Netflix: 'Arrested Development' Won't Crash Our Service 127
Nerval's Lobster writes "No, the latest season of 'Arrested Development' won't fatally crash Netflix, despite comedian David Cross's tongue-in-cheek comment that the series will melt down the company's servers on its first weekend of streaming availability. 'No one piece of content can have that kind of impact given the size of what we are serving up at any given time,' a spokesperson wrote in an email to Slashdot. Although 'Arrested Development' struggled to survive during its three seasons on Fox (from 2003 to 2006), the series has built a significant cult following in the years following its cancellation. Netflix commissioned a fourth season as part of a broader plan to augment its streaming service with exclusive content, and will release all 13 new episodes at once on May 26. Like Facebook, Google, and other Internet giants, Netflix has invested quite a bit in physical infrastructure and engineers. It stores its data on Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3), which offers a significant degree of durability and scalability; it also relies on Amazon's Elastic MapReduce (EMR) distribution of Apache Hadoop, along with tools within the Hadoop ecosystem such as Hive and Pig. That sort of backend can allow the company to handle much more than 13 seasons' worth of Bluths binged over one weekend — but that doesn't mean its streaming service is immune from the occasional high-profile failure."
isn't the content streamed via CDN? (Score:5, Informative)
I was level 3 a few years ago and i have read that netflix has developed their own CDN as well
the content is inside most ISP's networks. Amazon is used for authentication and to store the viewing data
Re:isn't the content streamed via CDN? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Netflix has Open Connect CDN [netflix.com] to help serve up content to the users at individual ISPs. As I recall, they give away server appliances [netflix.com] that hold a bit over a hundred TB of video to the ISPs, who then host it at their own expense at a peering facility they share with Netflix. One appliance is roughly capable of covering 70-90% of the content requests, according to some of the other documentation.
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I also read that if your upstream provider is L3, you may already be making use of one of these, and since Netflix is already paying L3 to be a CDN, if your upstream is L3, bandwidth consumed by Netflix doesn't count towards your bill. If you need to upgrade your connection to L3, you're still responsible for thos
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You mean like last Christmas? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I was reminded how durable Netflix was last Christmas when the ghosts of Christmas showed me the true meaning [digitaltrends.com] of bulletproof uptime.
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Still less outages than I had with cable.
Mind you I had TWC, so if you had a reputable provider instead you may have not had this level of outages.
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Mind you I had TWC, so if you had a reputable provider instead you may have not had this level of outages.
There's a reputable cable provider?
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"There's a reputable cable provider?"
Yes. I find monoprice supplies me with decent quality cables at pretty good prices.
Western Union and AT&T also used to provide "cables," and were considered quite reputable in their time.
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Yes, we shouldn't ever complain about or criticize anything because some leper is starving in Africa. Let's all just shut up, everyone!
Close down Slashdot, we're all done here until we fix all the problems in the world.
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Re:You mean like last Christmas? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have my entertainment 24/7. WAAAAAA!!!!! WAAAAAAA!!!! What a jerk you are. More people will die today from lack of food than you'll ever know in your life and you have your panties in a bunch over a single outlet of the dozens you have to choose from for instant entertainment being down for one friggin night? What a pig.
What a jerk you are. More people will die today from lack of food than you'll ever know in your life and you have your panties in a bunch over a single guy complaining about entertainment options?
What a pig.
No WAY (Score:1)
That sort of backend can allow the company to handle much more than 13 seasons' worth of Bluths binged over one weekend
They are going to make 10 MORE *SEASONS* of arrested development???!!!??!!
Let's not kid ourselves here (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let's not kid ourselves here (Score:5, Insightful)
Most American TV viewers watch Idol and Dancing with the stars, so we can ignore their judgement as a baseline for what is good.
I am pretty excited about this, I never watched the show on TV, but found it on Netflix and loved it. Netflix has recently been doing a great job creating content so I am pretty hopeful. I am really looking forward to next season of House of Cards.
Re: Let's not kid ourselves here (Score:1)
You mean the public that watched a rerun of the Big Bang theory over American idol?
http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/04/19/american-idol-big-bang-theory/ [ew.com]
That said, I don't like firefly, though I do like Arrested Development.
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Is that supposed to be an improvement?
If slashdot allowed images, I would place the "Your not helping" meme right here.
Wow, they watched a show that belittles folks like me, instead of watching idiots sing. I guess it is better than mistrel shows.
Re: Let's not kid ourselves here (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Let's not kid ourselves here (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my good friends refuses to even consider watching big bang theory, he calls it "black-face for nerds."
You know, that's a pretty good description. The show is full of the most ridiculous over-acting with one-dimensional (if that) characters with obnoxious voices and idiotic plotlines. I actually was looking forward to a sciency-type sitcom, but was disappointed to see it was the same traditional dross, only with "nerdy" characters. I put "nerdy" in quotes because they seemed more like socially maladjusted outcasts than nerds.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to the new Arrested Development. I'm both pleased and displeased all the episodes will be released at once. I like being able to watch them without waiting a week between each airing, but the suspension is nice to savor it, and I know I won't have the self-control to make it last more than at most a week.
That said, I'm also a little worried about it. I was one of those who didn't like the new Futurama episodes (not even The Late Philip J. Fry, as it was quite depressing, even if touching), and I worry that with the actors being so much older now, some of the flair of the original show will be lost.
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The reason given for releasing them all at once is that while there is an order they expect them to be viewed, they can be viewed in random order to get the stories in different perspectives. Portia de Rossi said something to the effect of if you watch her episode first, Lucille ends up looking particularly bitchy, but if you watch Jessica Walters' episode first, Lindsay ends up looking bitchy.
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... they seemed more like socially maladjusted outcasts than nerds.
Not to defend that stupid show, but honestly, I know some people from my Uni who (in terms of social adjustment) are way worse than Sheldon.
Re: Let's not kid ourselves here (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing about the Big Bang Theory is that there are little science-nerd jokes tucked into it that give me a chuckle, while the boiler plate sit com format still makes my wife laugh, who is European and doesn't get the subtle cultural jokes and wordplay of shows like Arrested Development. For example, why is Sheldon's face on the cover of the Journal of Physical Chemistry? That journal (or any other journal that I know of) would never put someone's face on the cover--let alone a theoretical physicist postdoc. I chose to take that as an inside joke because even the equations in the backgrounds of the sets were clearly vetted by people who know better. Meanwhile my wife thoroughly enjoys watching the various ham-handed relationships evolve. So neither of us is in love with show, but we both get some entertainment out if it... and voilà, mass appeal.
...I also think that the new Futurama isn't as good as the original, but it's hard to tell given that I was still in college when it first aired and I probably changed more than the show in time it was off the air. I hope Arrested Development has evolved with its audience, but I keep reminding myself that it can't possible meet my unrealistic expectations. At least they are releasing a whole batch at once so I can power through a few at a time to get re-immersed, rather than having to wait a week or more between episodes.
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posting to undo "slippity-finger-mod"....
Re: Let's not kid ourselves here (Score:5, Funny)
they watched a show that belittles folks like me
You work at the cheesecake factory?
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I would not say that it belittles, it just emphasizes the wrong things. Being geek is not about reading comics and playing D&D, even if many geeks do like it.
The reason I don't feel belittled by that show is because *any* TV show is like that. ER and Dr. House has nothing to do with real doctors, CSI with real cops, American Idol with real musicians, Dancing with the Stars with neither dancers nor stars.
So, cheer up, it is business as usual.
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Big Bang Theory jumped the shark the moment they started to recycle their jokes because they know the average viewer is too stupid to recognize the same scientific mumbo jumbo from season to season.
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The average viewer is not watching for that reason, they are watching the equivalent of a minstrel show but with nerds instead of African Americans. They only want a caricature of what nerds are, and they want to laugh at them, not with them.
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yep
my wife hogs the TV for AI and Dancing while i stream MLB TV on the iPad
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Most American TV viewers watch Idol and Dancing with the stars, so we can ignore their judgement as a baseline for what is good.
Not to blatantly contradict your logic too harshly...but you said it yourself. Most American TV viewers watch Idol and Dancing with the stars
So, yeah, I'd agree with you that most Americans wouldn't know good TV if it walked up and punched them in the face, but as long as networks base the continuation of a series on ratings, if people continue to watch Idol over something else, there's a good chance that something else is going to get the axe.
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Sure, but that does not mean these shows cannot exist on Netflix.
House of Cards does well on Netflix, Boardwalk Empire does well on HBO, showtime has seen much success with The Borgias. None of those shows are ever going to be what most Americans watch. Yet, enough do watch to make them profitable to continue to produce.
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Star Trek.
That being said, that was the 1960s and it's possible the show was really a victim of both poor scheduling and poor data collection.
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I don't think any of us are thinking that it's popular; we all realize that it wasn't popular and that's why it was cancelled.
We just realize that's it's so good it shouldn't have been cancelled.
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It has hard core devoted fans, but there have never been enough of them.
How many is enough? If they're meeting payroll, that's enough.
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How many is enough? If they're meeting payroll, that's enough.
Indeed. When an unprofitable show gets cancelled -- that is totally understandable, networks are not charity organizations.
The real tragedy is when a show with low profit margin gets cancelled, because some executive decided to get a bigger bonus. That's why crap reality shows are all over the place - they are dirt cheap to make.
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This is something that Netflix can break that mold. No longer are shows competing for prime time, or competing for any time. There's only 24 hours in a day that a legacy channel can air shows. Netflix based steamed shows just need to attract subscribers, and they can show an unlimited number of different 1 hour shows in one day.
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These are for-profit businesses, and you have to look at opportunity costs. If a show only breaks even, then you may (and probably will) make more money with a different show. This is even true when showing a profit; what would you rather have, a show with $1M in profit, or a show with $20M in profit?
It sucks for the fans, but it's not illogical.
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That's good thinking, but inaccurate -- because again, it comes down to opportunity costs. The question is not what breakeven is, the question is whether or not that's the best way you can spend your dollars.
Add to that the fact that it's actually awfully hard to figure out if that extra subscriber you're keeping is because of Arrested Development, House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, or a thousand other different titles.
The real way to figure out whether or not Arrested Development is a success is to divide the
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This is one of those subjective things that you are wrong about.
Re:Let's not kid ourselves here (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not going to pretend that everyone will, or should, like the show, but:
The reason I liked Arrested Development is because it's a serial sitcom with no laugh track that doesn't rely on vulgarity or shock value to deliver its laughs to anywhere near the same degree as other shows (see: How I Met Your Mother). I care about that not because I'm a prude, but because I appreciate that it forces the writers to be more creative, rather than regurgitating the same base jokes over and over again. AD also doesn't string the audience along for so long; again picking on HIMYM, that show will be in its 9th season before we actually meet the titular mother. Finally, I like the more varied cinematography that AD's use of single-camera shots allows.
At the same time, I think some of the above made it hard for AD to find a large audience. I know the lack of laugh track alienated some people, incredible though that seems to me, as I find laugh tracks to be an abomination. The serial nature makes it hard to pick up in the middle of a season, let alone the series, and the (slightly) more subtle humor might not be what Americans are looking for. The single-camera shots also made for higher production costs, which in turn hurt the bottom line.
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The reason I liked Arrested Development is because it's a serial sitcom with no laugh track that doesn't rely on vulgarity or shock value to deliver its laughs to anywhere near the same degree as other shows (see: How I Met Your Mother)
Dude, seriously? If you had given It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia as an example, I'd understand, but How I Met Your Mother is way cleaner than Arrested.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of Arrested, How I Met Your Mother, and Sunny. I'm also completely with you on the "no laugh track" thing, I seriously dislike that. I'm just really confused about your vulgarity and shock value comments. I mean, Tobias' character is entirely based on vulgar jokes. I mean, we're talking about a guy that has a card t
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I also find the entire premise hard to believe. This character is supposed to be listing off his sexcapades to his children as some sort of amusing anecdote.
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This is pretty much what I was thinking when I wrote the comment. Yes, there is vulgarity in AD, but it's the way that it's portrayed that makes a difference. Tobias is completely unwitting in what he says, while several episodes of HIMYM seem to carry the message of "misogyny is cool" if you don't understand the larger theme of the show (which often gets overshadowed in individual episodes).
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Wow, if you think HIMYM is vulgar, donâ(TM)t watch âoeTwo and a Half Menâ nor âoeTwo Broke Girlsâ.
I think itâ(TM)s somewhat of a shame that shows have gotten crasser, but Iâ(TM)m also part of the problem because funny is funny. (Heck, there are a couple of âoedirty wordsâ that are now common on early prime time TV nowadays -- d*** and d*bag.)
How did you watch the series? (Score:2)
If you saw some random episodes, then there was really not much chance to like it. That is one of the reasons the show did not pick up more viewers during its run (along with the fact that its schedule was not consistent of course).
The series is pretty self-referential as it goes on, so some of the best jokes cannot be appreciated. Also, its strength is that there is a design, things don't just happen at random. For example a certain Korean character sort of stops appearing on some episode and is not mentio
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Nah, Fox royally fucked up Firefly. Arrested Development had three seasons to do it right. Fox didn't even finish airing Firefly's first season.
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Indeed, it is in the same boat as Firefly. Like Firefly, I had never even heard of Arrested Development until long after it had failed to attract enough attention to survive on the air, and immediately fell in love with it once I had been introduced. I claim that, in both cases, it was less about being too much of a niche show, and more about completely failing to ADVERTISE just what an awesome show it was. It doesn't matter how many people *would* have loved it, if they never even knew it existed (or, freq
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most American TV viewers really did not care at about it
Most TV viewers are not American.
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Don't underestimate the networks to bungle any show outside there normal expected pattern.
I love Arrested Development, but I don't have high hopes for it's return. I don't know if they can recapture the high energy.
Also, I love Futurama.
Interestingly enough, I never even hear dog the show until it went off the air. I suspect there advertising was such it didn't draw my attention.
I know about 20 people I've got to watch it and they all seem to enjoy it.
So who knows. Maybe it was in a bad time slot.
Not that I
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Beyond this, t
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Shows like Community, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Arrested Development, Futurama, etc. do attract hard-core niche fan bases that are willing to deal with multiple cancellations, "restaffing," and arbitrary schedule changes and hiatuses, but that lack the "mass appeal" to drive ratings, which is how ad-buys are priced. That is why "teevee" is in the process of bifurcating between streaming, on-demand (and often subscription-based) services like Netflix and traditional push-media. And I for one think i
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Oh, please. AD and Firefly's handling by Fox couldn't have been more different.
AD: All 3 seasons shown in a stable slot. All episodes shown in order.
Firefly: 1 season shown wherever Fox felt like shoving it. You never knew week by week where it was going to be. The episodes were shown so far out of order that it was impossible to understand what the backstory was.
Frankly, I think an executive at Fox wanted the show eliminated as fast as possible to make room for a pet project or two. It's a wonder that
13 seasons? (Score:3)
Free Advertisement (Score:1, Flamebait)
You realize that this is a non-paid advertisement for Netflix and 'Arrested Development', right? This is in no way news. It is in no way for nerds. The nominal tie-in to "cloud computing" doesn't change that.
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... and yet *you* read, and dignified it with a comment.
Working as intended.
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Same reason you did. No life and nothing better to do. Thanks for asking.
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Check out http://techblog.netflix.com/ [netflix.com] if you want to know more. We're cloud-hosted, BTW, except for the actual streaming bits which are on a combination of our own CDN and public CDNs.
(And we're hiring).
Signed,
A Netflix Employee
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Re:Free Advertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
It's news to me that Netflix can pick up new seasons of canceled shows. That's great news for shows that do better on DVD than on the air.
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-CF
It is news for nerds (Score:2)
News that was just about House of Cards of the other Netflix shows, I'd agree with you.
But among "Nerds", Arrested Development seems REALLY popular, and so even arbitrary news about it would apply - and an article related to server configuration and Arrested Development DEFINITELY is News for Nerds.
Gob? (Score:5, Funny)
'No one piece of content can have that kind of impact given the size of what we are serving up at any given time,' a spokesperson (Gob Bluth) wrote in an email to Slashdot.
to be soon followed by "I've made a huge mistake."
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I was always under the impression that it's the under-30s who like the show the most. At least, that's been my general observation.
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it went off the air a decade ago
It actually started on the air a decade ago, and was canceled seven years ago.
most 20 somethings today wouldn't have been into a show like this
It was a later-night comedy, and not obscene, so teens in 2003-2006 would have been the perfect demographic; they could watch it after the 'rents went to sleep, laugh, and feel like they're older with all the "adult" themes.
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Wrong show.
Expectations... (Score:1)
I love AD, but I am quite ready to be disappointed. I suspect these so-called new "episodes" will just be some kind of mock promotional short content made to create some hoopla and... in short, a publicity stunt. Not real episodes.
Now, are American Idol and DWTS really that cheap to make? I've read that the judges, celebrities either we like it or not, make some pretty high salaries for just sitting there and going all blah blah blah about whatever it is they talk about in these shows. Doesn't seem so cheap
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Amazon? (Score:1)
Show that good? (Score:1)
I've never watched Arrested Development. I didn't think it was that popular.
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Personally, I loved it, but I caught it after it was cancelled when I rented it on DVD.
Internet (Score:2)
Game of Thrones killed HBO Go (Score:2)
I'm sure someone over at HBO said the same thing when season 3 of GoT was released. The system is still unusable for many on Sunday nights from the incredible strain their network is under as new episodes are released. During the Season 3 premier nearly the entire HBO Go service crashed, and the show was unavailable for most for about 45 minutes.
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it is perfectly acceptable to end a possessive with an 's even if the word already ends in an S.
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But no one really cares about that anymore.
Apparently so since there are 3 fucking posts about it in a row.
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Here are the magical English possessive rules:
* Indicate the possessive by appending 's
* Unless it's a plural noun ending in s: the nuns' habits, but the people's court.
* Proper nouns ending in s still take the appended 's normally. It's the plural that's important, not all words ending in s.
* Except for well known historical/mythological names. So it's Davy Jones' Locker, but Bob Jones's locker; Willis's heel, but Achilles' heel.
In all cases it's spelled as it's pronounced!
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Saying "it's his Achilles's heel" would make it sound like you were drunk. As always in English, there are exceptions to almost any rule you can think of. You would still say "Odysseus's pigs" for example, there's nothing magical about it being historical/mythological/bibilical.
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Well, to put the 4th rule a different way: the only cases where a singular noun ending in s lacks the 's are historical/mythological idioms.
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Spam is spam is spam.