Topic: Netflix complaint (not what you think)

[scottws]

Netflix's recommendations are terrible, especially in the Watch Instantly section.  Why the fuck is some Spider-Man cartoon in the Sci-Fi & Fantasy section?  I'm trying to find stuff along the lines of Star Trek or Alien and instead they are showing me stuff like Thumbelina?!

Also, since it doesn't make sense for a single household to have more than one Netflix subscription, it would be huge if a Netflix account could have profiles for the individuals in the household.  After all, they make recommendations and guess what you would rate movies based on movies previously rated in the account.  Jennie and I both like action movies, but that's about all we share in common when it comes to taste.  I can tell you that if our Netflix account had multiple profiles, you sure wouldn't be seeing Thumbelina as a recommendation in mine.  I can't believe they haven't implemented this yet.

[Cobra951]

What I find terrible about Netflix is their streaming selection.  You would think that by now you could watch most recent releases.  Instead, it's worse than the cable movie channels.  If you want recent movies, you have to do the DVD-mailing thing, and that's slated to become a separate deal from streaming as of September.  So the cost for being able to do both will just about double.  Sucks.

[scottws]

Hmm... it turns out they DO have an option for multiple profiles.  I never knew it existed.  Time to get my ratings going...

[scottws]

What I find terrible about Netflix is their streaming selection.  You would think that by now you could watch most recent releases.  Instead, it's worse than the cable movie channels.  If you want recent movies, you have to do the DVD-mailing thing, and that's slated to become a separate deal from streaming as of September.  So the cost for being able to do both will just about double.  Sucks.

Yeah, I regularly spend 20 minutes looking for something to interest me enough to click play on the streaming and oftentimes find nothing.  It's a rare sight to see anything higher than a 2.5 star guess for us on streaming.  Part of the problem isn't just Netflix.  It's sort of akin to the music industry around the time of Napster.  The big content providers aren't quite ready to embrace streaming.  Or to embrace it through another provider until they know it's something that can make them a lot of money.  In some cases it has to do with old contracts with weird terms.  I just found out Sony pulled its catalog because the number of streams on Netflix began to exceed the maximum number contracted for between Sony and Netflix.

[TheOtherBelmont]

The sub-par streaming selection will be the reason I will be dropping that part of my plan in September.  I rarely find anything that I really want to watch on streaming and there has been a few nights where I have looked through the streaming selection for several minutes finding nothing of interest and just giving up.  I'll be going to the DVD only plan in September which will drop my bill anyways.

[idolminds]

I just dropped my sub last week, but I'm actually kind of happy they split streaming and DVDs since I was paying for part of the service I never used. So when I start it back up again I get to save money! Yay!

[scottws]

Ugh.  So I went through their whole deal of doing the movie category preferences and ratings of movies I've seen under my profile only to find out that only the main profile gets the Watch Instantly feature.  Bummer.  I'm back to the "dammit why don't they have profiles" mood again.

[angrykeebler]

Thankskilling



look it up


awesome

[shock]

My girlfriend's recommendations are hysterical.  We have a tradition of watching terrible movies with a few of our friends, and Netflix is perfect for getting hold of these hard-to-find masterpieces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Monster is next on our list.  But she also uses the subscription a lot to watch documentaries, particularly ones about the environment, cities and city planning, schools, etc.

Netflix doesn't know how to cope.

[scottws]

Yeah, Netflix's recommendations system works well initially, but over time it really starts to suck.  For us, it is regularly recommending movies that it thinks we will give 2 stars to.  Uh, thanks for showing me a bunch of movies you don't think I'll like.

A few friends and I also used to have a Bad Movie Night every Sunday where we would go to the local Hollywood Video (R.I.P.) and look for the most godawful thing in the store we could find.  Here are some recommendations for you:

Battle of Los Angeles
Def-Con 4
Killjoy
The Langoliers
Ultraviolet
Bad Taste

That last one is from Peter Jackson and is meant to be tongue-in-cheek bad, so I don't know if that counts.  The Langoliers is a good one because it is so low-budget it is sickening.  The CG in particular is absolutely horrid.  Probably the worst I've seen.

[Cobra951]

The Langoliers would have been awful with Lucas and Spielberg making it.  It's the stupidest sci-fi story ever committed to film.

All this reminds me of how much I miss MST3K.  That's the only way to watch some of these movies.

[scottws]

There is a new thing where you can download MP3 files and play them while watching a movie.  It's basically the same thing as MST3K.  I'll have to figure out what it is called.

And yes, you are right about The Langoliers.  I never read the book, but the story seems completely stupid.  And what is up with Stephen King always having some sort of idiot savant that saves the day in his stories?

[K-man]

Rifftrax.

They've been doing it for a few years now.  Pretty good stuff.

[shock]

Nice!  Thanks for the recommendations.

If you are still into it, I REALLY recommend giving "The Room" a watch.  It's got a cult following now and they regularly show it at a lot of theatres across the country.  I've watched it at least 3 times now and it gets funnier and funnier.   The acting is SO BAD.

Here's a sneak peek. These guys are "best friends" but the guy in the red shirt is sleeping with the other guys wife.

[scottws]

Rifftrax.

They've been doing it for a few years now.  Pretty good stuff.

Yeah, that's it.  When I said "new", I guess I really meant newer than MST3K.

Nice!  Thanks for the recommendations.

If you are still into it, I REALLY recommend giving "The Room" a watch.  It's got a cult following now and they regularly show it at a lot of theatres across the country.  I've watched it at least 3 times now and it gets funnier and funnier.   The acting is SO BAD.

Here's a sneak peek. These guys are "best friends" but the guy in the red shirt is sleeping with the other guys wife.

Wow.  That guy with the long hair is pretty much as bad as Dante's girlfriend in Clerks.  Worse, actually.

[shock]

Yeah. He really makes the movie. He's the writer, director, executive producer, producer, and main actor (yes, he actually lists himself as both the producer and the executive producer).

&feature=related

One more for the road. 

[scottws]

Terrific writing.  She doesn't recognize him until he takes his glasses off?  Riiiiight.  It's also funny how he rushes through the lines and actions at the end of the scene.  Good stuff.

[scottws]

So back to Netflix...  The price increase thing.  It's an interesting thing for Netflix.  What they are betting on is that so many customers are hooked on Watch Instantly that they will either do nothing and pay the 60% price increase or be canceling their DVD memberships and keeping the Watch Instantly service.  That's actually what they want!  Long term, they want to get out of the lower margin and higher capital cost DVD business and just do streaming.  Unless existing customers completely terminate their service or everyone switches to DVD-only memberships, then it is a win for Netflix.

We are still trying to decide what to do.  We don't want to pay the $15.98/mo., but we don't necessarily want to just keep the Watch Instantly service either because the selection sucks so bad.  On the other side of the coin, we have been really bad about flipping our DVDs we rent.  I think we've had the two DVDs we have now for probably four months without watching them.

[shock]

I can definitely understand the desire to switch to all streaming, but I think they lack the content to really make it viable.  At best, it has the kind of movies you'd see on a Saturday afternoon on TBS.  It's better in that you can choose what you want to watch without ads, but the selection is still pretty poor.  I know a lot of this isn't their fault, but I think they should have waited to do this until the library got a bit bigger.  I can only watch so many average action movies from the 90's before I get tired.   They do some genres better (like documentaries), but overall, there's a pretty big void.

Like I said, my girlfriend is the one who has the subscription, but she'll probably end up cancelling the streaming service.

[scottws]

Yeah, if you like Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme, eat your heart out.  Otherwise it is really hit or miss.  I don't get why they have new, awesome stuff like Star Trek, but don't have something older like Galaxy Quest.  I'm sure it all comes down to contracts with the studios, but it is really bizarre from a consumer perspective.

[scottws]

Whooo man!  Netflix's Watch Instantly service is down for all devices.  It works on the computer, but only if you are already logged in.  If you aren't logged in, you can't get logged in.

The timing for something like this couldn't be worse for Netflix.