I don’t normally write about new stuff here, everyone else does, but yesterday as I was looking for baseball news (go Giants!) on my fairly recently acquired Apple TV, I noticed a new icon there, “Apple Events”. Wondering what that was, I was taken to the presentation Apple chief Tim Cook made only three hours earlier. So I got the early not-news of iPad mini. However, also all the other news, Apple presented new models across the board: MacBook Retina, mini, iMac. And something stood out: we are facing a shift in how Macs are equipped. One change is from hard disks to flash drives in most new models, not necessarily good for the checkbook, as flash of more than the minimal sizes are very expensive (but the new combo “Fusion” drive looked enticing, pricing to be seen).
Even more clear is that DVD is out, no new model has a DVD drive (thus the Air’s configuration has become the general pattern), and it was derided as “you old-fashioned people” at the presentation. The signs have been there, Mac OS has not been available on DVD for a while and hardly any programs are distributed this way. And in entertainment, streaming has replaced DVD.
Or has it? Is streaming the way to watch movies and TV shows outside the TV set? This links to the other big news in my country last week, which is related to the same topic. OK, what follows is not so much about the Mac, but about streaming in general, and is also a posting strictly about Norwegian matters. I might have written it in Norwegian, but let me continue in English since I started that way - the rest of you can see it as a case study from a small European country.
The advent of streaming TV
The big news, then, was that Netflix has arrived to Norway, and that HBO is due to follow in a few days as both streaming and a TV channel. This (Netflix) will change the way we watch TV, it was announced, now we will get all new series instantly online (legally) and not watch them on TV any longer. Of course, this is not true, and was a confusion of the two services: HBO promises immediate transmission of its new series to us, but that is not Netflix’s business. Netflix was originally an innovative video rental service, which switched to DVD rentals and then to streaming. Thus they do not distribute new series or films, only once they have arrived on DVDs, that is half a year or longer after original release.
I know Netflix from when I lived in the States, and loved it then for its rapid DVD delivery, and apparently bottomless catalogue; they seemed to have virtually every film or TV series ever put on DVD. They were just introducing streaming when I was there (2009), and that did not impress me so much; quality was low and selection meager. Netflix in Norway is streaming only, and is not the first such streaming service we have here, but arguably the most convenient to use, with a fixed monthly rate giving unlimited access to their catalogue. Of interest to us, Netflix is available on Apple TV, iPhone/Pad as well as on the web.
As for HBO, it does promise immediate release of new series, but it is unlikely to make any dramatic change in our viewing patterns, and in particular not for our main TV service NRK, as was darkly predicted. It will, to go into the national details, rather be a problem for Canal+ (now CMore) which has been the channel for new HBO shows. Currently, the pay channel Canal+ has sent these shows about three-four months after their US release, then NRK has re-sent the major HBO shows to a much wider public half a year or so or after that again. That HBO enters the chain as a pay channel will thus not make any significant difference for NRK, but the question is whether all these top shows will now disappear from CMore. Possibly for this reason, CMore has precipitated the new seasons for most of their HBO shows this autumn to send “just a week or two after the US”, so that most of them this fall will be finished by the time HBO itself opens later this month. But what of next year? Their “Series” channel will be very thin without the HBO shows, but is it possible to have a three-stage dissemination showing them first on the new HBO channel for their customers immediately after US release, then on CMore for their customers a month later, and then on NRK half a year after that? To be seen.
Streaming movies: A comparative test
That clearly relates to streaming to our Macs, PCs or tablets instead of watching traditional TV channels. But how useful is that really today? We already have several such Video On Demand (streaming) services in Norway, and on the occasion of Netflix’s arrival, I decided to make a survey of them to compare with the Netflix offer. There are about ten of them, offering mainly movies, typically for ca. 30–45 kr per film (one service, Voddler has like Netflix a fixed subscription, but adds a per-film charge in addition). They all “suggest movies you may like”, but to be really a new experience, what I would want to is look up a movie I know about, and find it on their service. So, I set up a list of 26 haphazard movie titles from my shelves, mostly from 2005–2010, from LOTR and other Oscar winners to current comedies, and searched for them on each of the services. In addition, I looked for films by two famous directors, David Lynch and Woody Allen, and in those services that showed categories, I took their suggestions for “Science Fiction” to see how many titles they offered (the latter is of course less useful, as each service may differ in how widely they define this category. Unfortunately, few of the services tell how many titles they have in total, except “thousands”, two say specifically 3,000+ titles. In comparison, Netflix's original DVD collection had 35,000 film titles).
The ten are: Voddler, Comoyo , film2Home, Lovefilm , SFAnytime , Filmarkivet , CDON.com, Homebase, CanalDigital, and ViaPlay.
What I expected was, first that only a few of my sample titles would be available for streaming, and that it would be the same titles for all ten, since the limitation was distribution rights from Hollywood, which would be limited country by country. In fact, I was surprised. The first assumption held true, out of my 26 total no service had more than 9, and the majority only 4–5. But the second was not true, every service had a different set of titles, so that in total only six of the 26 titles were completely unavailable. I do not know the reasons for this, but it suggests to me that the limitation is not Hollywood (distribution), but investment from the services; evidently it costs money to build up a library for distribution.
As for my directors, no service had any film at all by Lynch (whose last major movie was Mulholland Drive back in 2001), while the score for Woody Allen was surprisingly good: almost every service had a majority of the movies he has made after 1994 (from Bullets over Broadway), but absolutely zilch for his earlier great movies. But of the new stuff, at least two (Comoyo, SFAnytime) had 17 out of a possible 18 titles post 1994. SciFi? Voddler claims 118 titles, Viaplay 59, Comoyo 55. None a terribly great number, when you think of how many movies can fall in that category. In total, which service “won”? Well, it is not fair, since my title list was so haphazard, but in this very non-scientific test, film2home and Viaplay scored best with 9 and 8 of my 26 titles, the rest stretching from 1 (Filmarkivet) to 6 (Voddler, Comoyo, SF Anytime, CDigital).
So how does Netflix stand up to this? As expected, pretty much the same, not dramatically better but not worse either. Of the 26, it scored 8 titles, which is good, less good on Woody Allen (6 of 18). But they had one old David Lynch. So, Netflix is certainly more convenient, in particular if you watch more than a couple of streamed movies a month (and even more if you have Apple TV), but it is not really a game changer for the great public. I must add, however, that Netflix also streams TV shows (those that have appeared on DVD), and I have found quite a few of my favourites that never came to any TV channel here, so that may be a noticeable advantage over the other services, only some of which offer TV shows.
Of particular interest - and gave me a great surprise - was the question if it is “Norway” that is bad - whether it would have been dramatically different if we had had access to US Netflix. I was able to make a quick comparison with Netflix US, and was astounded to find that of my 26 titles (all Hollywood movies), only 3 were available in Netflix US, and none of the later Allens (but three older ones); far more limited than the Norwegian store. I can hardly believe it, but unless I did something quite wrong, there is no reason to chase after Netflix US rather than the Norwegian version, in terms of breadth of catalogue.
So what is good? (Fanfare:) iTunes. That is, iTunes US - which I was incorrectly guided to before I logged in with my account. They had almost all of my 26 sample titles for rent or purchase (23 / 26), and most of the classic Allens (but only half of the new ones). But, unfortunately, once I had logged in with my Norway account, it all went away: only 4 of the 23 remained and a single Allen. Norwegian iTunes is basically of limited value. But what this shows is that all of my 1990s–2000s sample films do exist in streaming format somewhere (and not just illegally), it is just a matter of distribution and commercial choice to let us access them.
How does this link to the new Macs? I think this is clear: Streaming is not yet mature enough in width of offering to let us drop DVD. If I want to see a particular film or one particular show on my Mac, I will in most cases have to get it on DVD and play it from there. It is possible that streaming will, like Spotify for music, extend their choice so widely that I can get any current or non-current movie from a streaming service, even in a small market like Norway, but we are not there yet. So, buy the external DVD drive, if this is something you want to use your Mac for.
But I will keep my Netflix subscription.
