Showing posts with label Netflix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Netflix. Show all posts

Monday, February 28, 2011

Netflix Finally Agrees to Caption 80% of Streaming Content!

Netflix has announced that 80% of its streaming content will be captioned by the end of 2011. It's about time. The issue of online captioning didn't appear to be on CEO Reed Hasting's radar at all in May 2009. That all changed with this May 2009 post.

Thank you so much to everyone who supported the online captioning campaign. We couldn't have done it without you!

Also, thank you to Netflix and CEO Reed Hastings for rising up to the challenge. We know it's not over yet--some people doubt that Netflix can meet its own goal of captioning 80% of its streaming content by the end of 2011--but at least the company finally appears to recognize captioning issue is an important issue.

Disclosure: I have either no shares or an insignificant number of shares in Netflix (NFLX). I continue to be a Netflix member, but have not watched more than a handful of movies online because of the captioning issue.

Update in January 2017: Reading Netflixed (2013), it appears Blockbuster's John Antioco had Netflix on the ropes when investor Carl Icahn disputed 5.6 million of Antioco's deserved bonus. The dispute led Antioco to leave Blockbuster, essentially bankrupting the company's online business (now Sling) and giving Netflix a clear path ahead.

Even more interesting is the "loss leader" strategy employed by Antioco to drive subscribers to switch from NFLX to Blockbuster Online. Having bricks-and-mortar stores once gave Blockbuster advantages--it could sell ancillary products to increase cash flow, and allow customers to return mailed DVDs to physical stores--while Netflix relied completely on online distribution. More importantly, the revenue from existing Blockbuster customers could allow it to create "loss leader" strategies to bankrupt the smaller Netflix--as long as franchisees were onboard. Such new strategies present fascinating anti-trust issues, because once a new competitor is vanquished, what prevents the sole winner of a complex, costly business model to drive up prices? 

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Is Netflix Ignoring the Hearing Impaired?

Stan Taylor, bless his heart, nails Netflix (NFLX) for its apathy towards the hearing-impaired community:

"Hearing-impaired get no love from Netflix "

So Netflix will be charging more for mailed movies? However, there is no word that they will fully provide CC and SDH (closed captioning and subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired) on their downloads.
Nor is there any information suggesting they will waive the increased cost for mailers for the deaf and hearing impaired until they can provide CC and SDH. The Americans with Disabilities Act should protect hearing-impaired people from a company that just doesn't seem to care about them.

(From SJ Mercury News, letters, November 26, 2010)

I have a love-hate relationship with Netflix. I love their DVDs and movie recommendations, but I cannot understand why they won't get their act together when it comes to online captioning. Many online video outlets already offer online captioning, including Hulu. In 2009, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings claimed that Hulu didn't offer captions. His comment really irked me, because Hulu did offer captions, and the fact that he got it wrong indicated online captioning wasn't even on his radar screen. (More here on that particular exchange.)

But Netflix isn't behind just Hulu--it's also behind YouTube, which offers online captioning on many of its videos. If you want to see the difference captioning makes in the lives of the hearing impaired, watch this YouTube video. It's only 1 minute and 28 seconds, but it will give you excellent insight into online captioning. The participants point out that online captioning also exposes content to a foreign audience that wants to learn English. I'd go a step further--Google has amazing translation services and tools, which means that eventually, every single show can be put online and watched by anyone, anywhere. Without captioning, however, most of those shows, including amateur user-made content, will be inaccessible to the majority of viewers. The loss of potential markets aside, why would Netflix choose to exclude the hearing impaired community when Hulu and YouTube are able to be inclusive?

Netflix's preference that its viewers watch films online certainly saves the company money on postage, but at what price to its viewers? Someone like me--severely hearing-impaired since birth--relies heavily on Netflix for entertainment. Since I function best in one-on-one situations where I can focus on a single speaker, I tend to feel lost during common social activities, which are usually group-based. For example, dance clubs and bars, which are noisy anyway, are terrible places for me and other hearing impaired persons who want to socialize. Now that Netflix is moving from DVDs to online streaming without captions, does it realize it is making another form of socialization harder for the hearing impaired?

Making matters worse, ordering a Netflix DVD isn't any guarantee that it will be captioned. You'll notice some Netflix DVDs are colored gray. Those plain gray DVDs are made specifically for Netflix. These DVDs sometimes lack captions, because Netflix doesn't require them. For example, I still haven't seen Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. I know it's supposed to be a great film, so when my first gray-colored Gran Torino DVD didn't have captions, I ordered another one. The second one had no captions. Being the persistent type, I got another one. Still no captions. I finally tried to watch it without captions, but Clint Eastwood has a very soft voice, and it's impossible for me to hear him without captions.

To be fair, it's not just Netflix that ignores the hearing impaired community. During Cisco's most recent annual meeting, CEO John Chambers indicated that "66 percent of the world's mobile data traffic will be video by 2014." (More here.) He did not mention the issue of online captioning, nor did he seem to consider that its absence might impact web traffic in the future. However, if senior citizens--who tend to lose their hearing over time--cannot fully participate in online activities, wouldn't online retailers and businesses lose a large group of potential customers?

For instance, let's assume that an online commercial has sound and speech--why would the company who paid for the advertisement want to exclude senior citizens from its reach? Even if they don't buy the product for themselves, most senior citizens have children and grandchildren, don't they? Let me give you an example of what Cisco and other online companies are missing. Make sure you have your computer's sound off or your speakers silenced. Now check out this Cisco advertisement. It's not a bad commercial, is it? Now go back and look at the commercial with the sound on. Amazing, isn't it? It's easily one of the best corporate commercials in 2010, if not the best.

Most hearing impaired people have some ability to hear sound (though not all speech). With captioning, hearing impaired people and senior citizens can mentally fill in the parts they miss and enjoy the full experience of television shows and online advertising. But let's set aside our altruistic side for a moment and say you don't care about the disabled, the hearing impaired, the deaf, and senior citizens. Fine. Yet, we all know people who watch videos and surf the web during work. If advertisers made it easier for employees to watch commercials and videos in a way that didn't alert their managers, perhaps productivity would decline, but online exposure would increase. (I said upfront I was ditching the moral choices in this particular argument, and once you've already accepted ditching the disabled and the deaf, time-theft seems almost vanilla.)

Overall, the fact that Netflix can't keep up with Hulu and YouTube should concern not just customers, but any company interested in acquiring Netflix. If Netflix can't handle online captioning, what else can't it handle? And why would any company consciously tarnish its public image by ignoring seniors, the disabled, the hearing impaired, and the deaf?

Disclosure: I currently own fewer than five shares of Netflix (NFLX), but my holdings may change at any time.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Netflix Finally Addresses Online Captioning Issues

In mid-May 2009, I reported that CEO Reed Hastings had confirmed that Netflix would not take an active approach to captioning its online content. The online community reacted immediately to CEO Hasting's comments. As of today, the Facebook group, "Netflix Watch-Instantly Needs Closed Captions!" had 983 members--most of whom joined after my review of Netflix's annual meeting was published. According to some reports, Netflix recently received thousands of inquiries regarding captioning online content.

Netflix finally issued a statement regarding captions yesterday. Click here to see it. The gist of the statement was that captioning would be supported on a specific Microsoft media player in about one year:

Captioning is in our development plans but is about a year away...I would expect to deliver subtitles or captions to Silverlight clients sometime in 2010.

One reader, Chris, wasn't buying Netflix's explanation:

I am not personally affected by Netflix's lack of subtitles but from reading multiple deaf consumer's complaints about Netflix's lack of support of Closed Captions I can sympathize with their point of view. from a technological standpoint I would say that Netflix has totally failed. I've been able to view DivX movies with subtitles for at least 7+ years. And it in no way required bringing the text into the the video. In fact all it required was a simple time-stamped .txt file that took up maybe 10-20 KB (that is 0.001% the size of a normal Netflix movie). There should be ZERO reason why Netflui/Silverlight can't support the use of .SRT. files and be able to EASILY support CC in multiple languages. Quite frankly I think Netflix has really disappointed a non-significant size of its customer base and is hiding behind non-existent "technological difficulties" as an excuse.

Personally, I view Netflix's response with cautious optimism. After receiving thousands of inquiries about online captioning, Netflix now understands that its cavalier approach to the issue was unacceptable. Also, by publicly declaring that online captioning will be available in some format in "about a year," Netflix has committed itself to a particular date. If it fails to provide online captioning by July 2010, its reputation and perhaps share price will suffer.

To be continued...

Update on June 15, 2009: I forgot to add that celebrity Marlee Matlin gave her support to online captioning via Twitter:

[from her friend] I called Netflix and talked 2 one of corporate offices Over 8000 letters & phone calls about #caption this month! YES!!

Update on July 10, 2009: I recently tried to enjoy Gran Torino, but it didn't have TV captions or DVD subtitles. I called customer service, and she sent me another DVD after assuring me the DVD had captions. (NFLX lists Gran Torino as a closed captioned film.) The second DVD also didn't have captions.

I noticed the DVD cover was gray. It turns out that gray-colored DVDs are made specifically for Netflix and may be different from other publicly-sold DVDs. In this case, it appears the studio, Warner Brothers, didn't provide Netflix with a captioned DVD. No one had apparently figured this out. Netflix and its contract lawyers should ensure that all of its specially-issued DVDs have captions. Why would any studio want to prevent hearing impaired people from enjoying their product?

Update on April 18, 2010: Netflix has finally captioned some online videos, but only 100 so far. More here. Looking at hulu.com's options, which have included captioning and now transcripts, I am still disappointed with NFLX.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Netflix's Annual Shareholder Meeting (2009)

[Note: this 2009 post caused an uproar in the online community, leading to a small Facebook revolt and support from star Marlee Matlin. Within a few weeks, Netflix announced it would enable online captioning by 2010 (but didn't provide specific benchmarks). The real surprise? As of November 7, 2009, not a single mainstream media outlet had formally covered either the issue of online captioning or Netflix's response. Finally, on February 24, 2011, Netflix announced 80% of its streaming content would be captioned by the end of 2011. Thank you to everyone who supported the online captioning campaign.]

[Note: A major media outlet did eventually cover the issue of online captioning--a year later. See here for June 20, 2010 NYT story.]

Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) held its annual shareholder meeting yesterday at its headquarters in Los Gatos, California. The meeting lasted less than half an hour and around fifteen non-employees attended. As usual, only cookies, water, and soda were offered.

The meeting consisted of CEO and Founder Reed Hastings answering shareholder questions. There was no presentation.

I like Reed Hastings. He has great ideas on education reform, and he is smart enough to have caught the eye of Microsoft (MSFT), which placed him on its board of directors. When it comes to annual meetings, however, Mr. Hastings seems like he can't wait to get back to work. That's a laudable trait in a CEO, and most mathematicians (he majored in math) aren't known as overly social animals anyway.

Shareholders' comments were generally half-question, half-compliment. One shareholder praised Netflix's compensation factors, also known as "performance factors." (See 2009 proxy statement, pages 14-15: "to attract and retain outstanding performers, it must provide a challenging work environment. To this end, the Company strives to maintain a high-performance culture.")

Netflix also evaluates employee performance based on several factors, including judgment; innovation; impact; curiosity; communication; courage; honesty; selflessness; and passion. It's unusual for a company to openly tell shareholders that it bases compensation partly on goals like "honesty." Netflix rightfully deserves compliments for having a multi-faceted compensation analysis that includes an ethical component.

Another shareholder asked what the company was doing now that more players were entering the streaming video business. Mr. Hastings answered that Netflix "is always having to compete," and businesses like www.hulu.com were changing the competitive landscape. At the same time, he said, "It's a big landscape," and while there will be "more competition in the future," Netflix was continuing to add subscribers at a healthy rate. Mr. Hastings also said that the most competition came from cable and satellite companies.

Another shareholder asked what Netflix would look like in five to ten years. Mr. Hastings answered that he didn't have a crystal ball, but Netflix currently had millions of subscribers and he hoped to to keep increasing its customer base.

I asked two questions. Page 10 of Netflix's 10K states that Netflix had issues with Starz Play service:

Many of the [streaming video] licenses provide for the studios or distributor to withdraw content from our service relatively quickly...For example, in December 2008, certain content associated with our license from the Starz Play service was withdrawn on short notice.

I asked why Starz Play revoked its license in 2008. Mr. Hastings said he didn't know about that (perhaps he didn't understand my question) and said Netflix currently had a good relationship with Starz Play. When I later pointed him to the 10K, Mr. Hastings said he did not want to comment. He reiterated that Netflix currently has licenses for Starz Play. [Update: when I followed up on the Starz Play question, I read out loud the relevant section in the 10K to Mr. Hastings. He appeared to understand my question the second time and immediately said he had no comment.] I was a little stunned, because Mr. Hastings was not willing to answer a question about a publicly disclosed fact. I realize as a small shareholder, Mr. Hastings doesn't owe me answers on every question I ask, but the Starz Play revocation seemed like an important issue, and an issue that might impact the share price. Although I didn't say it, I was thinking, "If Netflix doesn't want to answer reasonable questions about its company, why did it go public?"

I then mentioned Netflix's failure to add captions/subtitles to its online streaming videos. Netflix's "instant play" option doesn't include captions, making its online video option unusable for many users. As a result of not offering captions, Netflix is alienating its hearing-impaired, deaf, and senior citizen customers. According to some estimates, there are 34 million hearing-impaired persons in the United States. One would think Netflix would think better than to alienate such a large customer base.

I asked what Netflix was doing to make its website and online video accessible to everyone. Mr. Hastings said other online streaming sites didn't offer captions, and mentioned hulu.com as one of them. He said as time progresses, captioning technology will become more widespread, and Netflix would then incorporate it into its own technology. He also said that customers can continue to receive DVDs through the mail, and most DVDs contained captions.

Unfortunately for Mr. Hastings, I use hulu.com to watch Simpsons episodes. Except for a few episodes, every Simpsons episode I've watched had captions. Obviously, the technology exists to make online video accessible to everyone, so I wasn't quite ready to let this topic pass. I gave Mr. Hastings another chance to explain how he would make his business accessible to everyone. I mentioned that hulu.com did indeed offer captions, and I said (paraphrased), "It sounds like you're not planning to do anything to add captions to your site. Am I correct in understanding that you don't plan on making your online videos accessible to the disabled?" Mr. Hastings said he would check out hulu.com, but essentially agreed that adding captions wasn't an active agenda item. Now, I don't want to go Kanye West on anyone, but it didn't feel like Mr. Hastings or Netflix cares about deaf people.

Mr. Hastings is making a poor business decision by not maximizing his site's accessibility. First, Netflix has already signed up the "low-hanging fruit." In order to keep growing and to justify its relatively high P/E, it will now have to maximize its customer outreach efforts. By not even trying to make online video accessible to the disabled, Netflix is losing goodwill and a large potential customer base.

Second, although Netflix wants to grow its online video business, it is subject to the whims of the studios and other content providers. Netflix doesn't have much leverage over the studios, who control their online content and may wonder why they should license content to Netflix. The December 2008 Starz Play incident shows just how vulnerable Netflix is to having its access unilaterally cut off. To encourage content providers to grant Netflix licenses on reasonable terms, Netflix needs to add something of value. Providing captions for online content may be one low-cost method of offering value to content providers. (I don't know exactly how much it would cost to create online video captions, but there are plenty of people in English-friendly countries who would be willing to do the work.)

Third, being insensitive to the disabled will harm Netflix's public image. I am surprised that Microsoft's good corporate citizenship in this area hasn't rubbed off on Mr. Hastings. Although Microsoft gets a lot of bad publicity, it is actually at the forefront when it comes to offering tools to assist the disabled. Here is a list of the awards it has received as a result of its work on behalf of the disabled. Here is one relating to the hearing-impaired community:

Microsoft was recognized among 12 companies and two educational institutions for "extraordinary efforts in promoting equal access to telecommunications and media for consumers who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, late-deafened or deaf-blind..." "TDI commends Microsoft for its special commitment and allocation of resources over the years to introduce and offer accessible and usable software applications for all Americans. With this technology, deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans can fulfill their potential as full, active participants in the general mainstream—regardless of differences in culture, language and communication."

Bet you didn't know about Microsoft's good reputation in the disabled community. That reputation has created lots of Microsoft supporters willing to speak up when others bash the company. In short, there is no need for Netflix to alienate an entire community, especially not one that contains millions of potential customers.

I understand that Mr. Hastings founded Netflix, controls much of the stock, and probably feels like he doesn't need to listen to anyone. At the same time, Netflix needs to more carefully manage its reputation so it maximizes its customer base. It already has many loyal fans and will probably keep growing (though its rate of growth may not be as high as some shareholders would like). Despite my criticism, I love Netflix and am a huge fan of the company. The algorithm that recommends movies has pointed me to many wonderful films I might have never found on my own, like Germany's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, China's Shower, and Iran's Children of Heaven.

Mr. Hastings did shake my hand after the meeting and told me he wished he had better answers for me. He gets points for that gesture. I hope he will actually do something about Netflix's inaccessible features. In the meantime, I will not be adding to my small position in the stock. Absent a buyout, perhaps from Microsoft, Netflix looks fairly valued to me.

Bonus: I also blogged about last year's annual meeting here, calling it one of the strangest meetings I've attended.

Disclosure: I own an insignificant number of Netflix (NFLX) shares.

Update on June 1, 2009: unfortunately, this doesn't apply to online video, but if you have a complaint about a television show not being captioned, the following link shows you how to make an effective complaint:

http://www.hearinglossweb.com/Issues/Access/Captioning/Television/file.htm

Update on June 13, 2009: Netflix finally issued a statement re: captioning:

Captioning is in our development plans but is about a year away...I would expect to deliver subtitles or captions to Silverlight clients sometime in 2010...

It appears Netflix has changed its tune somewhat, but if you read the comments on the Netflix post, many readers are questioning Netflix's explanations and statements.

As of today, the Facebook group, "Netflix Watch-Instantly Needs Closed Captions!" had 983 members--most of whom joined after my review of Netflix's annual meeting was published.

Update on June 18, 2009: Here is my follow-up post to this story. The pro-captioning Facebook group continues to grow--"Netflix Watch" has 1,129 members.

Update on August 29, 2009: "Netflix Watch" now has over 2,000 members.

Update on April 18, 2010: Netflix has finally captioned some online videos, but only 100 so far. More here. Looking at hulu.com's options, which include online captioning and transcripts, I am still not happy with NFLX's slow progress. I guess it's a start, and better than nothing. Thanks to everyone who helped NFLX realize the importance of online captioning.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Netflix, Inc. Shareholder Meeting, May 21, 2008

Netflix (NFLX) had one of the shortest and strangest shareholder meetings I've ever been to. I am now realizing the time and day a company sets its meeting is important in analyzing whether they even want people to show up. Netflix had its shareholder meeting on a day other than Friday; in addition, the meeting was held at 3:00PM, too late after lunch, and too early before getting off work for most people to attend. It looked like less than 10 non-employees appeared at the meeting. While short interest in Netflix is quite high, the stock has done very well compared to the rest of the market. You would think that Netflix would want to show off its comparative stock performance. You'd be wrong. There was no presentation whatsoever. Only the Netflix logo appeared in the background of what appeared to be an auditorium. The food--well, there wasn't any real food. Some sodas and cookies were on a table with napkins. Take all this together, and you've got a PR campaign opportunity missed for what is basically a media company.

The meeting was in Los Gatos, CA, NFLX's HQ. This is not a distribution center, so don't bring your DVDs to the building and expect them to take it. The CEO is Reed Hastings, and he went up to the podium, said that Netflix was a company that offered media content online and through a DVD subscription service. After that short statement, he immediately launched into the Q&A session.

One person asked how Netflix intended to grow, given that all the people she knew already had Netflix. Mr. Hastings replied that in the Bay Area, they had good penetration in the market. 20% of the people in the Bay Area were signed up already. However, in other cities, such as Chicago and Boston, market penetration and brand recognition were still not at high levels. Therefore, there was plenty of room to grow.

The CEO pointed out that NFLX had won a customer satisfaction award.

Another person asked how many distribution centers Netflix had, and their location. Mr. Hastings replied that they had 50 centers located in about the 50 largest cities in the U.S., covering 95% of their current subscribers.

The CEO pointed out that although the company has been around for about a decade, it named itself Netflix, not "DVD-by-Mail" because it knew that eventually, the real market would be online. Nevertheless, the DVD format is still very profitable for companies, who aren't yet completely on board with the online streaming media format. (The underlying current, as I interpreted it, was that media companies make so much money on DVDs that they have no incentive to change their business model.) As a result, Mr. Hastings said that the DVD market should remain in place and be profitable for the next 10 to 20 years. (This would be good news for Toshiba and its Blu-ray format; however, the CEO never mentioned Blu-ray at all.)

NFLX has 100,000 movie titles. One interesting question was about how Netflix would adapt to globalization in an age where anyone could relocate to a lower-cost locale and set up a competing company. This dove-tailed with a later question about whether Netflix had considered selling its service to other countries' citizens because of the scalability of delivering online content. The CEO said that to use each film, each country has to provide you with authorization and rights to use it; in other words, it's a "country by country" analysis, and NFLX was planning on staying in the U.S.

I asked two questions. One, what did Netflix think about the potential merger between Circuit City and Blockbuster, and how did it plan on responding to it? This caught the CEO somewhat off guard, and he said that I knew as much as he did about it, and that when and if it happened, he would take a look at it. My second question was what the company planned on doing with captions as it moved to more online delivery (most online delivery lacks captions, and on many older films, captions are non-existent, even on DVD--if someone is hearing impaired, they wouldn't be able to really enjoy the online delivery service without captions). The CEO replied that the caption was basically another file that had to be incorporated into the online delivery, but that the media companies hadn't yet focused on delivering that file. He expected that the media companies would eventually provide such files for online delivery, but given his earlier statement about media companies being happy with the status quo of DVDs, I'm not sure online content delivery will be accessible to older and/or hearing impaired persons anytime soon.

Almost right before the shareholder meeting, Netflix received publicity for its set-top box player, which allows its subscribers stream videos from the NFLX website into their TVs. This was a device developed with Roku, another company that was apparently founded by some NFLX ex-employees. 10,000 films and TV episodes will be offered for this service at this time. But NFLX may lose money the more people use its box and online service because it probably has to pay a fee or a higher fee to the media companies the more views its online films receive. With a DVD, once NFLX buys it, it belongs to NFLX and there's not much--at least under current laws--that the media companies can do to prevent NFLX from offering it to others. These would be good questions to ask at next year's meeting: Isn't it less profitable for NFLX to move its viewers into its online services? How is the fee structure set up between NFLX and the copyright owner of a film in terms of how the copyright owner gets paid for online delivery? Is it a one-time fee?

After the meeting, the CEO looked very uncomfortable talking to the remaining shareholders but humored us for a while. His main comments related to piracy, and how international expansion would be difficult because of all the piracy outside of the U.S. (However, a shareholder mentioned that online delivery was harder to steal because encryption could be more complex--you can't download an encrypted movie file as easily as you can copy a DVD--and that the encryption could have several layers that were constantly changing.) Another question was how NFLX was going to work with the X-Box and Microsoft. The CEO was very vague on that response. Once he was out of the auditorium, he practically bolted away, even cutting someone off in mid-sentence. I don't mean to say that Mr. Hastings is abusive or mean-spirited. He actually appears quite the opposite, i.e. he appears to be a good-humored, good-natured person, and went out of his way to make an older shareholder who wasn't a subscriber and who didn't quite understand the business feel comfortable.

All in all, a very strange experience. I got to thinking perhaps this company was going to be bought out and needed to keep mum. But given the recent alliance with Roku, a smaller company, and the level of short interest, that appears to be less of a sure thing. Still, a company like Netflix will definitely be one to watch, if only because they appear focused on their business--so focused, in fact, that they don't seem to want to have any shareholders show up and see what they're up to, at least not in person.

Update on May 25, 2008: I read the company's 10K. Here are some interesting highlights:

1. Netflix says it is calculating the value of options under a "lattice-binomial model" rather than the more popular Black-Scholes model. I have no idea what this means, but it's definitely interesting--is NFLX trying to hide something, or does it have cutting-edge economists on its staff?

2. From 2006 to 2007, Netflix grew from 5,083,000 subscribers to 6,718,000 subscribers.

3. Netflix settled some litigation with Blockbuster and received 7 million dollars. I would have liked to see more about the content of that litigation, but it's settled, and so the parties probably have to stay mum.

4. See page 12 of the 10K for some information on the online delivery payment format. "Our ability to provide our instant-watching feature...depends on studios licensing us content specifically for Internet delivery...Unlike DVD, Internet delivered content is not subject to the First Sale Doctrine [where you can do whatever you like with a DVD once you buy one of them]. As such we are completely dependent on the studios providing us licenses in order to access and distribute Internet delivered content. In addition, the studios have great flexibility in licensing content. They may elect to license content exclusively to a particular provider...For example, HBO licenses content from studios like Warner Bros., and the license provides HBO with the exclusive right to such content against other subscription services, including Netflix."

It looks more and more like Netflix has to be bought out by a major producer of content to move towards its goal of being primarily an Internet delivery company.

Update on May 26, 2008: looks like Netflix's meeting wasn't always so brief. See

http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2006/05/netflix_annual__1.html