Netflix became the past year's best performer on the S&P 500.

Quote: Nareed

BTW, I've been seeing comparisons between Netflix and Amazon Prime.

I tried Prime for a month before Netflix, and it
absolutely sucked. Sucked big. Hard to navigate,
not nearly as many movies or shows, Netflix
is 1000% better. I have zero complaints about
them.

I can't find the subtitles on my menu. I have a ROKU 1, so maybe that is the problem.

It may be subtitles are not always avilable. Try a non-English film or show, if there is one, and see whether that comes with subtitles.

For the record, unless I forget I plan to bring the Chromecast along to Vegas next Spring (if I go, there are still some questions on that score). I heard something about some company or group making WiFi freely avilabale at Fremont Street. If so, it's worth a try. If not, I surely will rent the hotel's WiFi a day or two.

BTW hotels advertise "iPod ports" in their alarm clocks. They could advertise "Chromecast ports" in their TVs ;)

Main Street always had free WiFi in some parts of the casino, and so did Krispy Kreme

Quote: Evenbob

I tried Prime for a month before Netflix, and it
absolutely sucked. Sucked big. Hard to navigate,
not nearly as many movies or shows, Netflix
is 1000% better. I have zero complaints about
them.

My only gripe about Netflix is I cannot figure how to browse by genre. It will suggest "gritty crime movies from the 1980s" but I cannot find a list of how to find genres.

Quote: Pacomartin

Main Street always had free WiFi in some parts of the casino, and so did Krispy Kreme

Oh, you find free, or at least unsecured, WiFi all over Las Vegas, but not in your hotel room (unless it's included in the resort fees). That was good enough to check email and even do some web browsing on my brick of a phone, and would be even better with the Nexus 7. But it's no good for watching Netflix in your room.

Now it seems there's free WiFi on Fremont St, provided by the city in order to get bragging rights or something. It's supposed to be good on a one mile radius, so it may cover every hotel room Downtown.

HBO revenue was $4.9 billion for the entire year (2013). Netflix's numbers are actually pretty close, as the streaming company posted sales of $4.3 billion for the year, despite having fewer customers than HBO worldwide.

HBO's operating profit is $1.7 billion for the year,
Netflix's profit came in at $228 million all year.

So for right now, HBO is clearly more profitable, and is unlikely to make a break from cable in the near future. However, Netflix is still growing faster, and to compete HBO/GO may still break away from cable and survive as an on-demand virtual streaming product.

Of course if the merger of Time Warner and Comcast is permitted by regulators, the new bosses may be more likely to want to keep HBO wedded to cable.

Remember all those annoying popup windows... why won't customers boycott bad marketers?

As for myself, I use Netflix every day and haven't subbed
to HBO in years, I enjoy Netflix far more than any other
thing I've found online in the last 20 years. Its a movie
junkies dream come true.

It would be interesting to know precisely why HBO is more profitable. I suspect that they have less infrastructure to worry about. Since they have the ability to ride on RF technology developed a half century ago, their infrastructure cost is developing HBO-GO. But that is still a small percentage of their users.

Netflix, on the other hand, has to push everything through digital media. That means they must be investing in a lot of technology that they are giving to the cable company.

When Reed Hastings launched Netflix in 1997, his idea didn't make sense to a lot of people. DVD players had only been on the market for a few months, and many families were still using VHS tapes to watch movies. In spite of that, Netflix's movie inventory consisted exclusively of DVDs. Naysayers also doubted that people would want to wait for home delivery when video rental stores seemed to be everywhere.