Does Netflix care about movies?

Yeah, I use a Chromecast to stream to my T.V.
I rented something on Amazon once and I used the “Cast Screen” feature that Chromecast even warns you is going to suck. The warning was correct. It look horrible and the audio periodically cut out.

(The Cast Screen feature just throws whatever is on your tablet/phone/laptop up onto the T.V., it still plays on your tablet/whatever and doesn’t actually load onto the Chromecast stick)

And it’s my understanding that Amazon Fire is only good for streaming from Amazon, is that correct? No Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc.?

Looking at Wiki, it seems that the Roku (which I’ve considered moving onto) is compatible with Amazon as well as Netflix and pretty much everything else.

We just got Prime primarily for streaming video and we discovered the same thing :frowning:

We also thought about getting Netflix but we’ve both heard too many mixed reviews about it. We’re not big TV series watchers to begin with, and what we do watch is easily available on broadcast TV. Except for Doctor Who, of course.

Here in Holland when you sign up for Netflix you get a month for free and you can cancel before the start of a new month. I assume it works the same way elsewhere, so why not give it a try?

Netflix is dropping Dr Who Feb 1 :frowning:

"And it’s my understanding that Amazon Fire is only good for streaming from Amazon, is that correct? No Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc.?"

I have a Fire stick and the other apps have worked just fine.

Ehh… we’ll see. The BBC contract runs out at the end of the month, but the same thing happened last year and they renewed it.

I use instant watcher to find shows before I open prime or netflix.

http://instantwatcher.com/

It’s just ok, better than the Prime search.

I was recently at someone’s house watching a 20 year old vhs tape someone recorded of a pbs special and wondered about this. You really can’t do that anymore. You can have a Dvr, but you’d probably need to swap out the hard drives and keep one in storage for classic films. The ability to record a show and keep it in storage for 20 years seem like a lost technology.

You can always rent films on amazon, but they usually cost 2-3x more than I am used to paying at a video store. Video store generally charged $2, so spending $6 on a digital rental is not appealing. For $6 you can usually buy a used dvd of a movie on amazon. Compare heck, I think family video only charges $1 for older films, and they have more overhead than a streaming service that would charge far more for the same film.

Getting older movies affordably and recording broadcast TV shows for long term storage have both been lost for many people.

I’m just going by the fact that when I put on an episode, it is accompanied by text saying something like “This program is available until Feb 1” I don’t think I’ve seen that on any other show

On my Roku, from the main Roku search menu, if i search for niro, it finds Robert De Niro and shows a large number of movies. Most have to be rented from places like Amazon or VUDU, but it does show some available on Netflix (and they are, I checked).

However, if I go directly into Netflix and use their search menu, searching on niro, de niro, deniro, robert de niro, or robert deniro returns nothing. Their search tool is labeled “Search by Title” which I guess explains this, but it’s stupid that you can’t search by actor, director, or whatever.

It’s the other way around. Amazon would gladly provide Chromecast support, but Google demands a large cut from every in-app purchase. So if you rented something from Amazon, Google would get a hefty cut for doing basically nothing. Amazon wants to bypass Google’s pay system and run it via their own pay system. Google said no.

This is all Google’s (or is it “Alphabet’s”?) fault.

Note that there are “unofficial” apps for getting around this mess the other direction. You can install an app for do Chromecast-ing stuff on an Amazon FireTV devices. Not sure if there’s a way to go the other direction.

Which version of Roku do you have? I have 3.0 and in Netflix when I do a search…the movies are to the right of the text box and a list of actors appears below the text box. If you click the down arrow and select the name, it displays the movies they are in.

Are there movies that are now unavailable to purchase, either on a physical medium like a DVD or via download?

With music, streaming is big nowadays, but you can still buy and save songs/albums if you want them.

It’s a Roku 1. And the only thing below the text box (I’m assuming that you mean the text entry box) is the grid of letters used for entering the text, and all the prompts say things like “Search Titles” or “Search TV or Movie Titles”.

It’s a pain. I can use the main Roku search to search for actors or directors, but then I have to click on each individual result to see if it’s on Netflix or not.

That has nothing to do with Prime video though. That’s wholly Amazon’s refusal to allow the Chromecast API on its app.

And in addition, Google’s policies regarding in app purchases only applies to the Play Store. It has nothing to do with the Chromecast API. So, Amazon could accept the Chromecast API for its app that it distributes outside the Play Store, and the amounts it gets from rentals would be fully Amazon’s.

So… it’s all Amazon’s fault in the end.

yeah :(:(:frowning:
that does suck

:(:(:frowning:

thanks for the warning
i need to do some bing watching…

Not Doctor Who! It was one of the shows that I thought “Movies aren’t so great, but at least there is Dr. Who”. Though I think the local PBS station showed Season 8 not too long after Netflix.

Brian

They say that Netflix “doesn’t have XYZ” because they aren’t paying double the price to get discs shipped to them via pony express they want to just push a button and watch. This is the lazy generation, we’re almost all guilty to some degree.

Incorrect. I have Hulu, YouTube and Netflix installed on my Fire. Haven’t checked to see if there’s an HBO Go app, but I would be surprised if there wasn’t.