I signed up for Netflix Canada today in anticipation of lots of awesomeness, but the selection is hideous. How bad? No Harry Potter, no Star Trek, no recent superhero movies, like 3 HBO/Showtimes series…unless Netflix picks up more licenses and FAST, this is going to sink like a stone.
Seriously, when I go to the New Releases page, the first result is the original Wall Street. By actual production time, the newest selection is Slumdog Millionaire.
Perhaps the Canadian streaming content selection is different from the US, because here it’s pretty good, as least as an adjunct to the DVD-by-mail service (which has a much broader selection).
Son of a bitch? I just searched randomly for:
Casablanca
Airplane!
Gone With the Wind
Sleeper (Woody Allen)
2001: A Space Odyssey
And none of these were available? WTF?
Yeah the selection is underwhelming. I;ll keep my eye on it and think about joining once it has actual recent releases.
Also, there doesn’t seem to be any Blu-Ray selections…
It’s streaming only, with an HD option. No mail service.
Of the above, the only ones that are available for streaming in the U.S. are the Star Trek films and perhaps some Showtime series ( for example earlier seasons of Weeds are available in HD ). Netflix only has contracts with some studios for streaming content and the bulk of their mail catalog is not available for streaming. They’ve been expanding said content at a decent pace, but see below.
Some will possibly never, ever be available on netflix. HBO for example will not release their series to netflix for streaming - see this very timely article. HBO also control some movie rights for years to come from 20th Century Fox and Universal studios and Netflix won’t be getting those anytime soon, either.
ETA: The fact you don’t get access to the mail catalog is the biggest crime. In that realm Netflix is unmatched.
Oh and just a note on this - “new releases” mean newly released on streaming or added to the mail catalog. It doesn’t necessarily mean “newest films.” Netflix is constantly adding to the streaming content as they acquire new rights and transfer them over, so “new releases” on a given day might include a film from the 1940’s :).
I signed up. It’s $7.99. If I watch 2 things per month, it’ll be worth it. I’m more worried about my 125GB cap with Cogeco.
We do have in Canada zip.ca which essentially recreates the netflix mail service.
I’m sad to hear the selection for streaming is dismal. I’ll have to poke around and see if there’s anything I’d like to see at all.
It was more of a comment that the American site is getting so many of the newest films that an older film won’t be on the list for very long before being bumped for a newer film.
Yeah, I’m with you. There’s still a good handful of stuff I want to see. I’m hoping they’ll get more TV, even if it isn’t HBO. The TLC/Discovery/etc stuff they have already is nice.
zip.ca, a bajillion times more expensive and from everything I’ve heard, slower and more inefficient and just a letdown compared to Netflix.
Yeah, what I was about to say. Netflix streaming is nice, but it’s the mail service that is really what it’s all about. I’m sure there are exceptions, but in my experience if a DVD of a movie/series/whatever exists, Netflix has it, and you can get it.
I don’t know about Canada, but in the US, Iron Man is streaming.
Not here. Which offended me more, since when it gave me a bunch of movies to rate when I started the account so it could give initial recommendations, they picked a bunch of movies that only streamed in the US. They asked me about Iron Man, Batman Begins, X-Men: The Last Stand and Fantastic Four. Then they recommended me Waterworld. My coworker compared it to rating classic romance movies and getting Gigli.
The heck with that. Send me something I can watch on my big screen rather than on my laptop. No, I don’t feel like twiddling around to try to connect my computer to my TV. Do mail service like the Americans have (and which we have been envious of for some time), or don’t bother.
The foreign language section seems decent, and since it takes a year and a day for rogersdirect to get the more obscure titles out, I think I’m going to be watching a crapload of movies this month before the trial ends
The US just got every episode of Battlestar Galactica and Saturday Night Live today on streaming.
You realize that the company is called Netflix and not Netflix for Spoons, right?
Just checked…no BSG for us. Quit taunting me! 