Quickflix. Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings and stars from its flagship shows Orange is the New Black and Marco Polo mingled with local media and industry representatives. Champagne and cocktails flowed freely. Meanwhile, freshly-minted local players Stan* and Presto had been throwing big bucks into loud marketing campaigns and content bidding wars ahead of the Netflix arrival, ultimately overpaying to secure prime content. "Clearly we're the little guy," Langsford said. "We don't have the capital to go out there and wage a massive brand campaign."

Quickflix's user experience has been described as "spartan" and "clunky". Quickflix was a pioneer in digital video in Australia, starting an online DVD rental business 10 years ago and adding streaming services four years ago. But its share price has been all but obliterated in recent years, shrinking 98.6 per cent, to 0.2 cents, in the last three years. A lack of capital has left it with few options when it comes to expanding its paying customer base, which dipped in the second half of 2014 from 123,000 to 117,000. Langsford said the figure had since recovered, with the March quarter generally its strongest. The Perth-based founder is optimistic Quickflix can ride the wave of publicity that streaming has had in recent months thanks to its rivals doing most of the "heavy lifting".

He has also previously talked up third-party partnerships to grow the customer base. So far this has included news that it will stock gift cards at retail outlets such as Woolworths from April, plus an announcement from Samsung on Monday that Quickflix would be among a number of apps pre-installed on its flagship Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge smartphones, available from April 10. Meanwhile, Quickflix's rivals have announced free subscriptions or data exclusions through telcos, with plenty of advertising support to boot. Otherwise, it's all about emphasising points of difference. Quickflix is the only local player with a DVD rental service which, though it sounds archaic, currently provides about 50 per cent of its revenue. It's a big money spinner for Netflix in the domestic US market, too. However, streaming is where the growth is, and Quickflix's streaming volumes almost doubled in 2014 and continue to rise.

Quickflix also offers transactional streaming, which lets consumers pay for one-off items rather than subscribing to the whole service. EzyFlix offers transactional streaming too, but no subscription option. Langsford said Quickflix was able to deliver content to market sooner than its competitors on the transactional streaming service, which required less negotiation with rights holders. Finally, Langsford said the company was in the process of overhauling its user experience, which it expects to implement "in the next quarter". By comparison, its rivals already sport far more contemporary website and app designs, with a strong emphasis on visuals and interactivity. One Fairfax reviewer recently described Quickflix's user experience as "spartan" and "clunky", which suggests they are late to that party too. Media analyst Steve Allen thinks projections of how big the streaming market will be in Australia are overblown, and that ultimately Quickflix will suffer the biggest blow.

"Not everyone's going to survive - not even the three new players are all going to survive," he said, describing Quickflix as "a minnow in a giant's game". "It doesn't matter that they were the first and it doesn't matter how serious they are in their endeavours, particularly with Netflix in the picture. It's a global play." The main snag would be content, Allen said. While Quickflix's transactional streaming service includes key titles like Orange is the New Black and House of Cards (both produced by Netflix), its subscription service is sparser. While Langsford questioned the sustainability of Quickflix's rivals splashing cash on content, Allen said the players with fresh, exclusive content would be the most attractive to consumers in the long run.

"When you've got Fairfax and Nine throwing $50 million each into a joint venture, unfortunately it's marginalised his [Langsford's] operation, and it doesn't matter if they have big write-downs [initially]. "It's the same story with [Channel] Ten: if you can't afford enough new programming you're going to lose ratings; if you've not got the ratings then you've not got revenue; if you've not got revenue you're going to make a loss." Netflix has also had huge success with producing its own content, and its chief executive said last week that it would be open to creating content here in Australia. Stan is already under way with a spin-off series of the Australian horror movie Wolf Creek. "Producers of programming material are just having a field day at the moment because you've got two local large start-ups bidding for anything they can get hold of, let alone Netflix," Allen said.

Langsford said Quickflix was not looking to produce its own content, calling it "risky". Other analysts are less pessimistic about consolidation in the sector. Deloitte technology, media and telecommunications partner Mason Davies said it was too early to pick winners and losers. "We [Deloitte] predicted some time ago that people would start disconnecting their higher-value pay-TV subscriptions when more of these higher-value, lower-cost services come onto market," Mr Davies said. "That hasn't actually been the case," he said. Instead consumers have opted to pay for a range of services at once, he said.