Pushing streaming over the edge?

Some of the stuff I'm reading says that some "pre sorted mass mailings" might not be affected...not sure if that would include Netflix. Since Netflix already picks up and drops off at the post office, I wonder if they would offer to sort the mailers as well. I also wonder, with Netflix being one of the largest sources of income to the post office in the first place, if they have any pull be excluded from this. Not saying they will or anything (and obviously no Saturday delivery will hurt) but info is scarce. I suspect we'll hear something more official soon.

And this will obviously hurt Netflix either way. It might actually help Blockbuster, who struggles with delivery times now....the delay might actually even out the two services if/when 2 or 3 day delivery becomes the norm as it will diminish that particular advantage that Netflix currently has.

Thankfully though, Netflix is ahead of the game with streaming. Reduction in lack of physical delivery mechanisms can't do anything but help push more people to streaming (for good or bad).

I'm sure studios are drooling at another hit to the rental market though.

I will tell you already I have had damaged mail delivered to my mail box. I got a letter from a cousin with half the letter missing along with the contents. I have also received mail that was opened, ripped, wet from rain, and crumpled up. I could only assume that it was some angry postal worker who is going to loose their job. When all the cuts start to happen, I bet we will all suffer. I am predicting many packages and mail will be damaged or missing due to these cuts. You watch. It will happen.

USPS workers are the worst and the whole operation is inefficient, my mailman is always giving me my neighbors mail and my local post office holds on to packages for days(I track them online). It's no wonder they are broke and have to constantly raise postage.

Mainstream, you can’t be serious. Streaming only accounts for 1.2% of total viewing. I seriously doubt this will have much of an impact on total viewing.

although my experience is the polar opposite of your comment .. there are avenues in place to render complaints ..

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You have to remember that I am a TV production/broadcast (retired) kind of guy so I take wording at face value. Mainstream means the entire US viewing audience. As I said, streaming accounts for only 1.2% of the total viewing.

You have to remember I'm a born skeptic, do you have a source to back up that figure?


If you mean the USPS website then thanks for the laugh, they take complaints as seriously as Netflix does.

Yes, and most viewers watch nearly that amount, or more, in one night from OTA, cable and satellite!!

Just because a majority of folks have capable streaming devices does not make streaming “mainstream”. In fact the amount of streaming is quite small when one considers the number of devices capable of streaming. The same can be said of PPV/VOD, there are a huge number of STBs (≈ 100 million subscribers) capable of PPV/VOD but AFAIK no one is claiming PPV/VOD has gone mainstream.

Here are the numbers from one recent night and just the five networks.

1	NCIS® (CBS)	12.5
2	Una Familia Con Suerta (UNI)	3.8
3	Last Man Standing® (ABC)	6.1
3	Last Man Standing®-8:30 (ABC)	5.7
5	The Middle® (ABC)	4.7
6	Suburgatory® (ABC)	4.1
7	The Kennedy Center Honors (CBS)	8.4
7	Body of Proof (ABC)	5.1
9	New Girl® (FOX)	2.8
9	Aqui y Ahora (UNI)	2.4
	Total in millions	55.6

150 million a month? It's mainstream.

Unless Wendell wants to argue the Super Bowl isn't mainstream (only watched by 111 million last year).

And only slightly more than that (somewhere in the neighborhood of 170 million unique people) go the the movies each YEAR....or only ~14 million a month. And I doubt he thinks the theater isn't mainstream.

sources:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_p...vies_each_year

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_819559.html

If you have a beef with USPS misrouting / holding packages etc, as you described, and all you know about is to complain on the Website .. then you've made absolutely no effort to correct your issues ..

You all let me know when a IPTV provider sells a 30 sec. spot for millions of dollars!

At my previous address when I received a small package the carrier would leave a card in my mail box saying come pickup the package at the local postoffice because no one was at home and could not be delivered. That was not true, I was there most every day.

I went to the local postoffice and complained, several times. Eventually, they put another carrier on my section and I never had anymore problems. At my current address there is a lady that is a contract letter carrier, she is the greatest, could not ask for a better person.

This is interesting, I once lived in a Metro area, They had a netflix processing center in my area and my turn around was a day. More if they got the older DVD's from a different location. However, I moved to a rural area about 100 miles from the processing center and I am still at only 2 days turn around. To be expected !

I don't know why this would change, I have a rural P.O. carrier who I mentioned this too and he looked at me funny and said, " Not to worry". so, I won't !

I stream too but, not as much as most. Haven't had a problem out here in the boondocks !

I did email my postmaster and complained but it did no good, if you live in a big city(such as I do) they don't care. If you live in a small town where everyone knows each other then changes will be done, you're lucky that you have excellent service and your Netflix DVD's don't get damaged. By contrast UPS and FedEx has always delivered packages on-time and their phone support is top notch.

Back to our regularly scheduled discussion.....

That video was interesting and kind of shocking. I always assumed that the envelope stuffing process was completely automated (opening would need a human to check that the sleeve contained the correct movie).

I don't have a disc in front of me, but doesn't the white disc holder have a bar code on it? I doubt any Netflix human ever touches the discs. The idea that someone actually checks for the correct physical disc strikes me as way too labor intensive and yet I've never heard of anyone getting the wrong movie, so I am puzzled about this. Does anyone know if the discs themselves have RFID tags?

EDIT: I bet the discs are separated from the white envelope long enough to scan the data around the spindle hole and then it goes back into the envelope.

EDIT EDIT: Yeah, it is shocking that they have people stuffing the envelopes. No wonder Netflix wants out of physical rentals.

I have 3 processing centers within 1 day of me: San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento. I can get a disc from any of those three and it because sometimes I'm ordering an older video it may be at one a different location than the previous disc. Obviously from the video each stuffer is putting the same movie in each envelope. That way they don't even have to look. There must be a few people stuffing where that isn't the case and that would be undoubtedly slower.

What has this to do with selling ad space?

Wow! Netflix has one exclusive series. Want to talk about the hundreds (thousands?) that CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, PBS, HBO, Showtime, Disney...................................................... .........................History had/has?

That is very , IIRC, it got caned because of very low ratings. Who knows, it may play better to the Netflix crowd.

Over the last thirteen years with netflix, I've received a few discs that were in the wrong sleeve. it doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.

Speaking of superbowl and streaming being mainstream, NBC will stream the superbowl online this year.