Back in August, we wrote about the Hollywood movie studios conspiring to keep new release DVDs away from services like Netflix and Redbox for as many as 30 days after their release. The idea behind this from Hollywood’s perspective is simple: If people can’t rent movies right away, they’ll buy more. Sorry, did I say the idea was “simple”? I meant, “idiotic”.

At the time, it was reported that Blockbuster, the former video giant that is aging anything but gracefully, was also backing this 30-day window idea (where it might see a 30-day rental exclusive on some titles). With the company bleeding money, it shouldn’t be surprising that they’re aligning themselves with the studios. But more recently, there has been some very disheartening news: Netflix seems to be willing to back this idea too. Yes, the poster child for much of what is right about the consumer movie business these days may be on the verge of making a deal with the devil.

Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success.

In short, these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of “offers” are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it’s also bad for legitimate advertisers.

The reason why I call this an ecosystem is that it’s a self-reinforcing downward cycle. Users are tricked into these lead gen scams. The games get paid, and they plow that money back into Facebook and MySpace in advertising, getting more users. Who are then monetized via lead gen scams. That money is then plowed back into Facebook and MySpace in advertising to get more users…

Here’s the really insidious part: game developers who monetize the best (and that’s Zynga) make the most money and can spend the most on advertising. Those that won’t touch this stuff (Slide and others) fall further and further behind. Other game developers have to either get in on the monetization or fall behind as well. Companies like Playdom and Playfish seem to be struggling with their conscience and are constantly shifting their policies on lead gen.

The games that scam the most, win.

A video took the web by storm today entitled “Incredible, amazing, awesome Apple.” Basically, it boils down Apple’s latest event into a series of superlatives. It’s a funny video because Apple really does have a pattern of using these types of words over and over again in its demonstrations. Cynics will say this is how Apple brainwashes the masses into buying their products, and gets people jazzed about the tiniest features. But I think there’s something much deeper here.

While certainly there is some element of hearing something so many times that you start to believe it, that’s nothing new, any good salesman will do the same thing. But why I think the tactic works so well with Apple is because they actually believe what they’re saying. Just watch Steve Jobs in that video. It sure seems like he’s damn sure that what he’s talking about is amazing. He’s excited about it. So is Phil Schiller and the others on the Apple team. And that excitement translates on a level unseen.

I do my fair share of complaining about poor service. And if you follow me on Twitter, you might say that I do more than my fair share. Here’s my issue: It’s not so much that your service sucks, it’s that you refuse to be held accountable for it sucking, and rarely, if ever, do anything about it. I’m looking at you, Comcast and AT&T. That’s why it’s so perplexingly wonderful when a company does the right thing, like Netflix.

Tonight, Netflix emailed a large number of its subscribers to apologize for a Xbox Live streaming outage that occurred yesterday. They’re offering to refund 2% of users’ monthly bills back to them, if they simply click on the link that was emailed. It’s not a lot of money, but what’s remarkable is that Netflix did this for most of us completely unprompted.

Movie piracy is a problem, but it’s not as huge of a problem as music piracy was this past decade. While certainly the size of the movie files and the need for fast broadband connections to get them in a reasonable amount of time plays into it somewhat, also helping is the fact that there are some fairly decent ways to get movies quickly, for a pretty fair price these days. And now Hollywood is apparently trying to change that.

The studios are starting to rally around a horrible new idea: Keeping new releases out of Redbox and more importantly, Netflix for 30 days. Let me repeat that: They think Netflix shouldn’t be able to ship many new movies to you until 30 days after they’re released on DVD.

Ever since Netflix’s awesome vacation policy was revealed to the public (basically, there is no policy, it’s take the time you think you need), the company’s work policies have been of interest to people. A new 128-page presentation called “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture” was recently sent around the company, and then put on SlideShare, where the blog Hacking Netflix found it.

The presentation, which you can see for yourself below, is as interesting as any 128-page document can be. If you read it over, about half-way through, you’ll probably start wishing you worked for Netflix. This was meant to be an internal document for employees to read, but it’s also one hell of a recruitment pitch.

One big story today is that Netflix added ABC content to its streaming service (it actually did this a couple days ago when episodes of Lost started appearing). But there’s a potentially hotter Netflix streaming rumor floating around out there right now: That it’s coming to the iPhone.

Multichannel News wrote a story a few days ago that Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service would soon have an app in Apple’s App Store as well be available on the Nintendo Wii, citing an industry executive familiar with Netflix’s plans. Both of these devices would seem to play well into Netflix’s strategy of getting its service on as many consumer devices as possible (already it’s on the Xbox 360, Blu-ray players, the Roku box and built into a few TVs). But this rumor is interesting for a few reasons.

Who knew statistical computing competitions could be so cut throat? Since we reported on the contest last night, two teams in the Netflix Prize have spent the last few hours jumping back and forth on the Netflix leaderboard as the three-year-long competition ticked into its final moments, with last minute sniping submissions coming from both sides. Finally, the results are in: The Ensemble has managed to come from behind to upset BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos with a top submission of 10.10% — an improvement of .01% — only 4 minutes before the contest closed.

It’s been a long road to get here. Over the last three years computer science teams around the world have been vying for the Netflix Prize — a competition that invited teams to try to improve on Netflix’s movie recommendation algorithm by 10%, with a reward of $1 million to the best submission. Since then teams have gotten progressively closer to the magical 10% mark, but it wasn’t until last month when a number of top teams joined forces to form BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos that the barrier was finally broken, with a score of 10.08%. However, their announcement kicked off a 30 day last call period where other teams were invited to make their final submissions.

Last month news broke that a team of computer scientists had finally managed to improve Netflix’s recommendation algorithm by 10%, making them eligible to win the $1 million Netflix Prize, a competition that began back in 2006. The team, BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos, is composed of two former leaders in the competition who banded together in attempt to finally break the 10% barrier and managed to succeed with a score of 10.08%. However, their announcement kicked off a 30 day window where other teams were invited to make their final submissions and potentially take the prize. Tonight, with just one day remaining, a team called The Ensemble has managed to overtake BellKor with a score of 10.09% — an improvement of .01% over the former leaders. You can see the full leaderboard here.

According to its homepage, the Ensemble is made up of two teams who chose to join forces: “Grand Prize Team” and “Opera Solutions and Vandelay United”. The Ensemble has just posted the following blog post to its official site:

We are happy today to have made a submission which surpasses Netflix’s 10% Grand Prize target. The Ensemble is the second team to do this in less than a month. We are very proud of our achievements, and those of our top competitor, Bellkor’s Pragmatic Chaos.

Well here’s a hot little rumor. Netflix stock has surged today on news that it may be acquired by Amazon.

The stock is currently up over 7% in trading today, at an 11-week high. Sources seem pretty thin, based seemingly on stock analysis from places like WhatsTrading.com. And neither company is commenting. But the idea is a hot one.

Both Amazon and Netflix are in the midst of a full-on push to get digital video content into the living room. Amazon via its On Demand service, and Netflix through its streaming service. The two are battling the likes of Apple (with the Apple TV) and to some extent Microsoft (though Netflix also works on the Xbox 360 — and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is actually on Microsoft’s board).

A couple years ago, Netflix began supplementing its DVD mail rental business with movie streams over the Web. for a few thousand select titles. Today, millions of Netflix customers stream their movies instead of waiting for them to come in the mail (or, more often, do both). ComScore Video Metrix estimates Netflix’s online viewership a bit lower at 645,000 unique viewers in March. They watched 6.9 million video streams and the average time spent watching per viewer is an amazing 128 minutes for the month, which is right up there with YouTube in terms of time spent (having full-length feature films helps keep people around longer).

I ran into Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at the AllThingsD conference this week, and asked him in the video (after the jump) how his streaming service is going and how its economics compare to that of mailing out DVDs.

Looks like Windows Media Center, that hub for video and audio which I’ve never used, is getting full Netflix streaming support. This is good news for those of you running HTPCs with Vista on them — no need for an extra layer or front-end, just open up WMC, enter your info and you’re on your way.

If you’re not a member, hit up some free trial action and you could be watching a movie in about two minutes without leaving your chair.

In a golf tournament, it can be advantageous to putt after another player because you learn the contours of the path to the hole. In a similar way, you’d think Hollywood would have learned from the rough path the music industry took in transitioning to the world of digital distribution over the web. Unfortunately, it looks to be on the verge of missing the putt as well.

On the surface, it seems like Hollywood is doing a better job of getting consumers to use their approved methods for transferring content over the web — but the reality is that it’s a mess. And the only reason piracy isn’t so rampant in the US is that our broadband speeds, for the most part, suck.

Sure, there are a lot of channels to get films legally over the web. iTunes, Xbox Live, Amazon, Netflix and Hulu are all doing a fairly good job at making the content they’re given, accessible. Unfortunately, it’s the content that’s the problem. If you go to any of those services looking for a specific movie, there’s a very good chance that it won’t be available. And that can be true even if it was available on the service in the past. It’s a nightmare.

After watching your share of this year’s Oscar nominees, you might find yourself following the time-honored tradition of renting every tangentially related film in the hopes of finding something else just as good. Type in Slumdog Millionaire or The Wrestler, and Netflix will offer up recommendations that are “more like this.” But if you are looking for quirkier recommendations, the kind that you’d find at your local independent video store, then head on over to Clerkdogs. The human-curated movie recommendation site has an OscarMatch feature that suggests 400 films similar to this year’s crop of Oscar nominees.

On Netflix, if you are looking for movies that are like The Wrestler, for instance, it comes up with Requiem For a Dream (same director), Slums of Beverly Hills, Sideways, and Sin City (also starred Mickey Rourke). On Clerkdogs, it comes up with a bunch of down-on-their-luck fighter films:

Adding to the options of streaming movies to your PC, Mac, or TiVo, Netflix now streams 12,000 movies to the Xbox360. That includes 300 HD movies.

Xbox watchers have been waiting for this since last July. Add the Netflix streams with the Xbox 360’s Live Party feature and you can watch a movie with your friends remotely.

Where isn’t Netflix anymore? It looks great on the 360, it’s ending up in set-top boxes and media players from multiple makers. Now, if you had the foresight to buy a Series 3, HD, or HD XL you can now stream all of Netflix’s 12,000 streaming titles.

The service will use the same interface used by the 360 and the Roku box. You select films on Netflix.com and then add them to your instant queue. The films stream immediately upon selection. You can enable your TiVo for Netflix downloads by visiting www.tivo.com/netflix

Remember Silverlight? Well, Netflix is putting Microsoft’s video playback system to good use by offering “Watch Instantly” functionality under OS X “by the end of the year.”

Since “Watch Instantly” was introduced about two years ago Macintosh and Linux users have been complaining bitterly about Netflix’s failure to offer the service on their browsers of choice. The company has already offered streaming via dedicated hardware and specially programmed home theater and gaming devices.

In an interesting move by Netflix and Starz, about 2,500 featured movies and concerts are now available for instant streaming over the Internet and using the Roku Netflix box. Because Starz offers first run “premium” content, this move expands the overall streaming offerings from Netflix considerably.

My only complaint about Netflix streaming has thus far been movie selection – man cannot live on National Lampoon’s European Vacation alone, no matter how many times Rusty gets some – and this assuages that grief by adding first-run movies to the mix. The unlimited subscription with access to streaming content is $8.99 a month and the on-line library is up to 15,000 titles now, considerably more than when we tested the service a few months ago.