I pretty much can’t stand most network TV so I try to find shows and movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime. The problem is I can spend a lot of time browsing instead of watching and I often find myself watching a few minutes into a show to decide I don’t like it enough to finish it.
Does anyone ever watch recommendations based on movies that you have watched and liked and find that they fit your preferences?
I watched Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil on Netflix’s recommendation and enjoyed it. Jiro Dreams of Sushi, too, IIRC.
It’s been a bit, but I have. Mostly they recommend things I’ve already viewed elsewhere, but on the occasions when I’ve gone with their picks, I’ve enjoyed them.
Their criteria for recommendation doesn’t include “except that it sucks.”
“Because you liked X, you’d like Y, except that it sucks.”
I don’t watch recommendations. I really wish Netflix would stop giving them to me. My guests who notice them as I’m perusing Netflix think I have bizarre and/or overly sexual tastes.
I do occasionally watch NetFlix’s recommendations, but I have to understand why they recommended it. Their recommendations don’t always hinge on things that matter. For example, it’s clear that many recommendations are based on an actor/director and I almost never choose my watching based on names. Recommendations based on subject matter might be better - like recommending one sci-fi because I watched a different sci-fi. Other times, I think NetFlix is just pimping things out because I can’t figure out why they would recommend something.
Suggested star ratings are the same way. The horror genre is full of so many bad movies that NetFlix pretty much thinks I don’t like horror. I can’t seem to convince it that low-budget slashers are out and well-produced supernaturals are in. Nope. If I hated Zombeavers, I must also have hated Insidious, right?
I’ve been a long time Netflix user, and their recommendations used to be great. I’d watch tons of things from their recommendations. At some point it seems to have gotten worse, though I’m not exactly sure at what point.
I’ll sometimes watch something from the Trending Now list, or Just Released, but rarely from the Top Picks for You list. If I’m not sure what I want to watch and nothing in my queue looks like something I want to watch at the moment, I’ll google something like “best on Netflix”, and there are several websites that have lists of what’s best on Netflix at the moment, and keep it updated.
For me at least the difference was when I went from disc service to streaming service. With the disc service you had access to rate almost every movie ever made, and have it go through their robust algorithm to pick more movies for you - from the pool of almost every movie ever made.
Now with the streaming service you can’t tell them that you liked Ocean’s 11 and Muppet Treasure Island and have them come up with a new movie for you, because they don’t exist in streaming world. You can now, at least, get recommendations for movies related to Ocean’s 11, and movies related to Muppet Treasure Island. But they are not stored as “likes” anywhere in your account to be added to your personal algorithm.
Anyway - limited input and limited multipliers makes for bad results for streamers.
I don’t usually click on recommendations because they only recommend stuff I’ve already seen.
Netflix recommendations have been pretty useless. They seem to recommend stuff they are pushing for some reason. What gets me is that I’ve watched Seasons 1 - 7 of a show, it is beyond them to recommend Season 8 when it comes out.
I get a little notification on the Web-based streaming service that tells me when a new season of something I’ve watched a lot of has come out.
This particular show isn’t on streaming, so it doesn’t work for DVDs,
I’ve done Netflix from time to time. Its suggestion system is unbelievably bad. Wrong genres and all sorts of stupidity. If they ever got something right, it was a fluke. I wanted desperately to block it entirely but that isn’t their thing.
Amazon Prime does a much better job. But still it keeps recommending the same ones over and over and over.
Look, if I passed on it a couple times, stop showing it to me.
It’s pretty odd about Amazon. Their regular similar product suggestions are frequently idiotic.
Are you saying you don’t? 
Of course I watch them. That’s the point. Doesn’t mean I’ll always like them, but generally there’s a better chance I’ll like something in that list than something picked at random.
I’ve done Netflix since 2008. Recommendations got better as I rated more movies I had seen up to about 400 ratings, the it plateaued. The last couple of years they have been completely nonsensical and of no value to me.
I stream a lot of stuff and so have rated quite a bit both streamed and DVD since 2005. Even with whatever change happened in algorithm when the two separated, it seems to still work for me. If it thinks I’ll like it, I usually do. And especially if it says I won’t like it - I still give those a try once in a while just in case, when the description sounds good to me - I generally don’t like it. Of course there are always exceptions, but so far the majority of the time it’s right. It still gives me selections first in my preferred genres, too.
There should be an option for it to give you anti-recommendations. Based on your viewing history, here is the movie you’re LEAST likely to enjoy. I would probably watch that out of curiosity.
Now that’s a great idea!
However I already have a least likely to enjoy selector - my wife.
That does bring up another variable. Having your SO’s taste in the mix could really blow even a good system out of the water.
Fortunately my wife watches most of the “reality TV” nonsense and doesn’t Netflix much.
They sort of do that already with the predictive ratings (i.e., the ratings you see aren’t the average rating by users but what they think you’ll rate that particular item). Unfortunately they tend to be pretty accurate for me, so if I watch something even though it’s predicting ~1 star, I am rarely pleasantly surprised.
That’s why they have the option of multiple profiles. If you have more than one person in the household you should definitely be using that.
We do. In fact we’re on the two disk plan. But the stuff that is on her profile is the stuff farthest from what I want to watch. (And vice versa.)