Tag Archives: xbox

Business, News

Can You Search Netflix by Actor or Director? It Depends!

1 Comment

UPDATE MAY 2013: The search situation on Netflix is still terrible — most of all on the TV interface itself, less so on their mobile apps. But it’s Flixster‘s Rotten Tomatoes that can help you out with ease if you want to search Netflix by actor or director. They’ve even introduced a Netflix Streaming category (under DVDs, oddly, on the desktop version; under Menu on the app) that you can search by either movie title, or actor or director. Presently, they list 3,643 films available for streaming.

 

One of the strangest things about Netflix has long been how difficult it is to both browse or use to find that movie you want to see with that one actor in it.

Browsing is still surfacing off-kilter categories that feel translated from another language — “Exciting Foreign Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead,” anyone? Sure, but don’t think you know me, HAL! On the desktop, though, you can search by actor or director, and now that’s true of Netflix on Xbox 360 (and PS3), too. You can’t save a search, or pin it to your home screen, that I can tell.

People search is not yet in Netflix’s app for the iPhone (just checked) or iPad, or Roku, so the ecosystem of third-party Netflix apps that have sprouted up would seem still to have a lease on life — depending on how you read Netflix’s new terms for its API program.

In any event, Netflix people search is still a blunt instrument that recognizes names only if they are spelled correctly. Say you type in “Kristin Bell” for instance. (Obviously you are a terrible person and not a real fan, because you don’t know it’s “Kristen” with an “e.”) Up to “Krist-” you get 10 suggestions that don’t contain Bell. Once you type “Kristi-” she’ll never appear. In that case, you get these results:

 

Business, News

Hello, I’m a Microsoft Store

1 Comment
IMGP1950
IMGP1951
IMGP1953
IMGP1954
IMGP1955
IMGP1956
IMGP1958

Microsoft Store, University Village (Photo: MvB)

Microsoft Store, University Village (Photo: MvB)

Microsoft Store, University Village (Photo: MvB)

Microsoft Store, University Village (Photo: MvB)

Microsoft Store, University Village (Photo: MvB)

Microsoft Store, University Village (Photo: MvB)

Microsoft Store, University Village (Photo: MvB)

PlayPrev|Next
IMGP1950 thumbnail
IMGP1951 thumbnail
IMGP1953 thumbnail
IMGP1954 thumbnail
IMGP1955 thumbnail
IMGP1956 thumbnail
IMGP1958 thumbnail

The first week of its life, after the grand opening celebration, the Microsoft Store at University Village has about a dozen shoppers a little after one o’ clock on a Monday. There’s plenty of room to navigate among the tables that recall, sharply, the layout of the Apple Store across the parking lot. It’s the look of a tag-along kid brother.

Geekwire says this store is number 12, with “up to 75” more stores planned for the next two to three years. They quote Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO, saying the retail push is “helping us transition from thinking about our customers to thinking like our customers.”

So what can you get at a Microsoft Store? You can buy the latest edition of Windows or Office, an Xbox 360, a variety of games, and Microsoft keyboards and mice. You can choose from a selection of phones (HTC, Dell, Samsung) that run Windows Phone 7, and an assortment of laptops also running Windows 7.

You can also play Kinect in the window.

The “me too” impulse behind the Microsoft Store’s design obscures the differences in retail strategy. When you walk into an Apple Store, you’re shopping for–outside of some accessories–an Apple product.

Outside of the Xbox, when Microsoft makes a big sale on hardware (a laptop or phone), it’s making a sale for another company, of which it derives some small portion of OEM revenue. Do people shop for Windows 7 phones, rather than the models of phones they can use with their carrier?

Rents at the University Village are not inexpensive, as the recent contretemps over the Barnes & Noble bookstore lease indicates. Microsoft can afford not to worry about the time to break-even, but why not just call it the Xbox store? (I’m reasonably sure we’ll never see people camping out–unironically–for the new release of a Microsoft keyboard, or even Office.)

The net result is that the street runs both ways: After visiting a Microsoft Store, customers learn something about Microsoft thinks. The words “hodge-podge,” “potpourri,” and “amalgamation” spring to mind. That’s not necessarily terrible, but when the décor invites comparison to Apple, and Apple’s focus, it casts into relief the ways in which Microsoft isn’t like Apple at all.

Business, News

Netflix Weekend Outages Raise Question of Hiring Weekend Help

After suffering through that Mariners vs. Rangers game yesterday–interspersed with news of the Women’s FIFA World Cup Finals–I got home and settled in for some Netflix escapism. Not so fast.

Around 4 p.m. (PDT), Netflix streaming began to fail for a substantial portion of customers–judging from the Twitter complaints, if you were watching through Xbox or Playstation or Roku, you were hit hardest.

Some customers were prompted to change their passwords, though that usually failed. (I could log in via Xbox, but couldn’t watch anything–even Search didn’t work. Curiously, I could still access and watch Netflix from my laptop.)

As it happens, Netflix seems not equipped to deal with a weekend outage. Their Netflixhelps Twitter account is only staffed Monday through Friday. On the weekend you’re advised to call a single phone number: “Phone support is available 24/7.” Depends on what you mean by support: during a widespread outage, all you got was a busy signal or, if lucky, a recorded message saying that call volumes were high and you should try later.

Downrightnow.com's assessment of the outage

The outage continued through the night. At about 9:30 p.m., Netflixhelps roused itself to announce that the problem had penetrated Netflix consciousness: “For those of you having difficulty streaming tonight, our apologies – we’re aware of the issue and working to fix it ASAP.”

A little after 11 p.m., the problem was declared fixed, though the internet believes it lasted through most of the night, and a recent Netflix tweet from this morning reads: “Some PS3 users are reporting Cannot Connect to Netflix errors – we’re looking into it.” So maybe fixed is not quite the right word.

Netflix went down on June 20, also on a weekend. That was blamed on a technical glitch. Wishful speculation again last night was that this could be a Denial of Service retribution for their recent price hike, but so far Netflix has offered no guidance on what the problem was.

Whatever else is true, you couldn’t have asked for a better way to exacerbate upset over their recent push toward online-streaming-only subscription. Down on Sunday night? Four to five hours of outage before telling customers it’s not their problem? Telling customers the problem is fixed when it isn’t? Netflix should be grateful Twitter wasn’t down last night, as they’d apparently have left customers in the dark the entire time.