From my understanding, these boxes are basically local copies of the entire Netflix online catalog - a catalog that frequently changes. How do these ~15,000 machines pick up new content? I assume they synchronize with the Netflix mothership every once in a while.
My question (without any intent to trivialize what Netflix is doing) is, isn't that just a good-old caching system?
But it makes me wonder if it would be possible to create a distributed, localized caching system? For example, if I watch The Avengers, my machine could be configured to cache a part (or all) of the movie. The more people watch it, the more it is distributed. Since Netflix can correlate location data with what movies are watched, they can target certain areas to cache certain movies more aggressively. When the next person in my neighborhood watches The Avengers, they would pull part of the movie from me (maybe the beginning until the rest buffers) and cache another part of it themselves for the next person in line. That way all the people in my neighborhood or adjacent neighborhoods don't have to pull the entire movie across the internet every time - instead, we help each other watch movies with higher quality.
On second thought, this may not be cheap considering the amount of development that may be required (and, at the end of the day, someone has to pay for this storage - although Netflix could, for example, offer personal mini-caching boxes in exchange for a monthly discount), but it's fun to dream about a sanctioned, decentralized, peer-to-peer movie service.
It _would_ be a perfect setup (much much better than sending the same stream through the same lines just because 2 persons are watching the same show)
The problem here is not technical (Bittorrent solves that) the problem is societal: for most of the content that is of interest to population, you are not allowed to redistribute it. So Netflix has to DRM-protect the content for everyone, meaning that the actual content that transits on the line has to be different, meaning that you can't redistribute it (since it's targeted to you, no one else could decode it).
If you want to see how much the technical side works, take a look at PopcornTime.
As I wrote that comment, BitTorrent came to mind with all the societal implications that carries (that's what I meant by "sanctioned" in the last sentence)
I haven't really explored PopCorn Time but I'll take a look.
With regards to DRM, the content must be de-protected before you watch it - so if Netflix installed a mini-box on my network, they could decrypt it to let me watch the show, and encrypt it to store on the device before it is sent to someone else. The key itself could be retrieved from the a centralized server.
If I think about it some more, there really is no need to keep an entire Netflix catalog in every location. As I mentioned, they have usage data and a strong prediction system too, so predicting the next show that will be watched in an area and even when would be "straight-forward" (In quotes because it wouldn't be easy for me to do it, but I think it would be easy for Netflix).
Another thing Netflix could try is pre-fetching shows during off-hours. That would work well for binge show watchers, and reduce peak time traffic.
This seems to be pretty close to what Popcorn Time does, and apparently does it very well. Their site says they already select individual files, so I imagine a 'sanctioned' Netflix style offering would be technically trivial to implement. This whole thing is just a reflection of the open internet/what went wrong debacle where all of this money that could be going to the content producers is instead spent on several layers of network, hardware and technical service providers that a small group from Buenos Aries has demonstrated is unnecessary if we could only, actually use, the network. But we can't.
A few weeks back, there was a job posting looking for someone with peer-to-peer experience to build such a prototype for Netflix, so it's definitely something they're considering. On the other hand, I don't know how people with data caps would feel about reseeding content for a corporation like Netflix.
My question (without any intent to trivialize what Netflix is doing) is, isn't that just a good-old caching system?
But it makes me wonder if it would be possible to create a distributed, localized caching system? For example, if I watch The Avengers, my machine could be configured to cache a part (or all) of the movie. The more people watch it, the more it is distributed. Since Netflix can correlate location data with what movies are watched, they can target certain areas to cache certain movies more aggressively. When the next person in my neighborhood watches The Avengers, they would pull part of the movie from me (maybe the beginning until the rest buffers) and cache another part of it themselves for the next person in line. That way all the people in my neighborhood or adjacent neighborhoods don't have to pull the entire movie across the internet every time - instead, we help each other watch movies with higher quality.
On second thought, this may not be cheap considering the amount of development that may be required (and, at the end of the day, someone has to pay for this storage - although Netflix could, for example, offer personal mini-caching boxes in exchange for a monthly discount), but it's fun to dream about a sanctioned, decentralized, peer-to-peer movie service.