Comment by srameshc
7 hours ago
I never imagined that a service that ships DVD via mail would one day buy Warner Brothers. It is amazing how innovation and focus can change the game. Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
More like how did these companies drop the ball so bad. Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.
Unfortunately for them around the time of Netflix's ascent they were embroiled with all kinds of financial issues but still the mind boggles
> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label. They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.
I feel like some of those very diversified company tend to be the one who struggle to evolve and adapt because some part of their business are worried about being cannibalized by the new business opportunity (like how streaming “killed” physical media). I.e, if you are the director of the “DVD player division” you have an active interest in killing any potential streaming division. Reality is of course more complex than this, but this is the kind of story we sometimes hear off when "too big to fail" companies end up missing a major shift.
Innovator's dilemma. Leadership won't invest in the up-and-coming product because they've got a $1 billion revenue target they need to hit this year.
Funnily, Netflix is a common case study on how to transition past the dilemma.
I don't remember where I heard the original story, but this snippet from this article sums up why and how they deliberately cut the DVD team out of the company culture.
> “In periods of radical change in any industry, the legacy players generally have a challenge, which is they’re trying to protect their legacy businesses. We entered into a business in transition when we started mailing DVDs 25 years ago. We knew that physical media was not going to be the future. When I met Reed Hastings in 1999, he described the world we live in right now, which is almost all entertainment is going to come into the home on the internet. And he told me that at a time when literally no entertainment was coming into the home on the internet. And it really helped us navigate this transition from physical to digital, because we just didn’t spend any time trying to protect our DVD business. As it started to wane, we started to invest more and more in streaming. And we did that because we knew that that’s where the puck was going. At one point, our DVD business was driving all the profit of the business and a lot of the revenue, and we made a conscious decision to stop inviting the DVD employees to the company meeting. We were that rigid about where this thing was heading.”
https://colemaninsights.com/coleman-insights-blog/netflixs-s...
Silo-ing is the biggest brake on human progress
> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers. They owned a movie studio and record label.
They still do all those things? And they're still successful in most of them? They haven't "failed" or "dropped the ball" based on any metric I can think of. I'm not sure what you're referring to here to be honest.
Right reading that, didn’t Sony produce KPOP demon hunters, which is now the most watched movie of all time?
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Yeah lol, Sony still doing good in Music,Film etc
Sony just focus at their home market more
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> Most notably Sony which produced TVs, Computers, DVD players, Media Centers.
The answer to that one is simple: they were bad at software.
Apple and then Android killed the market for all those hardware devices and physical media.
> how did these companies drop the ball so bad
Companies didn't, leadership did. For a big, fat check. And they're happily retired now, sitting in their expensive villas with millions on their balance.
They couldn't care less about your happy childhood memories that the content produced by their predecessors engraved in your mind.
If everybody is dropping the ball, my first guess is that catching it is actually legitimately difficult.
>They also have in house expertise with cloud content distribution via PlayStation.
Maybe it's better now, but looking at the PS3-era PSN, that expertise had negative value.
It’s exactly the reason why. They focused on proprietary formats/devices to lock consumers in
Hindsight is 20/20 and the Innovator's Dilemma is very real.
And no OS. That certainly helped Apple.
Sony has crunchyroll
They didn't fumble around as much, also Sony still has leverage a lot on Japan Industry
Well, AOL did ship 1 billion CDs over its heyday and they acquired Warner Brothers in 2000…
If I had a nickel for every time a company that sends out optical disks bought Warner Brothers, I'd have $0.10, which is not a lot, but strange that it happened twice.
> Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
I think what history shows us is that the modern monopolies managed to destroy antitrust to the point where nobody will ever do to them what they did to others.
People said that a generation ago as well, and the one before that. Yeah monopolies make it hard, but every one of them eventually crumbles to the next wave of innovation.
I disagree. I strongly recommend this talk by Cory Doctorow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8
Yup. Can't redirect the ocean. So-to-speak.
> Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
Is that a financialised version of piggybacking?
They have to as a stop gap before going on generating full feature film on demand. Those streaming service are all struggling to have an attractive enough catalog for an extended period of time for a lot of folks with their shitty pricing policies.
Considering WB was once the champion of that format too. Guess that is end of DVD now. Netflix has no interest in that format.
> Guess that is end of DVD now. Netflix has no interest in that format
and neither do consumers. video over the internet is the future that Netflix saw 20 years ago, when others didn't, except YouTube.
That's absolutely not the case. Demand for physical media not only continues to exist but it's growing as streaming services prove undependable at keeping shows available, and are willing to censor/edit shows at a whim.
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