Your Tech Story

netflix

Amazon Prime Video

Amazon Prime Video App is now available for Windows 10 devices

After a long wait, the Windows users can finally download their favorite videos from the Amazon Prime Video App. Yesterday, the company announced the launch of this prime video app exclusively for Windows 10 users. One can download the app on their desktop or any other Windows 10 devices from the Microsoft Store. The app went live yesterday and it is available now for the Indian customers as well.

Previously, before the app was launched, Windows users were still able to stream prime video content from browsers like Chrome. But, they still faced the disadvantage of not able to download and watch any video offline. So, this new Amazon Prime Video App will permit you to download the prime video content and watch it offline.

Watch Party feature for the US

Apart from launching a new app for the Windows customers, Amazon Prime Video also introduced a new feature called Watch Party last week. Currently, this new feature is only available for prime users in the US which will eventually expand its user base. The new Watch Party feature allows prime members to watch videos together with friends from a different location.

So, through this new feature Amazon prime video allows a maximum of 100 viewers in a group. But, each viewer must have a US-based Prime subscription otherwise they won’t get access to this feature. And, after joining a group, one can choose any TV show or movie both from licensed and original category. Watch Party doesn’t allow to stream TV shows or movies that are available either for rent or purchase. Moreover, this feature is only available for desktop users. The company didn’t make any announcement regarding a similar feature for smartphones.

Strong competition for Netflix and Hulu

Amazon Prime Video has always been a strong rival of Netflix and Hulu. But, with the service launching new features and getting new content might get things heated up. Amazon Prime video now has originals like Fleabag, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Jack Ryan, The Big Sick, The Boys, Homecoming, etc.

The demand for Amazon Prime Video is not going flat anytime soon especially after the introduction of the Watch Party feature. Apart from video streaming and watching it with friends and family, it also comes with a chat feature. So, anyone in the group can talk to all the other viewers in the group. To include viewers in the group the host needs to share a private link. So, the working process is similar to today’s video conferencing apps like Zoom, Cisco Webex, etc.

After Amazon Prime video launched the feature of Watch Party, Netflix along with Disney and WarnerMedia is trying to pull off something similar.

Payment for the new app

The Prime video is already free for the Amazon Prime subscribers as they pay $119 annually. For Windows users, they can download the Amazon Prime Video app for free from the Microsoft store. But, a monthly subscription fee of $8.99 is required for getting access to Amazon Prime Video.

Video quality

It is found that the new Prime Video app for the Windows 10 users doesn’t allow video streaming above 720p resolution. The same goes for the prime video app for the iPad as well. If the Windows users use browsers like Chrome, they can stream videos at 1080p.

But, the app claims to stream and download videos at a maximum of 1080p. When the user will try to download any video, he or she will be offered three quality choices, Good, Better, and Best. Higher quality will occupy more space and consume more data.

Sazae-san

The 45-years old Japanese cartoon will start rerunning its episodes due to the COVID-19 crisis

The consequences of the pandemic have hit every industry in the worst possible way. While people are trying to entertain themselves staying at home, the demand for movie streaming websites, Netflix has skyrocketed overnight. But, the kids also need a constant source of refreshment. They indulge in various indoor games and not to mention watching cartoons. Cartoons, anime, and fictions are very popular among kids. Many old cartoons bring a feeling of nostalgia, especially when more than two to three generation grows up watching it. Sazae-san is a Japanese cartoon that started broadcasting from 1969. But, any further production won’t take place due to the lockdown.

Disruption due to the novel coronavirus

Sazae-san is a famous and one of the oldest cartoons running for 45 years. The sudden cease in the production will witness many gloomy faces. But, Fuji TV has decided to rerun two-years-old episodes from next week. This is the first time since February 1975 when it has stopped production. The last time it was due to the oil crisis which shook Japan’s economy. The lockdown has already resulted in the repeat telecast of many shows all over the world. But, with the increase in the intensity of the crisis, the rerun of cartoons will also take place.

A great loss

Before the pandemic disrupted the production, a fresh episode of Saeze-san was aired every Sunday night. Fuji TV is not going to air any new episode shortly. In the history of cartoon series, this anime TV show is the longest one still on the track. Since 1969, more than 2,500 episodes of Saeze-san were aired. With time, this anime series became a part of the Japanese culture. So, with a sudden pause in the production, it feels like the end of an era. The series also made into Guinness World Records as the longest-animated series after the famous U.S show, The Simpsons.

Who created Saeze-san?

Sazae-san, the longest-running cartoon adopts itself from the manga series by Machiko Hasegawa. Manga is the word used by the Japanese to refer to comics and cartooning. Machiko Hasegawa is one of the first female artists in the world of comics. She started creating her very own Sazae-san in 1946.

Born in Taku, Machiko and her family moved to Tokyo after her father passed away. She started drawing cartoons from the age of fifteen. Many of her cartoons and comic strips got published in newspapers and magazines. Holding the hands of Machiko, the four-panel layout of comics came into practice.

After she started designing the Saeze-san comic, it became a dramatic radio series in 1955. And, after that, it became an animated series broadcasted on television. The comic was also translated into English under the title The Wonderful World of Sazae-san. Machiko is the recipient of Order of the Precious Crown (fourth-order, 1990) and People’s Honor Award (1992).

The longest-running cartoon 

The story of Sazae-san is based on a Japanese housewife and her extended family. It narrates the ups and downs of the life of Sazae-san who lives in a suburban area. The background story runs deeper than just revolving around her life which includes the story of more than one generation.

From next week, the old episodes will also come on Sundays for thirty minutes. Since two-years-old episodes will be telecasted, losing the audience is obvious. But, the show might still attract 10% of the total audience the show entertained. Though the number of coronavirus cases is comparatively low in Japan, it seems like it has hit a recession this year.

Return of Terrace House

It is not only one Japanese show that is making a reappearance this month. The famous Japanese drama, Terrace House is also coming back though with a single panelist. Terrace House was off the air for nearly a month and it declared its reentry today. Terrace House, the famous addictive Japanese show was only broadcasted on the television in the beginning. Later, it became a big hit for Netflix as well. The entertainment industry is trying its best to keep people busy and cheer them through the flat screen. It is a hard time and we have to patient and strong we combat it.

Netflix

The Last Airbender to Hit Netflix on May 15th

Netflix recently announced that all three seasons of the fan-favorite The Last Airbender will now be available on the video platform from May 15th onwards. The beloved anime loved by millions around the world had opened to rave reviews years ago. The story follows the life and adventures of the Avatar, Aang, as he tries to master the four elements. The original show aired on Nickelodeon between Feb 2005 and July 2008, to much love and adoration from fans. Here’s a look at how fans around the world have greeted this announcement.

Netflix and Avatar

This is not the first time the video-streaming giant has associated itself with the Avatar series. For instance, Netflix is working on creating a live-action adaptation of the show. This will be the second time such an adaptation has been made, with the first one being the movie made M. Night Shyamalan. Netflix’s adaptation, titled The Dragon Prince, will feature the screenwriter of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aaron Ehasz. Netflix released a statement regarding the Airbender series via Twitter yesterday.

Throughout its 61-episode run, it won various awards and recognitions, including a Peabody Award and a Primetime Emmy. While the M. Night Shyamalan movie did not receive favorable reviews, Netflix plans on creating ripples through their live-action project based on the Airbender series.

Other Netflix Ventures

Netflix has also bagged streaming rights for 21 Studio Ghibli movies, from this year on, for any area outside North America. However, in case you stay within the US and wish to watch these movies, you will need to register with WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, which will hit the market on May 27th. Yesterday, Netflix announced that it would also be the one to release the new Pokémon animated episodes. All of this comes as a result of Netflix’s plan to invest more heavily in animated shows, manga, and anime. Such a decision will significantly help in competing with other children’s platforms such as YouTube and Disney+.

Airbender Series

The series premiered in 2005, on the Nickelodeon network and ran for three years, until 2008. The show featured the adventures of a powerful Avatar who could control the elements, fire, water, earth, and air. By using martial-art moves, the power of his will, and help from other gifted children like himself, the Avatar fought against negative forces that wished to take over the world. The titular Avatar, who took form once in every generation was the only being capable of handling all four elements at the same time. The Avatar takes shape as a 12-year-old boy named Aang to stop the tyranny of the Fire Nation.

The series, which ran for over three years, faced great critical acclaim and was loved by fans all around the world. In 2012, a sequel came out, titled The Legend of Korra, following M Night Shyamalan’s live-action movie in 2010. Netflix too is working on a live-action project, with the series creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko serving as executive producers. The series The Legend of Korra, which came out on Nickelodeon ran for four seasons till 2014.

The show aired briefly on Netflix in 2019, being removed later, which led fans to wait anxiously for its return. A large section of Twitter was set ablaze by Netflix’s announcement, with fans flocking to express their excitement and happiness. However, fans in Canada were surprised regarding why they did not receive the right to watch shows like their American counterparts.

The live-action remake will feature a soundtrack by original composer Jeremy Zuckerman, meaning that most of the same team will reunite for this project. While no release date has been specified, fans are expecting the movie to drop sometime in 2021. Jan Chol Lee will serve as the concept designer, having worked previously on large projects such as on Big Hero 7, Beowulf, and the animated feature Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. With the original series celebrating its 15th anniversary this February, it is safe to say that fans couldn’t be happier regarding their favorite show returning to Netflix!

netflix

The Urban World of Netflix: Success Story of Netflix

There are very few internet-users who haven’t heard of Netflix. The streaming giant has grown so exponentially that it no longer needs an introduction. But long before it had become a staple tool that eats up hours of our time, Netflix was a DVD rental service that was on the verge of collapsing. So what happened? How did such a large turn of events occur? Read on to understand the highs and lows of Netflix, and how it got to where it is now.

About the Founders

Marc Bernays Randolph who was the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix is an American entrepreneur with a flair for business, having invested in various companies throughout his career. Randolph was born in New York, to Stephen Randolph, who was a nuclear engineer, and Muriel Lipchik. On his father’s side, he is related to both the legendary psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and Austrian politician Edward Bernays. Randolph was a very active child and spent his summers working for the National Outdoor Leadership School. After finishing school, he went on to pursue Geology from Hamilton College, and soon after graduating took up a job at Cherry Lane Music Company.

Over in Cherry Lane, Randolph handled the mail-order operation and taught himself the basics of marketing in the process. It was while working here Randolph’s fascination with user data was born, and this would later prove to be the inspiration behind Netflix’s recommendation interface. In 1984, he founded an American chapter for the MacUser magazine and also co-founded MacWarehouse and MicroWarehouse, firms that handled mail orders a couple of years later.

He later joined Borland International in 1988 as a marketer, but soon left to pick up odd jobs in Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Visioneer, and Integrity QA. Then, in 1996 Pure Atria which was a debugging company acquired Integrity QA, and that was when Randolph met Reed Hastings, who was the founder of Pure Atria. Meanwhile, Wilmot Reed Hastings Jr. was born in Boston and attended the Buckingham School in Cambridge. Shortly afterwards, he joined the Marine and spent a summer at Marine Corps Base Quantico. He never completed his training, choosing instead to serve the Peace Corps.

After graduating, he joined the Peace Corps and taught in Swaziland for two years, and then returned soon after. In 1988, he graduated from Stanford University with a master’s in computer science and took up a job at Adaptive Technology. He left the company in 1991 and found his first venture Pure Software, which helped in troubleshooting other software. In 1996, the company merged with Atria Software, forming Pure Atria. It was while serving as the CEO there that he met his friend and colleague Randolph. In 1997, the company was acquired by Rational Software for a whopping $850 million.

Founding Netflix

In January 1997, when Pure Atria was on the verge of being acquired, founder Hastings planned on going back to school, while VP Randolph was looking for the next big launch. Well, as luck would have it, that next big idea turned out to be Netflix! The idea for the company was hatched on a 90-minute car ride that the duo took from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley. For six months, Randolph kept pitching ideas to Hastings, till finally one day, they hit on the idea of having a movie rental company that operated via mail. The first thing the duo did was head down to a music store, buy a CD and send it to each other.

When the pair received the CD without any damages, the pair knew that this idea could indeed work.
What followed was a mad scramble to find investors, and this was something the pair found difficult as they were rejected over a thousand times during this process. Then Blockbuster CEO John Antioco reportedly even laughed the idea off, but the duo refused to give up, and slowly Netflix grew.

The pair started the company in 1998 by using their savings and taking money from Randolph’s mother, and IntegrityQA founder, Steve Kahn. Analysis of user data helped the team build a successful subscription-based business model which still works for the company even now. They tested out an early recommendation algorithm named Cinematch, which was met with positive results. The company had only 30 employees initially and slowly grew, introducing a subscription in 1999.

By 2000, Netflix had over 300,000 subscribers but was losing money badly. This led to Blockbuster offering to buy the company for $50 million, but the duo turned down the offer. The economic crisis of 2001 would then force them to fire around one-third of their 120 people workforce, but the spring of 2002 brought good times for the company, and the business started to grow.

Streaming Giant

The company went public in 2002 and sold 5.5 million shares at US$15.00 per share. The company earned its first profit of US$6.5 million in 2003, and had by then over 35,000 films in stock, and was shipping over 1 million DVDs every day. Randolph gave up the position of CEO to Hastings in 1999 to focus more on product design and development and then left the company in 2003, a year after the company went public. Hastings proved his mettle and grew Netflix to the stage it is at now, wherein it has a market value now exceeding $130 billion.

By 2005, the company acquired movie rights and were about to go public, but decided instead to opt for a streaming channel, which went public in 2007. In 2007, Netflix delivered its billionth DVD and slowly started the move to a digital format via the internet.

2010, the company expanded further by starting a streaming media and also grew beyond America, going international and offering services in Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 2012, Netflix has started taking content production and generation seriously and has pushed out several award-winning series through its Netflix Original tag. By 2016, Netflix had expanded to over 190 countries and had already released more than 126 original series and films.

Netflix is as of now the world’s sixth-largest internet company bringing in over $15.7 billion every year, with revenue growing at 35%. From being a company that was barely surviving to the behemoth it is now, Netflix has indeed come a long way, and along with that way it has faced constant challenges. But it is in overcoming those challenges by constant evolution and adaption that the secret to Netflix’s success lies. Netflix went from being a novel and crazy-sounding idea to a movie rental company and then morphed into a streaming and production giant that churns out award-winning content month after month. With over 151 million subscribers around the world, it is safe to say that the future looks bright for Netflix.

Netflix India mobile only plan

Netflix to Roll-out a Cheaper Mobile-only Plan to Target More Users in India

The online video streaming services are taking over the entertainment industry, and there has been the rise of many of them Netflix being the leader of all. But amid the high competition, Netflix is also having some issues in regaining its customers. For the past few months, the company has also been facing slower growth due to the rise in its subscription plan prices, as well as the rise of other companies like Amazon that offering fancy discounts and original content over their platform.

The company has seen the lowest growth in the past few months, and only half of the expected number of new users have subscribed to Netflix in the first quarter of this year that just ended in June.

To be the leader in the filed, the company has to take some serious steps, to begin with, reduced prices. Netflix just announced that it will be starting up a new but cheaper mobile-only streaming plan, India being the first recipient of the new plan. The company revealed the news on Wednesday, adding that India is the biggest growing market, where it will be easier to get to most of the users with lowered prices.

Netflix India mobile only plan
Image Source: magicpin.in

“After several months of testing, we’ve decided to roll out a lower-priced mobile-only plan in India to complement our existing plans. We believe this plan, which will launch in Q3, will be an effective way to introduce a larger number of people in India to Netflix and to further expand our business in a market where Pay-TV ARPU is low (below $5),” said Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix.

According to a report, despite being the biggest population, only 2 million people are subscribed to Netflix in India. The company said that it may gain more subscribers if it reduces the subscription prices for the Indian users, The basic Netflix monthly plan starts at Rs 500 which allows the users to access Netflix on a single screen at a time. With the announcement, the company disclosed that the new plan will only work on mobile devices and will render a 480p picture quality.

While testing the new plan in March, Netflix offered the users a price as cheap as Rs 250 ($3.63) for it, but there has been no revelation on what will be the prices for the original plan. The company will be bringing the plan by the third quarter of this year in India, and later, it may also expand to other countries.

After the U.S. Netflix Rises Prices for its Premium Plans for the U.K. Subscribers

netflix
Image Source: denofgeek.com

Netflix is the top most loved streaming service in the world, and maybe, this is the reason that it has decided to raise prices for its monthly streaming plans. According to a report from The Guardian, the company has announced that it is going to increase the subscription fees for its UK users. Earlier, in January, the company had even raised the prices for its US subscribers.

Currently, Netflix has got three different plans for its subscribers, including the £5.99 per month plan applicable only for a single screen, £7.99 per month HD plan to stream on two devices at a time and the £9.99 a month Ultra HD plan available to stream on four devices at a time.

According to the report, the basic plan, applicable for a single screen will remain the same, whether the company will hike the price for both the HD and Ultra HD, i.e. for the two screens and the four screen plan. After the change in the price, the HD plan with a rise of £1 will cost £8.99 per month, and the price of Ultra HD will be increased by £2, i.e. £11.99 per month.

After the US, Netflix has raised the prices for the UK, giving the reason that it is working on new projects to bring original content to the platform. The company is also pushing hard to get the license for the popular shows to be streamed on Netflix, including Friend. Noticeably, Netflix is already streaming Friends on the platform under a $100 million deal, which will be over by the end of 2019.

Amid the risen competition from the contemporaries like Disney, Amazon, BBC, and the other emerging streaming services, Netflix is well aware of the steps that it needs to take in order to stay ahead of the competition.

The company has already invested hundreds of millions of pounds into UK content, so by raising the price, it is only trying to get a stable position in the market and bring more good content to the platform. The price rise has already come into effect, as the old subscribers will be charged with the new prices on the renewal of their plans, and the new users will need to pay the new subscription fee for joining the plans.