netflix

Courts Are Looking At Approving Profanity and “Nudity” on Television

by on January 11, 2012

in Entertainment, television

Brusimm Cinema Static TV NewsThough it may take six months to actually come to a conclusion, the U.S. Supreme Court is actually pondering the idea if censoring, to some degree, is even worth the effort in this day and age of cable TV and time-shifted viewing.

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The FCC is a powerful entity whose biggest, arch nemesis, Howard Stern, has been on Sirius XM satellite radio for the last few years… though Howard Stern is coming to America’s Got Talent.

But all joking aside, the FCC is becoming an antiquated entity with the rules it is enforcing and maybe the money spent there can be placed like say, into education programs so more teachers don’t lose their jobs?

Look, if the Nielsen Ratings org can adapt to streaming entertainment in their metrics, sooner or later the advertisers will embrace it more… seeing as how adverstisers spend nearly $10 billion per season on ads!

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Everyone behind the TV industry has been rather slow to adapt to what is evolving as far as watching TV goes, but if you think about it, TV is no longer about sitting down at 8pm to catch a TV show.  Today, “TV” is about when you’ll pull up your favorite show or on what device you might watch it.

Advertisers still base their funding decisions on live+7 TV ratings.  That’s counting who watches a TV show live, then they also take into account viewership for the next 7 days.  But like I noted, TV is no longer just, well, on TV any more.  It’s all over the place.   It’s on our phones, our computers, in our cars, it’s at the gas stations, at sporting venues and what not.

So when the Supreme Court starts pondering the idea of why worry about censoring time-shifted TV viewing, you know we’re starting to take a step in the modern era.

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Netflix Won’t Let Customers Clear Their Viewing History. Why Is That?

by on January 2, 2012

in consumer, product review

NetflixNetflix users have been asking since at least 2007, for the ability to clear or hide their “recent viewed” queue.  And yet there are still no options for this?  Why’s that?  You would think with the clamor that Netflix would want to appease those for this long-running inquiry.

I’ve seen suggestions, but not logical ones.

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I’ve been watching my brother-in-law tinker around with his Netflix account and the principle is pretty neat.  But the more I see him tinker, the more I’m thinking that Netflix is not better than sliced bread.  Most movies are not the newest and there’s an eclectic and cumbersome way to navigate their entertainment choices.

But what I’ve noticed is that as you create a viewing history, THERE IS NO WAY TO FILTER, HIDE or DELETE it.

Why filter, or delete the viewing history?  The most common reason I’m seeing out on the web is if someone watches something of a questionable moral nature, they don’t want their friends, family, or more importantly, their kids to see this viewing activity.  I get that.

The reason I’m focused on this is because I noticed that with my brother-in-law’s situation, his kids use Netflix to watch their movies, but they have access and are exposed to the entire viewing history of the account.

That doesn’t seem smart from Netflix’s side of things.  They don’t seem to care that their customers are asking for a filter.

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Netflix Price Increases and Their Reasoning

by on July 15, 2011

in consumer

NetflixAs many now know, Netflix has increased their subscription rates by quite a bit more than what most consumers are actually willing to accept or absorb.  Part of the price increase is because the cost of their DVD rental program was higher than anticipated because as surprising as it seems, more folks still want DVDs rather than streaming movies or TV series over the web.

Plus in some cases, the movies are available on DVD first before becoming available in streaming mode, so folks jump on that opportunity.

Thus, the huge price increases reflect adjustments for the costs of the DVD side of the business and to compensate for the business costs of streaming content, where the expected landslide of members did not show up.

The best package that includes both DVD and streaming, was around $10 and is now $16.  If you’re going to do the math, that’s an incredibly crazy cost increase of 60%.

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Hulu For Sale? Looks Like It

by on June 22, 2011

in Entertainment

HuluAccording to Deadline, Hulu is up for sale, and with that development, they point out that the adventure of Hulu-Plus, where subscribers are charged for premium content, may very well be a busted business play.

It’s also pointed out that with Netflix charging hard into the arena of streaming entertainment that the big nets are drooling over the money they could get from Netflix and possibly torpedoing their own play with Hulu.

Part of the problem though with the sale is that they can’t promise all the content that comes with it.  The buyer of Hulu would have to fork up the cash then fork out more cash to buy into programming deals with the networks.

I have to wonder out-loud with this new development, if the Comcast On-Demand scenario didn’t already preclude this sale as an warning of sorts.  When Comcast added ABC and FOX and such back into their On-Demand service, they did so, but disabled the FF option so you can’t get past the ads.  (Which are just as loud in On-Demand!)

I also think with the new disable feature in the On-Demand process, that it negates the bonus of watching shows that way.  I used to be able to snag a show and watch for 40 minutes.  But now that I have to have it play for the full 60 minutes, I’m stuck trying to schedule out my live-watching versus my DVR-like watching.  The Comcast On-Demand scenario loses and suddenly, I’m not watching some shows any more.  For my household, it’s a fail to have added these networks back into the fray and lock you out of FFing content.  (On principal, I hit mute and walk away to do my laundry or something else.)  I apologize to the advertisers, but this situation forces me to make a tough decision.

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Netflix and Facebook To Possibly Join E-Forces

by on May 31, 2011

in consumer

Facebook & Netflix

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Over at the eG8 tech conference in France, Mark Zuckerberg had made note in one of his talks about being in discussions with different companies to be working with to integrate video and other content.  One of those companies is the ever-rapidly growing Netflix.

Though Facebook said they have nothing to announce, they are looking at different ways to have people have access to things that they can “share” with their friends.  Video content is one of those things.  Music is another.

As with how the games and other content grew on Facebook via people liking things and other friends seeing and sharing things, Facebook is looking at all the avenues to propagate media while still angling to make the ever popular buck.

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While Blockbuster Falls, Netflix Rises

by on April 27, 2011

in Entertainment, movies

netflix blockbuster‘Blockbuster’, The Video Store That Never Kept Up

As the internet has changed how business is done, so too, has business changed the medium of entertainment.  With retail, huge retailers can still retain hard locations and stay viable while they can also offer their merchandise online.  Regardless of what it is.

Sears has huge stores, but everything can be bought online.  Safeway has stores, but you can buy food online and have it delivered.  Alas, Blockbuster went bust because they did not keep it modern enough, fast enough.

In its prime, Blockbuster held 5,700 stores to rent DVD’s out to the world.  But then Netflix came along and suddenly a different business model was available.  A business model where someone can order a movie and have it show up at home without going out of your way to get it.  Then of course, there’s the online streaming the Netflix is also providing.

While there were some changes that needed to be made by all… retailer and consumer alike, the consumers started to see the way along the path of having product delivered to them.  They also started looking at their computers more for their entertainment venues.  And slowly but surely, people were starting to appreciate the premise of downloading and not handling DVD’s and such.

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Calling All ‘Star Trek’ Fans Who Use Netflix

by on April 9, 2011

in Entertainment, television

Welcome to Vulcan Enterprise Totem

Welcome to Vulcan Enterprise Totem

Hey gang, for the Star Trek fan in all of us, who also get Netflix, guess what?  Netflix will be streaming ALL Star Trek series for your enjoyment!

Starting July 1st, all the different Star Trek series except one will be available for streaming.

For the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fan, you will have to wait until October 1st.  Not sure why, but still, they will be there.

The series coming:

  • Star Trek (William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy)
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation (Patrick Stewart)
  • Star Trek: Voyager (Kate Mulgrew)
  • Star Trek: Enterprise (Scott Bakula)
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Avery Brooks)

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Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise

via [masslive.com]

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Cinema Static Bits: ‘Chase’ ‘NetFlix’ ‘Toy Story’ ‘Game of Thrones’ ‘V’

by on April 8, 2011

in Entertainment, television

Cinema Static on Brusimm logoHere are some news bits about NBC’s Chase coming back, Netflix snagging Mad Men, all of Toy Story airing on Starz, the fourteen minute preview of Game of Thrones and what might be considered a huge spoiler for ABC’s V.

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NBC’s Chase

Starting Saturday, April 23rd, NBC will start airing the episodes of Chase that never made it on air back when the show was running.

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Netflix Snags Mad Men

I know this is old news, but in the wildly off chance that you have not heard this, then hear it now:

Netflix has paid almost $1M per episode to have the ability to stream Mad Men.  You can begin watching Mad Men starting July 27th.

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Facebook and Warner Bros Looking To Rent You Movies

by on March 9, 2011

in Entertainment

Facebook LogoFacebook wants to be everything to everyone.  They’ve cornered the market in online games, in friends chatting with each other, in passing out their “Like” button to everywhere on the web.  They’re trying their hand at a new email system and they’re trying to pass around a plugin that will allow people to share their website surfing comments with everyone.

Now, Facebook as landed on the medium of Hollywood, which in my mind, was inevitable!  Now they want to rent movies to you online.  (As if a billion different streaming options wasn’t enough!)  But to be honest with Facebook competing with Google as a web presence, this option actually makes some odd and wildly potential sense!

Warner Bros. is behind the application that will allow FB users to watch rented movies and their first offering to the FB masses is the ever wildly popular film from Christopher Nolan, called The Dark Knight.

To be honest, this I see working out, if for anything, as FB being a live ratings system for movies.  Not only could we look up reviews of movies to determine if we like them or not, but now, if our friends “Like” a movie, friends whom we know have the same tastes as we do, that could push the market medium into a totally different level of marketing.

And it won’t just be a local, geographical momentum!  Meaning, from my perspective, that instead of talking to the occasional co-worker or neighbor, we would now have access to hundreds of people that we might like, who we see what opinions they hold about a movie, from around the world.

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Introducing The New & Expanded HBO GO

by on March 4, 2011

in Entertainment, television

HBO GO onlineHBO GO was introduced to the world last year but there were folk who grumbled about the lack of titles under the service.  Then something happened to wake up the crew behind HBO.

Last year when HBO lost 1.5M subscribers, Netflix had gained around 3 million and that said oodles to the ‘pay-cable pay-station’ that heralds some of the best programming I’ve ever enjoyed.

Now they’ve expanded their title collection on HBO Go from six hundred to around fourteen hundred titles.  Some of those titles include hit shows such as True Blood, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Sex and the City.  I’d love to check out The Wire or revisit the wonderfully done The Pacific.

As far as movies, they also have around 200 titles and if the movie is airing on the channel, it’s on the streaming service.

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