From Gerald Lynch’s piece at Gizmodo:
Offline downloads are perhaps the most often requested, “holy grail” feature of TV and movie streaming services, and while Netflix may be the leading provider, it’s Amazon and its Prime Instant Video service that’s become the first to offer it. Netflix however remains firm in its stance that it’s not going to offer offline downloads through its mobile applications, even in the face of competition from its rival. But why?
According to Neil Hunt, Netflix’s Chief Product Officer, Netflix users won’t be able to handle the complexity the added choice will bring.
“I still don’t think it’s a very compelling proposition,” said Hunt, speaking to Gizmodo UK at the IFA tradeshow in Berlin.
As I write this at 34,000 feet over Montana, all I can say is, I don’t buy it.
The biggest use case for downloaded content is air travel. Airlines have been extremely quick at installing WiFi and some of these systems even offer streaming content, but basic WiFi service is still the norm and just about every service out there that I have seen blocks streaming content from Netflix, Amazon, etc. On top of that more airlines are moving to a model where streaming movies and TV hosted on an onboard server are paid content only. The recourse for customers is to download that content before a flight.
About six months ago I made a comment on Twitter about how I wished Amazon would allow downloads of video content on non-Fire devices. There was, and still is, a large amount of video content that I would like to enjoy and now I can, even when flying. Add people who don’t want to eat up their data plan or don’t have access to an LTE network from time to time and the number of those who could benefit from downloads starts to increase dramatically.
The argument that downloads would be too complex seems to me to be a cop-out. An easy way to avoid the discussion. People will take notice and eventually Netflix will have to offer downloads or some variant of them.
Agreed. I’m a subscriber of both services. This quote is kind of funny:
“I think it’s something that lots of people ask for. We’ll see if it’s something lots of people will use. Undoubtedly it adds considerable complexity to your life with Amazon Prime – you have to remember that you want to download this thing. It’s not going to be instant, you have to have the right storage on your device, you have to manage it, and I’m just not sure people are actually that compelled to do that, and that it’s worth providing that level of complexity.”
Let’s say all of this happens. You forget to download this thing. You don’t have the right storage. What do you end up with? The same thing you’d end up with if you had Netflix and no internet connection: nothing.
I give Amazon a lot of credit for being the first serious film/TV streaming service to offer downloads in a subscription. It has been two full years since Amazon started offering it on current generation Fire tablets: http://allthingsd.com/20130924/amazon-tries-breaking-from-the-streaming-video-pack-with-offline-viewing-for-new-kindles/
In those two years, Netflix could have made a big move by offering it on their service to a wide array of devices. Now, Amazon has beat them to that. Hulu and Crackle are not without their charms, but I don’t think anyone is pushing Netflix the way Amazon is, and it’s good for consumers.
Disclosure: shareholder.