Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

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There's another reason to do this, beyond Wolverine DVDs costing more than My Little Pony DVDs: inventory utilization. The demand curve for a new release goes something like this: BIG FREAKING SPIKE, two weeks pass, long-tail until the sequel is released. To accommodate peak demand, Netflix would have to do what Blockbuster does: order a metric truckload of Wolverine, then either let it suck up shelf space or dispose of it somehow after the spike was over. Alternatively, they could just not accommodate peak demand, and have users perpetually ticked off that they can "never watch anything I want to watch".

I use one of the Japanese analogs to Netflix and this is the #1 complaint everyone has with the service. You're lucky to be able to watch a new release within a month of them getting it, which sort of defeats the purpose now doesn't it. (Note that they offer plenty of UI features Netflix doesn't which tend to exacerbate this, such as "Sort by Popularity", "Sort by Release Date", and "Most Popular Recently Released Movies". They also have "Sort by Availability", which is essentially "Show me popular new releases from 2 months ago where you now practically can't give away the DVDs.")

> To accommodate peak demand, Netflix would have to do what Blockbuster does: order a metric truckload of Wolverine, then either let it suck up shelf space or dispose of it somehow after the spike was over

Or just burn more copies. The cost of a disc is probably less than the postage. But they'd have to get a license for that, which leads back to same reason: studios charge more for popular movies. Renting good movies on Netflix is hard for the same reason it's hard on iTunes, which has no inventory problem.

Netflix doesn't even need to burn discs, they already have the video streaming infrastructure in place.

The studios don't want people to watch their movies. They want people to pay for the discs.

which sort of defeats the purpose: Only if your purpose in subscribing to them is to be able to watch the newest movies, rather than the best movies or the ones you'd enjoy most.

> I use one of the Japanese analogs to Netflix

Out of interest, what do you use? Tsutaya? I'd be interested to know of any Netflix-like services here in Japan.

I use dmm.com/rental (DMM.com オンライン月額DVDレンタル)

I can't remember why I picked it over Tsutaya. However, they work fine (and have been good to me over the years with my infrequent CS needs), so I've got no real reason to switch. (I must be one of their favorite customers considering how often I go three months without renting anything. Speaking of which...)

Interesting, thank you.

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