Netflix To Deploy HDR ‘as Fast as We Can,’ Its Digital Supply Chain Point Man Says
LOS ANGELES -- Contrary to some industry-watchers who think otherwise, Netflix sees no “format war” between open-standard high dynamic range and the proprietary Dolby Vision HDR platform, Chris Fetner, director-global media engineering and partnerships, told the Transforming Home Entertainment Summit Thursday. “We plan to look at both,” said Fetner, who serves as the Netflix point man on its global digital supply chain.
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Netflix is “very excited” about HDR as a technology enhancement that will bring “very meaningful impact” to its subscribers, Fetner said. “We’re going to deploy it as fast as we can, but we want to make sure that it’s going to have impact and that it will be a very noticeable improvement to our service today,” he said. “The same goes with Rec. 2020" wider color gamut, he said. “We can see a future where Rec. 2020 is very important to our members, and we’re excited to try working on getting there.” His PowerPoint slide said Netflix eyes deploying Rec. 2020 colorimetry within two to five years.
Coincidentally, Netflix launched streaming in 2007, the same year the first iPhone was introduced, Fetner said. “I remember how transformative” the first iPhone was, yet no one would want to trade an iPhone 6s for the original model, except for “nostalgia reasons,” he said. “And so I just look at our platform from 2007, and how much it’s changed, and how much better it is today, and how much better it will be in the future, but it is going to require a constant collaboration with our content partners to get those better and better assets.”
Looking at the components of the first-generation iPhone, “the screens weren’t as good, the chips weren’t as good” as those of the iPhone 6s, Fetner said. But “we got a much better alcove in the end,” and that’s how people should be thinking about the Netflix digital supply chain, he said. “We’re going to be constantly asking for new things,” including “new assets and asset types,” but the outcome “will be much better for everybody,” he said.
As Netflix continues to pursue its aggressive global expansion, “the same business dynamics apply” in luring and retaining customers in overseas markets as in satisfying U.S. subscribers, Fetner said. “We have to win their love, every month, and ensure that they come back, and a big part of that is making the content accessible to them in their language,” he said. “And so it’s really important that we get that right, and it’s the thing that we actually struggle with a lot.”
Netflix employs a “pool” of about 400 people globally who are “in territory” and are “local speakers” whose linguistic talents serve as a safeguard against gaffes in translating content from English to other languages, Fetner said. Anyone in the pool can log onto an online quality control “tool” that Fetner designed with the help of linguistics experts throughout the world to ensure translations are consistent with the “current vernacular” in each territory, he said. But “idiomatic” translations have been a “big problem for us that we’re trying to solve,” he conceded, noting that the English language alone contains more than 25,000 idioms. For example, he said, to “kick the bucket” translates into Danish as removing one’s “wooden clogs.”
An “outstanding customer experience” is Netflix’s "Polaris" because “every month, we have to earn our customers back,” Fetner said. “It’s very easy to switch away from Netflix, where there’s no annual contract,” he said. Nothing makes subscribers keep “coming back, except for a love and delight with our product,” he said. “And so everything that we do is focused on making that product better,” whether it be in the platform’s “search and discovery” functionality “or the devices that we tend to put our service on,” he said.
Netflix uses a “redelivery rate” as a key metric for measuring the quality of the customer experience, Fetner said. He defined the redelivery rate as the percentage of content files Netflix typically receives for distribution that it rejects because they “are so bad that if we tried to use them, it would create a bad experience for our customers.” Today’s redelivery rate at Netflix averages about 6.5 percent, compared with 24 percent when Fetner joined the company three years ago, he said. “We continue to get that number down” through the availability of better repair tools and closer cooperation with the studios, he said. “Our goal actually is 2 percent,” because that’s “the right number for us,” and it’s consistent with the norm in Hollywood content production, he said.