Though this was the year "everything changed," Gartner Fellow Leigh McMullen was looking to the future at this week's Gartner Symposium, laying out the company's strategic predictions for 2024.
29.09.2023 - 04:13 / tech.hindustantimes.com
The curtain is finally coming down on Netflix's once-iconic DVD-by-mail service, a quarter century after two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs came up with a concept that obliterated Blockbuster video stores while providing a springboard into video streaming that has transformed entertainment.
The DVD service that has been steadily shrinking in the shadow of Netflix's video streaming service will shut down after its five remaining distribution centers in California, Texas, Georgia and New Jersey mail out their final discs Friday.
The fewer than 1 million recipients who still subscribe to the DVD service will be able to keep the final discs that land in their mailboxes.
Some of the remaining DVD diehards will get up to 10 discs as a going away present from a service that boasted as many as 16 million subscribers. That was before Netflix made the pivotal decision in 2011 to separate the DVD side business from a streaming business that now boasts 238 million subscribers and generated $31.5 billion in revenue year.
The DVD service, in contrast, brought in just $146 million in revenue last year, making its eventual closure inevitable against a backdrop of stiffening competition in video streaming that has forced Netflix to whittle expenses to boost its profits.
“It is very bittersweet.” Marc Randolph, Netflix's CEO when the company shipped its first DVD, ""Beetlejuice," in April 1998. “We knew this day was coming, but the miraculous thing is that it didn't come 15 years ago.”
Although he hasn't been involved in Netflix's day-to-day operations for 20 years, Randolph came up with the idea for a DVD-by-service in 1997 with his friend and fellow entrepreneur, Reed Hastings, who eventually succeeded him as CEO — a job Hastings held until stepping aside earlier this year.
Back when Randolph and Hastings were mulling the concept, the DVD format was such a nascent technology that there were only about 300 titles available at the time (at its height, Netflix's DVD service boasted more than 100,000 different titles)
In 1997, DVDs were so hard to find that when they decided to test whether a disc could make it thorough the U.S. Postal Service that Randolph wound up slipping a CD containing Patsy Cline's greatest hits into a pink envelope and dropping it in the mail to Hastings from the Santa Cruz, California post office.
Randolph paid just 32 cents for the stamp to mail that CD, less than half the current cost of 66 cents for a first-class stamp.
Netflix quickly built a base of loyal movie fans while relying on a then-novel monthly subscription model that allowed customers to keep discs for as long as they wanted without facing the late fees that Blockbuster imposed for tardy returns. Renting DVDs through the mail became so popular
Though this was the year "everything changed," Gartner Fellow Leigh McMullen was looking to the future at this week's Gartner Symposium, laying out the company's strategic predictions for 2024.
The roleplay community in Final Fantasy 14 is, simply put, an ocean. It's absolutely massive, comprising several servers, hundreds of night clubs, bars, fight pits, free companies, and homegrown drama. It's big enough that last year, someone thought buying four billboards in California and Texas to advertise their virtual nightclub was a good idea (it wasn't).
The Netflix team is slowly trying to break into the video game industry. It’s not an easy process; they are still far from where they likely want to be. Right now, their bread and butter is providing a streaming service for movies and television shows. We can’t forget to add the fact that they also produce original content. But the company has been making some drastic moves of its own. One of their recent moves has been aimed at the video game industry.
Netflix is beginning to test its cloud gaming servicein the U.S. after initially launching limited trials in Canada and the U.K. The service, an expansion on the company’s mobile gaming efforts which began in 2021, has seen the streamer picking up gaming studios and licensing titles from individual developers with the intention to make gaming another major arm of its business. With its cloud gaming service, Netflix now allows members to play its games on smart TV and TV-connected devices, like Fire TV, Chromecast, Roku, and others, by using their mobile phone as the gaming controller.
Netflix is reportedly interested in adding a Grand Theft Auto game to its subscription service.
The edge of the network isn’t always where you find the most powerful computers. But it is the place where you can find the most ubiquitous technology.
More than a thousand Qualcomm employees are set to lose their jobs in California on or around Dec. 13 this year.
It was previously discovered that Google enticed Apple with a $20 billion deal that allows the search engine to remain the default on its millions of devices. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even spoke of this partnership at a testimonial, believing that it gives the technology giant an unfair advantage in the market, but it is possible that this alliance might be coming to an end, assuming that an antitrust trial ends up going against Google’s favor.
A pop-up Freddy Fazbear's Pizza location has appeared on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, California ahead of Five Nights at Freddy's October release.
Bobby Kotick held a giant all-hands meeting as CEO of Activision Blizzard King, where he talked at length about his hopes and dreams for the company in the future.
Having played 100s of hours of Stardew Valley, I can say with certainty that the soundtrack is absolutely killer. Not only does it feature a combination of genuinely moving and upbeat tracks: but my wife and I also can’t help but hum to the vast majority of the score. That’s going to be a lot more exciting to do in person of course, when the Stardew Valley concert tour kicks off next year.
Good news for Trainspotting fans – there's a promising update on the upcoming spin-off show that will focus on Begbie. Last year actor Robert Carlyle confirmed that a TV series about his popular character was in the works, adapting author Irvine Welsh's 2016 novel The Blade Artist. Now the star has revealed that not only are scripts currently being written, but the show will consist of six episodes.