I bought an Apple tv a few weeks ago, then subscribed to Netflix.
The service works really, really great. Only thing is that I feel totally overwhelmed by the number of choices available at my fingertips.
For instance, I just put on part 1 of the PBS episode on Harry Truman, but instantly I feel like I should switch it to something else more interesting. Don’t get me wrong, the show really interests me, but I feel like there has to be something available that would interest me more.
Ugh, I wish I could just enjoy this show and not wonder what better is on.
I had an honest-to-God borderline nervous breakdown about four months ago (just post-holidays). Netflix played a significant role. Every single time I turned something on, I felt overwhelmed by all the other things I could be watching that would be more entertaining, educational, or somehow worthwhile. It got to the point where I couldn’t watch TV, or would be genuinely stuck for 20 minutes plus cycling through the queue trying to decide. The fact that I couldn’t just “turn on TV” but had to CHOOSE something was crushing.
My wife trimmed our queue down to, like, twelve things one day when I wasn’t looking. I am now a functioning person again.
If you count individual TV episodes, I probably have close to 1000 items in my Instant Queue. But I can never decide what to watch. I usually end up watching the entirety of a TV series before I can move on. (It’s a gift and a curse that they just added nearly every episode of Top Gear)
No. Because as a child of the late 20th Century/early 21st Century I have had access to a variety of media resources, consequently I have seen a LOT of what Netflix currently offers, which is mostly old stuff (>1year). I WANT immediate access to recently released work, e.g. the latest iteration of True Grit. Otherwise I am just panning for the occasional nugget of gold that somehow I missed over the last 40 years. White people problems? I’m not white, what does race have to do with it?
Once again, I welcome you to the Straight Dope. Now, I don’t speak for everyone here. Compared to many members, I’m relatively a newbie. But I think I’ve got a good beat on things. While we have members from all walks of life and accept all opinions, the boards is mostly A) American, B) Educated, C) Middle to upper class, and according to a recent poll, D) indeed there are a lot of white people here. We do like to complain about minor things, but you’ll also people discussing more serious problems affecting them (deaths, births, poverty, etc.) Obviously, we know the difference between not be able to decide what to have for dinner and not being able to pay for dinner. But we like to talk about all those things. I suggest you look around, check out the boards, see if you would really like it here.
Also, we don’t appreciate all caps posts, hyperbole in attempt to mock others, or excessive “txt” talk. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy your stay.
Annnd back on topic, I say put all your stuff in a row on your queue, stick with it, and watch it in order.
I’ve had Netflix for about ten years now. I put off Instant until just recently for reasons similar to the OP. See, when I’m driving in the car, I have the habit of flipping through the radio stations, if I have a CD in I listen to the first 30 seconds of each song and keep going. But, when I have a Netflix DVD, I know that whether I watch the whole thing or the first 10 minutes and stop it, I won’t have a new one for two days, period. So I might as well finish it. My fear was that with Instant that if I wasn’t “in to” a movie in the first few minutes I’d just give up and go to the next one. I was worried I might not give movies a chance and end up missing a lot of good movies that way.
Luckily, that hasn’t been the case. I’m actually really picky about my movies. I’ve rented about 1500 movies from Netflix, yet my queue usually has between 10 and 20 movies on it. When I send one back I struggle with which one to bring up to the top next (same goes for Instant). So by the time I pick one out, I’m usually pretty confidant I want to see it. Of course, part of this is because after 1500ish movies, I’ve seen most of the movies I care to see. If I was at the beginning of my movie watching experience, still trying to figure out what I like with thousands of unwatched movies in my (yet to be decided) preferred genre, this might be different. In that case, I could see myself being very overwhelmed. Back when I first started with Netflix, I had hundreds of things on my Queue, was watching one to two movies a day, constantly rearranging. If I could have had instant then, in college and been watching 4 or 5 a day without leaving the couch, I would have gone nuts.
I still use Netflix for DVDs mainly. My DVD queue is maxed out at 500 and most of those aren’t available on Instant. I don’t like to watch Instant on the PC, my 360 doesn’t have Xbox Live, and my iPhone screen is tiny. Plus, I have HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, and Encore with On Demand.
My problem is getting to my movies. Watching a TV show is so convenient in 40-60 minute episodes it’s hard to convince myself to buckle down for a full 90-120 minute movie. As a result I have a ton of movies I’m afraid I’m never getting to. Enalzi, I too am currently working on Top Gear. I rarely streamed anything before this now I’m switching off between Top Gear and Airwolf.
I don’t have netflix but I do have a DVR and free on demand. And my friend has netflix through cable. Both on disc and through cable.
I do feel overwhelmed BUT it’s not because I have too many choices. Its because I don’t have enough.
I’m limited both by the DVR’s hard drive space and by the free on demand’s time constraints. If everything were truly universally accessible, and there was some kind of wishlist + priority algorithm, I wouldn’t have hesitation whatsoever. I could easily pick what I wanted to watch next.
It’s only because there are still arbitrary restraints that I still feel some angst.
My latest preference has been to find TV series that were much loved but are now over and the entire series is available on Netflix Instant. I’ve grown intolerant of watching series episodes for which I have to wait for one a week while still being broadcast on-air, or getting into a series that’s still airing where I may watch a whole season, but then run into the current season still on-air and I have to start waiting again.
It’s also a huge time-waster, as I can’t watch just one episode at a time. Since I know there’s another episode available, I end up watching 2 or 3 in a row. I blew through Buffy and Angel in their entirety in about 3 months, for example. I’m working on 24 now, and Veronica Mars.
But there’s no overwhelmed feeling for me. I’ve simply stopped watching broadcast/cable TV pretty much entirely aside from catching up on the news!
I’m familiar with how message boards work. This ain’t my first odeo. But thanks for the welcome! And I must say, I am disappoint you guys don’t love caps speak. =[
I still stand by my “first world problems” comment. I have too many friends who complain about their Netflix having too many movies and their iPad screens being too smudgy all the time etc. The fact that Netflix sometimes DOESNT have a movie I want to watch seems like a more legit complaint. Alas, it is a service I pay $8 whole dollars a month for so if I can’t find what I’m looking for, I’ll go to the store for it or torrent it. BFD. (I can abbreviate things here right?)
This reminds me of a scene from the Robin Williams movie Moscow on the Hudson in which he plays a Soviet defector trying to get used to life in the U.S. He goes to the supermarket to buy coffee but gets so overwhelmed by all the choices he has – regular or decaf? whole beans or ground? flavored or not? little plastic jars or big metal cans? instant or not? – that he has a panic attack right there in the aisle. “I just vont coffee!”
I have been a member of Netflix for six years now and it is a constant struggle to not have so many titles in my queue that I become overwhelmed. I have almost always tried to keep the titles in chronological order and just watch whatever is on top. I used to have 500 titles in my queue and I could have had twice that without even trying hard. Now I have < 200 but I am trying to stay below 150. And that’s just my disc queue – I have more stuff on my Instant queue. I have been watching TV series, one episode a day, from that. Yup, I’m overloaded. I have watched who knows how many movies from Netflix with no end in sight.
