Netflix Prize Awards $1M, Promises Better Recommendations
A team of former rivals has officially won the competition to improve Netflix movie recommendations. The collaborative known as BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos took home a $1-million prize today for their winning submission from July 26, which beat out yet another rival team's matching submission by just 20 minutes. The winning set of algorithms represents an improvement of just over 10 percent over Netflix's Cinematch system at the start of the contest in 2006. But that 10.06 percent bump translates into twice as much customer satisfaction with movie recommendations, according to Netflix. The world's largest online movie rental service awarded the prize check at a ceremony held today at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City. Related Articles New Netflix Box Streams Movies Battle of the Internet Video Boxes: Netflix vs. Apple TV vs. Vudu