Netflix hits our screens

TV is dead; long live TV. Tra­di­tion­ally the supreme source of fam­ily and mass en­ter­tain­ment, the tele­vi­sion is con­stantly seek­ing new for­mats to keep us glued to the screen, with an al­most year-by-year rev­o­lu­tion in re­sponse to the changes in our view­ing habits.

The In­ter­net has made it eas­ier to see what we want, when we want and, with the im­pact of tablets and smart­phones, the “box” has even be­came mo­bile. This is the new tele­vi­sion that op­er­ates under the name Smart TV, in­cor­po­rat­ing In­ter­net ap­pli­ca­tions, such as on-de­mand ser­vices, but also so­cial net­works that co­ex­ist along­side tra­di­tional chan­nels.

How­ever, now there is a new player in Eu­rope: Net­flix. The Amer­i­can com­pany was born in the late 1990s as a DVD rental ser­vice. The DVDs were mailed and col­lected when fin­ished with but then, in 2007, with high-speed in­ter­net be­com­ing wide­spread, Net­flix launched an on­line video ser­vice. In the eight years since, it has be­come a world leader, pre­sent in 50 coun­tries, with over 62 mil­lion sub­scribers around the world, as well as ex­pand­ing to be­come a provider of tele­vi­sion con­tent ri­valling the on­line con­tent of the likes of HBO.

The ser­vice is based on hun­dreds of films and se­ries, ac­cessed through a SVOD (sub­scrip­tion video on de­mand) ser­vice that uses stream­ing, avoid­ing the need for down­load­ing, stor­age and re­stric­tions, and it is all legal. Mean­while, the stream­ing tech­nol­ogy ad­justs to the con­nec­tion speed of each client. From Oc­to­ber 20, local users can sub­scribe to net­flix.com or use the app that even comes pre-in­stalled on some brands of smart­phone and Smart TV. What's more, Voda­fone clients will get the ser­vice for free for a pe­riod of six months.

A num­ber of other plat­forms are al­ready of­fer­ing on­line ser­vices here, es­pe­cially Canal+ and Yomvi, with a cat­a­logue of top qual­ity se­ries that make it the mar­ket leader. Yet, Net­flix will rival it, of­fer­ing ex­clu­sive se­ries al­ready pop­u­lar in the US but with large fol­low­ings here, such as Nar­cos, Dare­devil, Sense8 and Blood­line. In the fu­ture, the com­pany also said they do not rule out in­cor­po­rat­ing Cata­lan sub­ti­tles and dub­bing.

At the time of writ­ing, the com­pany had still not an­nounced its pric­ing for ac­cess to its ser­vices.

The much-awaited launch of Net­flix rep­re­sents a rev­o­lu­tion for the sec­tor. Al­though in its of­fi­cial press re­lease it claims that its of­fer­ings aim to be “com­ple­men­tary” to those of other com­pa­nies, by of­fer­ing “total free­dom to clients”, it is clear that the Amer­i­can giant has put pres­sure on its ri­vals, who have been of­fer­ing video on de­mand for some years al­ready, com­pa­nies such as Wuaki TV, Nubeox, Filmin, but above all Mo­vis­tar Se­ries (Telefónica), which, after its fu­sion with Yomvi (Canal Plus), in some way has had the mo­nop­oly on quan­tity as well as qual­ity. Yomvi's cat­a­logue in­cludes the hit se­ries Game of Thrones, but also pres­ti­gious ti­tles such as True De­tec­tive, Fargo and The Knick. In ad­di­tion, Canal Plus of­fers an ex­ten­sive se­lec­tion of sea­sons, since it has been a pi­o­neer in buy­ing up the most pop­u­lar se­ries to avoid pi­rat­ing, a widely es­tab­lished prac­tice that aims to bring about a change in the user's men­tal­ity.

Hav­ing the re­leases avail­able 24 hours after they have been launched in the US also makes legal con­sump­tion more at­trac­tive to con­sumers, as well as sat­is­fy­ing the grow­ing de­mand for orig­i­nal ver­sion sub­ti­tles. Since the be­gin­ning, Mo­vis­tar made the choice to offer a cat­a­logue of a great va­ri­etythat would ap­peal to Eu­ro­pean tastes. After the fu­sion with Yomvi, they are, for the mo­ment, still on top.