I agree..this week alone we watched FIVE movies via NETFLIX stream..three of them were high-def and were okay by me... I think the quality of the stream is dependent on the quality of your internet provider. When we had DSL it was crappy...ever since we switched to cable, its been really good... Rob
Oh hey I'm a moron. Sorry I concluded it was poor based on a 1940s movie. After your post, I went back and streamed a newer movie and thought it wasn't too shabby. Streaming still annoys me though. I have an ocd urge to play with my mouse and whenever I do that, the player's navigator bar comes on. I want my mplayer dammit!
That drives me absolutely batshit crazy. My fiance has been wanting to see Inglorious Basterds for months now and almost doesn't believe me when I tell her that it still has a long wait on it. I've been using Netflix and will never give up my membership, but that is the one consistent knock against them that I can think of.
I have 186 movies listed right now, I do what you do, it's just a handy way to do it. I might want to really watch 10 of them and my top 8 or so have had very long waits for awhile now.
Temis, in one of the Blockbuster Sucks threads, weren't you one of the ones championing Netflix in this regard? They had just signed a deal basically agreeing not to carry new releases from one of the companies (forget which one) for a month after release, and everyone said this wasn't a big deal. You now want new releases quickly? Believe i was told in that one that Netflix customers didn't care about new movies, and ones that did could just use RedBox... Bash Blockbuster all you want, but this is an area I haven't really had much problem with my online rental service. And because they have physical locations (for now), if I occasionally DO want to see a movie that's stuck in the queue, i can take my mailer to the store instead of mailing it back, and swap it out for a movie there. Works well for new releases that might be slow, or just random older titles that there aren't a lot of...
I like to spread the money around..I occaisionally get stuff via X360 (like new episodes of Batman/Brave Bold or Smallville)...then I use my Netflix streaming (via x360) or, sometimes, hard copies of Netflix (recently THE WINDS OF WAR)...If I have to see a new release so bad that I don't want to wait, I have a Blockbuster right down the street.... But without a doubt I use NETFLIX streaming more than all of the others combined...if new releases aren't that important to you, and you want to see movies that aren't even carried at some Blockbuster because they are old, then you can't be NETFLIX.. Rob
Yeah, now I'm watching them through the Wii, so throttling be dashed. Oh yeah, and Time Magazine actually did a story on this at one point, and found that it was nearly impossible to get new movies from Netflix early on. They suggested using Redbox or whatever for that, and Netflix for everything else, and a public library if you were especially cheap.
i wouldn't be surprised if Netlix drops new movies..I never get new movies with NETFLIX. I think NETFLIX is best for those of us who have kids, or love the movies of the 70s and 80s, or whenever, that are no longer carried at Blockbuster. The local blockbuster where I live relocated across the street to a smaller venue, and they now only have games..Blueray and new DVDS. There are no older movies carried at all... Rob
Let's look at this another way. If you are one of the power users with 100s of movies and TV shows in the queue, then why should it matter if this particular title is taking longer to show up? Is it more important than the other material by virtue of being more recent? If it matters to a person that they see the new releases more quickly, then they should use the theater or brick and mortar rental options. The power users are getting a great value for their money, and it's not a feasible business model for Netflix to plan extensively for those exceptional cases where power users care about getting the newest release right away.
I've never had problems getting new releases. It all depends on the area you are in and which center it ships from couple with how many they have at that center. I just got Inglorious Bastards after putting it on my rental list Thursday.
I'm pissed because 90% of the discs I get from Netflix skip. So it now works through the Wii? Good to know, how exactly does that work?
But throttling means "send DVDs slowly enough that Netflix can make money off them" rather than "don't send certain DVDs ever at all in a hundred billion years"? The former makes sense. The latter doesn't. Why should they throttle Inglorious Basterds rather than Double Indemnity? Manufacturing costs and shipping costs are the same. There has to be some difference in cost to Netflix of those two titles. Otherwise, they'd pump out DVDs to match demand, problem solved. I think Inglorious Basterds is demanding a premium licensing fee. Netflix didn't project demand accurately and has exceeded their agreement and they're trying to re-negotiate the deal but the license owner of course is going to jack up the price sky high. There's just no way that Netflix could have the right to print DVDs of an in-demand new release that cost them exactly the same as the right to print DVDs of movies that have little demand. Yet they've let their customers assume that all movie titles are equally valuable, and that's how their business model is set. That must be the "broken business model" that the customer service guy referred to. You can't sell a premium product at a discount price. Something's got to give. So they're doing the stupidest thing possible: aggravating their customers. Why should I be aggravated? I didn't come up with their broke-ass business model! Check back in a couple days. I'll tell you if my workaround was a success and then you can use it, too! That doesn't apply to Inglorious Basterds. People in this thread have said they got it immediately. No, the reason seems to be that I rent and return DVDs at such a fast clip that they are trying to drive me away as a customer by aggravating the fuck out of me. I don't begrudge them the attempt, but I think I've found a way to foil their little schemes. I ignored it for a couple months. Now I've decided I'd like to see it. But really, it's not that one movie. It's that I'm annoyed by their system and I want to find a way to game the system, just for the sake of doing so. Yeah that's true. The last thing they want is people like me who aren't content for Netflix to make no money off me, but actively seek to undermine their business and will tell everyone about it if I figure out how to do it. That reminds me, I'm also a Saturn owner. I've had my car for 20 years. Ya wanna know why Saturn is out of business? Because they attracted people like me - who buy a car and keep it for 20 years. DUMBSHITS! When a business sees me, they better run the other way because if there's a way to drive them out of business, I will find it. That may be part of it, but consider how easy it would be to ramp up DVD pressing in any shipping center and take care of any localized problem quickly. I've seen those industrial DVD pressing operations - production capacity isn't an issue.
Usually, I have no problem getting new releases, and if I do have to wait, it's only a few days or so. One thing I like with netflix is that they will send me an extra dvd when I have to wait for a dvd that isn't available at my local Netflix distribution center.
You must have a lousy mail carrier or something. I've only had to return 1 disc in the 4 years that I've had Netflix.
Same. And from what I could tell based on my internet research, that was a mastering error on the disc that prevented it from working in certain players (including every single one I had access to), so it wasn't even their fault. Luckily, the library had a copy of it on VHS, otherwise I never would've found out how North by Northwest ended.
2012 today skipped about 2 minutes into the movie and I had to wash it. It has happened with at least 4 of the last 5-6 discs I have gotten. I'm waiting for Wii or Blu-Ray to lower the price to <$150 and I might buy one to stream things to.
Ugh, I'm glad I dropped netflix. As a high volume viewer it was always just a matter of time before I got throttled and all of a sudden stuff took forever to get. The solution was to send an angry email about it. Which would speed service back up for about a month before going back to the snails pace. Even when I started only putting available movies at the top of my que, my returned disks would inexplicably take three days just to go the 20 miles back to the netflix distribution center. It just wasn't worth it anymore. Netflix is good if you sit on movies you get and don't mind waiting for new releases. Then I'm sure it's aces.