Netflix Will Explore Mobile-Specific Cuts of Its Original Series (theverge.com) 80
An anonymous reader shares an article: Netflix chief product officer Neil Hunt said in a briefing today with journalists in San Francisco that the company plans to explore streaming mobile-specific cuts of its original movies and TV shows, to satisfy what he said was a growing audience of mobile Netflix watchers. "It's not inconceivable that you could take a master [copy] and make a different cut for mobile," Hunt said. To date, Netflix hasn't been delivering different cuts for different viewing platforms, Hunt said, but "it's something we will explore over the next few years." The idea would be to create a version of the content with scenes or shots that are more easily visible or immersive on a mobile phone, since certain shots can be hard to see or can appear diminished on a relatively small phone screen.
Do not want (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you want to lose subscribers? Because that's how you lose subscribers.
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I hate this idea but at the same time it would be really nice if you could pick which edition of the movie you wanted to watch like the 1989 version or the 2017 remastered 1989 version or just between the rated and unrated versions.
That and things like commentary are some of the only features i'm still looking for with netflix.
I like watching really good movies a second time with the commentary on but I won't mess with discs and the pre-roll ads anymore for the privilege.
Oh and keep like the last 1-10 minu
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Bullshit. Everyone had a collection of VHS movies.
Maybe the neighborhood AV snob would insist on laser disc, but everyone else went with the basics. They bought into the technology that gave them a decent experience at an affordable price. For 10-20 years, that was VHS.
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Bullshit my family had Betamax until the mid 90'S
Still though even that had issues. You know the scene in return of the Jedi where the saucer dish breaks off? I didn't know that was in there until the mid 2000's when I finally watched the Betamax versio. I had and then the new restore version Lucas put out.
That shit changes story line and editing for devices will change the story today with Netflix too.
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VHS (Score:2)
VHS movies were cut for a different ratio (4:3). TVs and phones have very similar ratios (usually 16:9) so why bother making different versions?
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Well, screens are different. Most TV screens are barely sRGB, while most smartphone screens are 100% sRGB, and some are even pushing DCI-P3. But few TV screens are fully Rec.2020 (aka BT.2020, or "HDR" or 4K Wide Color Gamut (WCG)). So color mixing might have to be adjusted. This can be important for HDR movies - if you know your display is WCG, then you can use a full HDR scene. But if it's just SDR (Rec.709/BT.7
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and what if you are streaming to a projector or a tv that accepts video streaming from your device... does the app then renegotiate and publish the "right" version.
or do you realize that this is a loosing battle and let the end devices scale it.
9:16 (Vertical) (Score:2)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I had lots of movies and I sought out letterboxed editions. They were hard to find but did exist. I still have a good number of them, and still have two S-VHS VCRs I have in my AV rack but haven't connected or powered on in quite a few years. Also, I seem to remember there was a huge company which littered the landscape that was full of VHS tapes to rent. Perhaps you've heard of "Blockbuster?"
The reason VHS went away was the same as cassettes, and 8-tracks before them; relatively poor quality and sequential
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I got an even better story. Funnily enough it also happened at Walmart. I was looking at the new consoles, it was around the Wii/PS3 launch. I was t
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Of course, that's not necessarily true. Some P&S movies were originally shot on a larger frame, but with physical mattes on the eyepiece so the camera operator could see what would actually show up on a widescreen setup. In those cases, sometimes you got more content in the P&S version of some scenes, because they went back to the original negatives. And in other ca
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I'm old enough to have lived in the VHS era and I can assure you, no one had movie collections. No one wanted to actually buy a VHS cassette of a favourite movie because it was modified and cut to fit a TV.
Taking your point (which some people apparently missed) and co-opting it for my own purposes...
This used to drive me nuts. I've always liked movies, so when people would ask me for a birthday/Christmas list there would always be movies on the list. And, alongside that, I've always included the caveat "please do not buy the 4:3 version that was cropped for television!"
I must've received a good two dozen 4:3 movies (both VHS and DVD) as gifts, over the years...
Thank goodness TVs are all widescreen now, and th
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Except there's no mention of it being inescapable forced onto mobile users. The sky isn't falling here.
Opt out option (Score:3, Insightful)
They better have a opt out option!
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What this guy said...... And it better be persistent not a per viewing option.
David Lynch's take on things is interesting (Score:2)
Re:This would upset me... (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm sorry you'll have to wait a few hundred years for "Ow My Balls!".
America's Funniest Home Videos (Score:2)
"Ow My Balls" premiered in 1989 [wikipedia.org], and I'm guessing it's part of the reason Tourette's Guy shouts "BOB SAGET!"
Dumb.... (Score:1)
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I see it like the mobile optimised versions of websites.
When they make something for mobile it's way butchered and has way less functionality than the full site.
While device manufacturers and mobile browser programmers are going in the opposite direction entirely (with exception of plugin support like flash and java) trying to make their browsers work with the desktop version of websites and most of the time /. included the desktop version works way better on mobile than the "mobile" version does.
What will
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Not yet Netflix basic features are still included with the sub.
If it were owned by EA the netflix app would be $2.99 and if you want to watch HD on mobile that would be an extra $10 "HD VIDEO DLC" in addition to the monthly subscription fee.
Re:Dumb.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. Imagine if Amazon removed paragraphs from the eBook versions to make it easier/faster to read? Different cuts of TV shows and movies that depends on the viewing device is a bad idea.
However, if all they're talking about is different cropping for smaller devices, i.e. to make it easier to see details/action/characters on the small screen, then it's not really that different from a 16:9 movie cropped to 4:3. Sure you're missing parts of the image, but it's not a different cut.
I'm 40 and the only time I've noticed cropping removed important information was the ending scene of The Fifth Element, where you see the moon in the 16:9 version but not in the 4:3 version. The implied information was that our current moon was another evil sphere that was stopped thousands of years ago and the new now-also-dead evil sphere became a second moon. Removing that bit of information kind of ruined the ending for those who watched in 4:3.
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Imagine if Amazon removed paragraphs from the eBook versions to make it easier/faster to read?
I believe that would have the opposite effect. Paragraphs are not designed to impede reading.
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I believe that would have the opposite effect. Paragraphs are not designed to impede reading.
Ever read Les Misérables?
Hopscotch, a novel with appendices (Score:2)
Then perhaps Hugo's Les Misérables might benefit from an approach akin to that of Julio Cortázar's novel Hopscotch [wikipedia.org]: the main story at the front, with the rest relegated to appendices. Readers could then choose to read the main story first or read with the appendices inserted before each related chapter.
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Yes, my favorite chapter was the Intestine of the Leviathan... because it didn't involve any character that was part of the story but instead went about describing the sewers of Paris based off the tales from various real figures.
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I didn't mean paragraphs as in formatting, I meant removing whole paragraphs - i.e. remove text - from pages.
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In Mission: Impossible, Hunt had his back to the camera and was doing his sleight of hand trick with the disc*. In 4:3 his hands were not visible so you couldn't tell what he was doing. Not that it ruined the movie or anything but probably made the scene a little more confusing for someone who hadn't seen it before.
* he was in the safe house with Claire, Krieger and Luther after the heist
Roku, Amazon Fire, etc? (Score:2, Insightful)
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So are they going to consider the Roku and Amazon Fire and similar devices to be "mobile devices"? Because a lot of people use these devices to output via HDMI to their TVs. That doesn't seem right to give these users different content just because they're not using a computer as their primary output device.
If you actually RTFA, you would see the very first thing in the article is a picture of handheld devices. In the article at the very bottom it even says:
“mobile screens are the majority consumption device.”
"mobile screen" != HDMI output
My cell phone is "larger" than my TV (Score:5, Insightful)
My TV is on the other side of the room. My cell phone I hold close to my head when watching TV. Guess which fills more of my vision?
Optional... (Score:2)
Devil's advocate (Score:2)
My gut feeling tells me recutting for mobile will lead to no good.
However; how is this any different from movies cut to 4:3 a few decades ago, and (re-)cut to 16:9 somewhat more recent?
Out of context? (Score:4, Insightful)
Buried in the original article is a mention that these statements were made during a two-day event Netflix held together with Dolby Laboratories, centered around High Dynamic Range video (e.g., Dolby Vision).
Maybe these out-of-context statements really mean "If we're filming a show in Dolby Vision and it has a lot of really dark scenes, maybe we should make a mobile version that brightens up the shadows a bit so that it's not a murky mess on a glossy mobile-phone screen under who-knows-what lighting conditions?" The Dolby Vision spec can adjust the dynamic range to meet the capabilities of the viewing device... if the device has a Dolby-manufactured ASIC. It sounds like Netflix is considering how to offer mobile users the option of a server-side tweak to do something similar.
That would actually be a good thing, especially if the user had the option to select "normal" or "mobile optimized" versions.
I have a Dolby Vision-equipped TV. Netflix has several shows filmed in Dolby Vision. Many, like Daredevil, have very dark cinematography. It looks incredible on a Dolby Vision TV under controlled lighting... but you're definitely missing stuff on an iPhone under commercial lighting. Bumping the darks up a notch or two to compensate would not be a terrible thing.
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Hey, this is /., you're supposed to just crap on ideas, regardless of their actual merits. Also, no fair reading the article. 2 demerits!
Do you know they are already doing this? (Score:2)
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This isn't talking about a different format on Netflix vs. Blu-ray. If you even read the headline, let alone the summary or article, you could see it is talking about Netflix on a TV vs. Netflix on a phone.
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I haven't bought many movies from iTunes - not since Requiem went away - but those I did buy generally kept the original aspect ratio. So a movie shot as 2.35:1, purchased from Apple, would be letterboxed on my widescreen television.
David Lynch explains mobile movie viewing the best (Score:2)
Seriously anyone here claiming that watching a movie or TV show on your mobile device is better than a good sized TV screen with quality audio is insane.
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Depends what "better" means. On a phone, I can watch a show in bed before I go to sleep without bothering the spousal unit. If I watch on the TV when I'm done I have to turn everything off and get up and go to bed. So there are advantages and disadvantages.
Are you crazy? (Score:1)
This is suicide. I need to be watching the same thing as friends or people in online forums, or how am I going to discuss things with them? And the less I can discuss, the less I am immersed. Stupid idea.
My netflix rant (Score:1)
I like netflix, have been a subscriber for a very long time.
But I hate trying to find something to watch on Netlix streaming.
I *really* don't want to wade through 800 old TV shows. Or the 100 or so Netflix Originals.
I'm primarily interested in movies. Or, rather, when I do want to watch old TV show or Netflix Original, there's already pre-defined Menus for those: "Netflix Originals" and "TV Shows" (although the latter tends to include all of the former too). I have watched several Netflix Original series an
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I went to a genre and got all movies, no TV shows. That isn't what happens for you?
The problem with this is use case (Score:2)
Just because I am watching Netflix on my Phone does not mean I am looking at it on its 6" screen. I might have it plugged into the HDMI port on the TV in my hotel room. Do that a lot actually.
I am cool with this but only if there is a way to select the standard version.