The booming situation caught Huang He a bit off guard. He saw an opportunity and immediately instructed the companies within the alliance to work overtime to produce more. At the same time, he placed more orders with other companies and directly dispatched a private jet to bring another batch of 1 million boxes to the United States for free distribution, to meet market demand.
After all, many people discovered that the clarity of the online version of "Misty Journey" was not as good as the television version… It wasn't that Mr. Huang deliberately lowered the quality of the online version, but rather that without LCD screens at this time, traditional displays were quite poor in clarity.
Furthermore, the online version of the video was divided into three different versions: 720p, 480p, and 360p. The 360p version could play smoothly, but once it reached 480p, it would often stutter. As for 720p, many computers simply didn't support it… it required a dedicated graphics card to run.
However, the clarity of television was generally around 480p and 720p, depending on the television's own resolution. Due to exclusive compression and decompression codecs, the television version was indeed much clearer than the computer version.
And the improvement in special effects with higher clarity was obvious.
In short, viewers found that watching "Misty Journey" on television provided a much better experience than watching it on their computers, and this applied to other dramas as well.
In fact, the clarity of all dramas on Los Gatos Television seemed to be much higher than on other television stations… The reason was simple and not difficult at all: all videos were simply given a brighter filter.
The ultimate result was that "Misty Journey" proved what a phenomenon-level drama was, much like how "House of Cards" had caused Netflix's stock price to increase tenfold back in the day.
Now, one "Misty Journey" had transformed Los Gatos Television, which originally had only a few thousand viewers, into one of the top ten highest-grossing television stations in the United States!
After starting to charge for services, Los Gatos Television directly received over 8 million US dollars in revenue. With the distribution of the second batch of TV boxes, this revenue was expected to increase to over 16 million US dollars, and this was just a stable monthly income.
Annually, exceeding 100 million was the minimum, not to mention that within a year, Huang He would deploy over 30 million TV boxes into the US market and give them all away for free.
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While the entire market was shocked by Los Gatos Television's explosive expansion online, Hastings was quietly executing his own plan.
However, he wasn't foolish enough to completely follow the old man's advice and first set up a food delivery company and partnered with KFC to deliver fried chicken.
After all, this sounded very stupid, and if fried chicken was delivered through the postal system, it would probably be cold and tough by the time it arrived.
Hastings thought for a long time and soon discovered a more perfect alternative: delivering lottery tickets.
Giving out lottery tickets with products was a marketing method that had been used for hundreds of years. In modern society, there were countless marketing strategies involving attached lottery tickets with various products. Therefore, it was incredibly normal for Netflix to give its users a lottery ticket. No one would suspect anything upon seeing this decision.
Thus, Hastings quickly instructed one of his trusted subordinates to create an online gambling company called "Magic Lottery"... In the United States, operating an online gambling company was not legal, but it was not illegal either. After all, at this time, many laws and regulations related to the internet were still incomplete, allowing Hastings to perfectly skirt the edges to establish this company.
Afterward, representatives from this company approached Netflix and proposed a collaboration: to give all Netflix users network lottery tickets, which could win up to 1 million US dollars in prize money.
This cooperation was approved at the fastest speed, and under direct command, Netflix mailed out these lottery tickets to all its users.
According to the cooperation agreement, after receiving the lottery ticket, users only needed to open their computers, go to the corresponding gambling website, create a personal account, enter their credit card information, and input the verification code from the mailed ticket to receive a prize voucher on the website and see if they had won the grand prize.
Of course, Hastings also understood his users very well. Netizens were generally lazy. They wouldn't spend time filling in so much personal information for a lottery ticket that might not even win.
Therefore, the lottery ticket clearly stated that because it was a co-promotional effort for their website, each lottery ticket was guaranteed to win at least three dollars, which was about 20 Chinese yuan.
This was very attractive. Three days after the lottery tickets were sent out, the user base of this online gambling company began to grow rapidly. On the first day, over 600,000 people registered. Afterward, the registration scale remained above 500,000 people daily. In about a week, all 4 million Netflix users were transferred into this gambling website's database.
These were all active Netflix users, Netflix's most valuable asset. Although Hastings needed to pay over 12 million US dollars for this, this money didn't come out of Hastings's own pocket; it came from investors!
That's right, within two days of Hastings establishing this company, with the old man's assistance, over three large investment institutions jointly invested a staggering 50 million US dollars in this website.
Of course, the old man didn't pay his own money, nor was he influential enough to make these companies pay. Instead, he painted an incredibly bright future for these investment companies.
Netflix was currently valued at least around 1.5 billion US dollars. Now, Hastings was bringing all of Netflix's users to this company to replicate the Netflix myth and legend. They only needed 50 million US dollars to obtain a 30% stake in this company. Wasn't this a guaranteed profit?
Therefore, these investors naturally generously contributed. The 50 million quickly arrived in Magic Lottery's account. Hastings was naturally smug, waiting to lure all of Netflix's users away and then remotely direct the establishment of another Netflix on the other side. This would completely sever ties with Jiangnan Group and allow him to regain full control of the company.
Mr. Huang was, of course, unaware of this matter. The entire Netflix was controlled by Hastings's people, and he had Netflix tightly in his grip.
However, Mr. Huang was not idle at this time. Mr. Huang was currently in Oak Brook, Illinois. This was a city that Chinese people were largely unfamiliar with, but it was the location of McDonald's global headquarters.
However, Mr. Huang's purpose for this trip was not McDonald's, but the headquarters of another company located next to McDonald's headquarters, named Redbox.
Redbox, a word that even a middle schooler could understand, directly translated to "red box."
The reason it was named this was that it was a company that operated and sold through automated vending machines.
The company's vending machines were all bright red and very conspicuous among mobile vending machines. Therefore, the company also adopted the name Redbox, a name that, while not particularly sophisticated, was instantly memorable to anyone.
So, what did this company called Redbox sell?
The answer was simple: DVD rentals!
That's right, Redbox was a company that rented DVDs through offline automated vending machines. From its business function, it was a company that directly competed with Netflix and Blockbuster. So, was Mr. Huang here to eliminate this competitor of Netflix in advance?
Not exactly. Mr. Huang's primary purpose for this trip was to find someone.
When Mr. Huang arrived at the company's headquarters, he found that the headquarters were very small and quite chaotic.
Small because the company's headquarters was actually just a two-story building, and it was a very old-fashioned structure, exuding an atmosphere from the 1920s.
Chaotic, mainly because most of the workstations inside the headquarters building were empty. The few employees on duty were not working but were watching videos on their computers.
Fortunately, the company's receptionist was still diligent. Upon noticing Mr. Huang's appearance, she immediately inquired about his identity and purpose of visit, and then invited Mr. Huang to wait in the reception room, as their Vice President was busy with an important matter and would likely be unable to see him for a while!
Well, Mr. Huang naturally did not reveal his true identity, otherwise, the company's president and vice president would have rushed down immediately.
Mr. Huang nodded and went to the reception room, only to find that someone was already there. Mr. Huang had no intention of disturbing them, but this person was coincidentally watching "Misty Journey." Mr. Huang smiled and stayed, sitting to the side. The feeling of watching someone immersed in the world he had created was quite satisfying!
"That's right, he should have killed them directly. Protagonists who are too kind are damned bastards and will harm children!" Seeing the protagonist Li Qiang kill a villain who was begging for mercy, this person exclaimed loudly, even propping his feet on another chair, his posture extremely arrogant.
Just then, the ending theme song played, and the episode ended. The person's expression immediately soured, and he grumbled indignantly, "Damn Netflix, why haven't they released the latest episodes on DVD yet? They are so slow. The DVD audience will eventually be taken away by the internet and this Los Gatos Television!"
"Yes, Netflix is indeed becoming more and more of a scoundrel!" Mr. Huang said in agreement.