Netflix and Warner Brothers Reach Deal

[Temis the Vorta]

Why are so many people so happy with the Netflix service, if the common experience seems to be rarely getting new releases anytime near when they come out?

Because I don't care about the timing of the DVDs. The releases aren't really "new" anyway - the movies are new and top of mind when they're in the theaters. If I didn't bother to go see them at that point, then I don't care about them enough to care when I see them. A month more or less doesn't matter in the least to me.

If something is wait-listed, all that means is that something else I wanted to see bobs to the top of the list and comes instead. As long as I'm always getting things I want to see - and there's nothing in my queue I don't want to see - why should I care about the order in which it arrives?

My one criticism is that when a TV series moves from saved to active, sometimes the first DVD is wait listed because everyone wants to see that first. If I don't monitor my queue, I might get the second DVD first. Netflix could solve that by letting you link the DVDs; if the first one is wait listed, the subsequent ones are held. That would be easy for them to implement and I've emailed them about it, but so far, no dice. Kind of a small tweak anyway. I'm always checking my queue just to add new stuff so monitoring it isn't burdensome.

[Harvey]

Netflix doesn't link TV DVDs? Weird. I'm pretty sure Blockbuster does that, although their system is far from perfect.

[Starbreaker]

http://mashable.com/2010/01/08/netflix-on-nintendo/

Looks like Netflix is also coming to the Wii.

[Temis the Vorta]

If there's a way to do it on Netflix, I haven't found it. Anyone know? It seems like an obvious thing.

It can't be automatic because what if you wanted to see disk 2 first for some reason. And I can't figure out how to set it. There should be a little "link" icon like they use in Photoshop layers, that you can click for each DVD you want in your chain. (Move the little "top" icon over to the right but still before the movie title.)

I'd put the icon greyed out between the list-order number and the movie title. Click all the DVDs you want in the chain to activate the icon - everyone will understand that intuitively.

And not just TV shows, if for some reason you want unrelated movies to arrive in a certain order, regardless of wait listing, why not let people do that?

but I still contend that you guys are the "power users" on Netflix, and not representative of the bulk of their customers.

If the bulk of their customers don't like the way Netflix does things, why are they customers? The situation will sort itself out. I don't care if other people want to bail.

Could see broadcast television going away completely at some point, being replaced by a version of TIVO-like service where everything is available, and new stuff just shows up on the weekly schedule...

Who's going to pay for production of those shows? I wonder if Netflix would ever be able to move into content production - I'm not sure if their subscription model would support that. OTOH, they have a direct two-way link to their customer base and could use that in innovative promotional ways, such as polls asking people if they would like this or that genre produced, even getting into details like favorite actors. Netflix is in prime position to really take advantage of social networking for promotional purposes.

[J. Allen]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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If there's a way to do it on Netflix, I haven't found it. Anyone know? It seems like an obvious thing.

It can't be automatic because what if you wanted to see disk 2 first for some reason. And I can't figure out how to set it. There should be a little "link" icon like they use in Photoshop layers, that you can click for each DVD you want in your chain. (Move the little "top" icon over to the right but still before the movie title.)

I'd put the icon greyed out between the list-order number and the movie title. Click all the DVDs you want in the chain to activate the icon - everyone will understand that intuitively.

And not just TV shows, if for some reason you want unrelated movies to arrive in a certain order, regardless of wait listing, why not let people do that?

If the bulk of their customers don't like the way Netflix does things, why are they customers? The situation will sort itself out. I don't care if other people want to bail.

Add the entire series and not just a particular disc. According to Netflix, if you add the entire series, they will send it in order, unless there is a wait list, and they won't ship any DVDs of that season until the first one is available.

This is from the help page:

Q:
How do DVDs in a series get shipped?

A:
If you are renting a series or season and add the entire season together, we will ship the DVDs in order. That means:

• DVDs within the season will be shipped in order (Disc 1 will ship before Disc 2, etc.) unless you specifically change the order in your Queue.
• If there is a wait for a particular DVD in a series, we will wait until the earlier DVD ships before we ship the next DVD in that series.
• Seasons will be shipped in order that they appear in your Queue. If you have Season 1 and Season 2 in your Queue (in that order,) Season 2 DVDs will not be shipped to you until all Season 1 have been shipped.
• If you added the individual DVDs to your Queue (rather than the entire series at once), those DVDs will be shipped in the order listed from your Queue.

[RoJoHen]

Yeah, I've had TV shows wait-listed, and it skips the whole show until the first disc is available.

[cylkoth]

^^ Same for me...Dollhouse S1 was a popular rental in my area, and I didn't get disc 1 until a month after it had been availabe, and the mailings skipped over the subsequent discs, going to the next item in the queue instead.

[barnaclelapse]

RoJoHen wrote:

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You benefit from the increased Instant Streaming library.

Now, if you don't really use that feature, you're not benefiting much at all, but that's not really Netflix's problem.

That's a good point. I do use the Instant Streaming feature, although not as much as I'd like.