Certainly not mad enough to put it into the Pit, but the complaint I hear about Netflix all the time is “It takes too long to get movies/it delays new movies.”
I don’t understand this at all. Blockbuster and Hollywood didn’t have unlimited stocks of the new movies, either. That was just the way it was!
There might be a lot of stuff to complain about Netflix (though I have not found much) but that seems like a reason just to be stubborn. You never got new movies at the instant you wanted to watch them because everyone wants those new movies at once.
Yes? Or am I just crazy? I know, the possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
The admittedly subtle difference is that Blockbuster and Hollywood had the movies in their distribution the day it was released but they might all be with customers. Netflix has negotiated with some studios to not rent their material until it has been on sale for four weeks.
My queue is about 60 movies deep. I also don’t understand that argument. What’s the point of having a continually replenishing source of movies in your mailbox if you don’t have a big list of movies you want to see? Yeah - I don’t have immediate access to the latest DVD that came out. It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to hit it on my queue for another 3-4 months!
I don’t get that complaint either. If you are that desperate to see it, you should have seen it in the theater. So it boils down to people being cheap and liking to bitch about stuff.
134? Pikers - last time I looked, I had over 250 movies in my Netflix queue Of course, this does include a number of season sets of TV shows that I’ve missed over the years. I’m on the two-at-a-time plan, and don’t cycle through them nearly as fast as I should, which is one of the reasons there are so many.
I also have ten or so movies that are listed as “unavailable”, some of which were original available but later downgraded for some reason I was never told.
My complaint about Netflix has to do with the “saved dvds” list. They are movies not yet available. For example, I have Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! on that list. It is a Russ Meyer movie from the 1960s. Yes, the 1960s. From my Que: ** Availability date unknown** WTF?
I just checked. It’s actually 175. But yes, I do have a show on it (Remington Steele, I admit rather shamefacedly).
I have the one-at-a-time, unlimited plan, Leaffan. This means I get one movie mailed to my home, but as soon as I finish it and return it I get a new one - the next one on my queue. If they don’t have that one in stock, the following one gets mailed, and as soon as the other is available, it is also mailed, even if I have one at home already. Then I just send both back when I am ready.
Three times in all of the time I’ve been a member they’ve made a mistake - wrong disk, or the disk got lost, or whatever. Twice they gave me a 10% discount without being asked on the next payment after these mistakes.
They have a ton of movies, obscure sci-fi and comedy which I could never find from Blockbuster. And I watch instantly a lot, too. I just watched the Kevin Costner Robin Hood, and then Robin Hood: Men in Tights! back to back on Instant watch. I also am all the way to Season 9 on X-Files on Instant watch.
There is so much to do with Netflix that I kind of feel like just ignoring the thing because they don’t have the latest movies instantly is missing out on a big deal…but then I am firmly of the belief that this is where movies are going, anyway - to instant streaming. I’ve got no interest in Blu-ray because I think it’s just the last gasp of a soon to be dying industry. Soon, everything we have will just be kept on massive hard drives, or better yet, we’ll pay for a service like Netflix and just ‘rent/borrow’ movies whenever we want to watch.
Uh. Now that you mention it I have no idea if there is a difference or anything. On my computer, I have to install Silverlight, and that makes it play. On the Wii, they sent me a disk.
No, you just don’t get that some people’s expectations have changed.
Back when I was a child and dinosaurs roamed the earth, if you missed a movie in the theater you had to wait months or even years for network TV to air the film before you were able to watch it. No one got particularly bent out of shape over this, because that was just the way the world was.
Then cable TV came, and with it channels like HBO. A newish movie would show up on HBO way before the networks ever aired it, and with no commercials, to boot. Progress!
Then came the days of VCRs, and later DVD players, and you only had to wait a few weeks for the film to come out on VHS or DVD, and maybe a day or two more for a copy to be available at your rental store, before you could watch it at home. More progress!
Now with BitTorrents, Hulu.com, YouTube, and Netflix, people have become accustomed to getting new stuff almost immediately. For the folks who have to see The Latest Big Thing ASAP, even having to wait a day or two for the DVD to arrive in the mail is tough. Having to wait a month for Netflix to even get the DVD in stock is nigh-unbearable to them, hence their complaints. The expectations of just how soon a movie should be available to view at home after it leaves the theater have changed, just as they had in prior decades following other technological advances.
Now if you’re someone like me (whose Netfix queue already has about 70 movies in it), that short wait is no big deal. I’ll just watch something else until the new film is in stock. But if you’re a person who is mostly interested in seeing the newest big Hollywood blockbusters, I can see how that short delay would be frustrating.
Negotiating for the rights to the movie, I’d imagine. I have over 600 titles in my instant watch queue but I keep my DVD queue to about 10-12 titles. I watch far more instant content than actual DVD’s…in fact I had Close Encounters Special Edition for a month and forgot all about it…I just mailed it in and I didn’t even watch it!
The complaint I so often see about Netflix is its built-in player. I don’t know what the complaining is all about…works great for me and there’s even some HD content as well.
There is a difference. There are two separate queues, one for DVD’s by mail and one for instant watching (streaming), which you can do over any decent PC from anywhere with your login, or on your Wii, PS3, Xbox.
A few weeks? I do not remember that at all. I remember it being sometimes six months before a movie came out on DVD. And I paid attention, because I see less than half a dozen movies in the theatre in any given year. Really? A few weeks??!
Hum, unless they’ve changed something I’ve never had them ship me a movie that had a wait time once it became available after already shipping the next thing on my list. That’s a nice perk though!
No, that was not the question. I am aware of the two different queues. What leaffan asked is, is instant watch the same as streaming? And that I have no idea. But both are different then DVDs by mail.
SmellMyWort, they do it for me regularly - it’s the only way I ever have two movies at home at once.
I think there’s also a bit of foot-stomping and “It’s just not fair! People can buy it August 3, but I have to wait until September 3 to get it from Netflix!”
At this time, I’d like to take a moment to point out that your local library likely owns at least one copy of all the latest releases. And it’s free!
My only Netflix complaint/WTF? is how a movie can be statused “very long wait” for over 9 months. I mean, how many people can be in line to watch the last disc of Route 66 Season 3?