment Group, FIND Advisory Board and MediaRights.org, as well as a serving as a trustee for International Documentary Association. Ted was also most recently included in Variety's Global 50, a list of the 50 most influential people in independent film distribution.
An avid consumer of popular culture, Ted keeps abreast
of the entertainment industry by reading the dailies and trades cover-to-cover,
attending the latest and greatest events in Hollywood and traveling and
skiing in his coveted downtime. He lives in Los Angeles with his two kids.
Ted owns an HD TV and uses Netflix to catch up on films he hasn't seen
in person.
Netflix, Inc. provides online movie rental subscription
services in the United States. It provides its subscribers access to a
library of movie, television, and other filmed entertainment titles on
digital versatile disc (DVD). As of December 31, 2006, the company served
approximately 6,300,000 subscribers with a library of approximately 70,000
movie, television, and other filmed entertainment titles on DVD. Netflix
was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California.
SLATE
-- http://www.slate.com/id/2160946/
Watch technology:
The future and what to do about it.
Watching "Watch Now" Netflix's new movies-on-demand
service, reviewed.
By Reihan Salam
Posted Thursday, March 1, 2007, at 3:49 PM ET
As a kid, I fantasized about having a kitchen sink with dozens of faucets. Not only would it dispense hot and cold water, but also chocolate milk, macaroni and cheese, and boneless fried chicken. It's a testament to the primitiveness of the times (and my imagination) that I never dreamed of owning such a device for movies.
At age 10, I watched my worn-out VHS copy of Ghostbusters pretty much exclusively. A decade and a half later, I snap my fingers and a red envelope arrives bearing whatever movie I want. Still, for all its convenience, I can't help but feel that Netflix is an artifact of an earlier, less convenient age. You might say that Netflix brought this upon itself. By making it radically easier to rent movies, the company raised the bar high and fast. These days it's clear that Netflix is not, in fact, the height of convenience.
Rivals like Blockbuster have rolled out similar services. The rise of digital cable, complete with on-demand video, has proved a godsend for the infirm and the criminally lazy. Internet behemoths Amazon.com and iTunes both recently rolled out their own on-demand services. For Netflix, the heat is on, and it has responded with something called Watch Now. Like a magical movie faucet, the service streams video straight to your Web browser. Right now, about 1,000 of Netflix's 70,000 titles are available for instant watching.
Though Netflix doesn't offer unlimited streaming, you still get a hefty amount of watching time — roughly one hour for every dollar you pay in monthly subscription fees, at no additional cost.
Three-disc subscribers who pay $17.95 a month, for example, can supplement their regular DVD watching with 18 hours of online time.
If you need to watch more than 18 hours of streaming video per month, I can assure you that this problem will solve itself when you go blind. (Netflix plans to roll out Watch Now to every subscriber by June.
To see a walk-through of how it works, check out this video from the site Hacking Netflix.)
Conceptually, Watch Now is the perfect vessel for instant movie gratification.
Ever rent, say, Street Fighter Alpha and discover that it's not the modern classic your "friend" promised?
With Watch Now, you can watch two minutes and abandon ship.
You'll still have 17 hours and 58 minutes of watching time to go.
So, in between checking sports scores and reading blogs, you'll be able to catch up on old episodes of that new hit TV show everyone's raving about. (Actually, you'll be able to catch up on episodes of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, but we'll get to that in a moment.)
In reality, Watch Now is less than perfect.
The first and by far the most vexing snag is that, for the moment, it's available only for Windows. Watch Now also isn't compatible with Firefox — my browser of choice when I'm forced to use Windows.
This will change, of course.
Netflix is run by savvy people, and I'm sure they don't want to run afoul of the effete iMac intellectuals.
Still, I count this as strike one.
Fortunately, a comrade allowed me to commandeer his Sony VAIO. Despite my initial annoyance over the format business, setting up Watch Now took about 10 seconds. I didn't even need to reboot!
The viewing format is elegant, clean, and simple.
Video streams into a box at the center of a black screen.
Underneath, you have simple sliders for volume, rewind, and fast forward, as well as play and pause buttons. I have a decent Internet connection, and it never took more than 30 seconds for a movie to get started.
The quality is good.
I'm no connoisseur, but to my untrained eye recent titles like The Prince and Me and The Puffy Chair look just barely sub-DVD.
Older movies like Living in Oblivion and 2010, however, look about as gnarly as VHS.
Now for another complaint.
The video downloads progressively as you watch, which means it's not easy to skip around.
This proved particularly frustrating while I was watching The Cars: Unlocked: The Live Performances.
I struggled desperately to skip over band high jinks and lesser-known singles, but each time the damn thing had to rebuffer. Instant gratification is never instant enough.
Ideally, Watch Now would import all the functionality of an actual DVD, complete with chapters, subtitles, and maybe even commentary tracks.
We're not there yet technologically, and the whole point of streaming is that you don't download the movies to your machine permanently.
But for now, instantly watchable streaming video works best for traditional movie watchers — the kind who make popcorn before the show starts and then sit still for an hour and a half.
That's not me. I will note here that my Netflix habits are unconventional. During my early days as a Netflix subscriber, I spent anywhere from 1 to 3 hours a night watching DVDs on fast forward with the subtitles on. Because I read fairly quickly, I was able to follow twists and turns at high speed, thus increasing my cultural literacy in record time. This is impossible with Watch Now. To fast-forward, you grab the slider and drag it to the right, then wait. It's more like teleporting than running at high speed.
Of course, all this talk of functionality means nothing if there's nothing to watch.
Amazon Unbox and iTunes offer awesome content, including new movies and TV shows fresh from the boob tube, at obscenely high prices. (It costs $12.99 to buy a download of The Prestige on iTunes.)
Thanks to its all-you-can-eat pricing scheme, Watch Now is a giant step forward.
I can honestly say, however, that in the 12 or so hours I've spent watching Netflix's streaming offerings, I've seen nothing I would pay to see.
At the risk of sounding needlessly harsh, I found the offerings impressively bad, as though some schlock curator from an Ivy League cinema studies department was called upon to select the dreckiest soft-porn screwball comedies ever made.
Find Caddyshack too highbrow?
Try Golfballs!
You won't find any of Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs movies.
You will find Andy Sidaris' Triple B trilogy, which features more "bullets, bombs, and babes" than you can shake a stick at. If you search hard enough, you'll find a handful of newish highbrow releases like Sherrybaby and Conversations With Other Women.
But good luck finding enough to keep you entertained.
The Big Media Mafia guards its content so jealously that I can't really blame Netflix — I'm confident that its library will expand in the weeks and months to come.
But right now, Watch Now is all promise.
My fantasy would be to have a collection almost as expansive as Netflix's dizzyingly wide selection of DVDs.
My heart sings at the thought of lighting up my beautiful big-screen iMac with almost-new episodes of Ego Trip's (White) Rapper Show and The Wire or a film classic like Dazed and Confused.
But it's all too easy to imagine another, darker future in which the digital-rights management powers that be crush my hopes and dreams under their steel-toed stiletto, reducing me to slogging joylessly through hours of the BBC adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit.
Please, entertainment industry, don't let me down.
Correction, March 1: Because of an editing error, the sentence originally read
"You'll still have 17 hours minus 58 minutes of watching time to go."
(Click here to return to the corrected sentence.)
JOHN
LONGENECKER
