People do you hear me,
just give me the sign,
It ain't much I'm
asking, if you want the truth,
Here's to the future,
for the dreams of youth,
I want it all, I want
it all, I want it all, and I want it now.
Queen 1989
I need to rant tonight. I really hate to do this because as I was
rereading some of my blogs, I realized that I sometimes sounded like an angry
young man. That's unfortunate because A) I've never been happier, and B) I'm
not young anymore.
But I'm not happy about
the whole Netflix situation. No, not the
part about them recently raising prices. Kind of the opposite, actually.
Right now the
technology exists to instantly stream every movie and every television show in
the history of the world to your TV. Whatever
you want to watch, at any time, that’s ever existed, on your TV. Right.
Now. It's one of the more amazing
innovations that has ever occurred in entertainment, and has surprisingly not
gotten the amount of attention that it deserves.
So
let's take the market leader, Netflix. Instead
of having everything immediately, the large majority of movies can’t be
streamed. Some aren't available in any format. For the others you have to wait for the CD in
the mail, and then wait for Netflix to receive the disk. The Postal Service is going to disappear
soon, but for now I'm not such a big fan of relying on them. The whole process is annoying, especially
when you realize there's a better way.
So
why isn't everything streamed? Movies are big business, and right now the
studios and companies like Netflix can't figure out a way to make everybody financially
happy. I don't remember the exact
numbers, but the studios make far more on a CD rental than a streamed rental.
Whatever.
Just get a deal done. I'm guessing there are a lot of people who
would be willing to pay a lot of money to be able to stream everything. I'm one of them. An arm and a leg. Anything but my firstborn. Seriously, this has got to be worth at least
as much as your cable bill, right?
Why is this so
important to me? Because I'm in stage 2
of the three stages of life, which I just thought of 8 seconds ago. Stage 1 is when you're single, and are either
cool or think you're cool. Stage 3 is when
all the kids have moved out of the house, and you actually have some free time
again.
I'm in stage 2, the young kid
stage, when between work and family you're in a constant state of exhaustion. Look, I'm not complaining; like I said, I've
never been happier or more fulfilled. But this is the stage when after work,
putting your kids to bed, and taking care of all your other obligations after
that, you just don't get out much. Movies
on a big screen at home are a nice alternative. I
would say in the seven years since my oldest was born, I've watched more movies
than I have in the rest of my life combined.
So work it out Netflix,
or whatever company wants to crush them.
We’re waiting.
Have a good night
everyone.
JR
