I’ll email them on this. They are available for purchase, but Netflix has no idea when they will be renting them. Huh?.
Uh… you do know that we’ve already have an identical business in Canada, right? Zip.ca has been around since 2004, at least. They based their business model on Netflix.
I’m not endorsing them though. We had terrible experiences with them.
Right, like I said though, I try 3 different players each time - the xbox360, and both of our laptops. I do appreciate Netflix sending a new one out once you mark it as unplayable online, but if this happened in days of yore, you could easily just go to the brick-and-mortar store and get another. Now you have to settle for something else, which is always bothersome. I’m considering downgrading from 2 dvd at a time unlimited to 1 dvd at a time unlimited. I really wonder if Netflix even checks the dvd for playability once you mark them as unplayable. Maybe, like blondebear said, they’re morons using them as coasters.
FWIW, I think the online instant stuff is amazing. The quality is superb, there’s a pretty large collection, it loads quickly and you can skip with ease.
I suspect I wouldn’t want to be on your postal route. I think some post offices are much better than others about handling the mail. I also wouldn’t want to be on a walking route. Riding around in the bottom of a carrier’s bag can’t be good for the DVDs.
I assume Netflix has done the math and figured out that they save more using the paper sleeves in postage than the damaged DVDs cost them.
I’ve been a Netflix member since February 2005. 3 at a time. I pretty much have gotten 3 a week the whole time. That’s better than 2,000 DVD’s. At the bottom of my rental history, there are 3 discs recorded as missing over the entire membership. I think I had maybe 4 in addition that were unplayable, one was cracked.
So I wonder if it’s the geographic location that’s the problem, a combination of how a certain distribution center is run plus the local mail service. I can definitely say that I have had far fewer unplayable problems since I bought my current upscaling Denon DVD player a couple years ago, but they were still rare before that.
In one DVD, the knucklehead who had it before me apparently didn’t understand how to report an unplayable disc, and when I took it out of the sleeve a little piece of torn notebook paper fell out, stating the disc wouldn’t play. Duh. But it DID play on my Denon!
I have about 325 movies between the 2 queues right now. Yes, I’m a dork.
After responding early and then reading comments, I feel compelled to point out that things can annoy you about Netflix while other things about Netflix are good or great. It is not all or nothing.
To me, with slight hearing loss, the instant viewing is almost worthless until they add that ability to activate captioning. Fro the same reason, I hate to be in a theater with other people because of background talking. It is not an issue of being “cheap” it is a matter of wanting to understand the dialog.
It is annoying to have to wait an additional week to see a movie I really want to see. However, I can always get the disc at my local Blockbuster (until they go out of business).
You need to crank up your volume to 11, Dude. 
Seriously, if you are relying on the typical computer speakers, which are crap-junk, try using headphones, or better yet, connecting to a modest hi-fi system with or without headphones. Many people don’t realize that computer sound is very high fidelity because all they hear is the ridiculous speakers that come with the computer.
I have that on my list, too, and it was available when I put it on. I think they had one copy and somebody didn’t send it back.
There was another one that went from my active queue to my saved list, also old, but not that old. Breaking the Waves. What’s up with that? And The Fabulous Baker Brothers went from short delay to long delay to saved, and then back to long delay, and I’m convinced the only reason I ever got it was, I took everything else off my list, temporarily, so it was that one or nothing.
My theory is that Netflix has an algorithm that takes the number of copies and the number of people with the item in their queue and categorizes the item into the “now”, “short wait” and “long wait”. On any given day, if a copy comes in, someone is going to get it mailed despite the “long wait”.
Of course, if someone can verify that different people have a different status for a film at the same time, that would kill my theory.
The one thing I hate about Netflix is that there isn’t some automated flashing sign that appears over my door each morning I need to take my disc to the post office. I HATE getting to work and realizing I have a viewed movie sitting in the player.
I skipped through, sorry if this was mentioned already:
The Math Argument against Netflix: It takes about 3 days for them to get your order shipped to you. Let’s say you don’t watch it and immediately send it back. It takes three days to get it back to them, and the cycle starts anew. Therefore, for whatever monthly membership you have, you can only get 1 DVD every 6 days or 5/month.
The Time Argument: related to the above, it takes 3 days to get the movie you want, which is three days longer than going to the video store.
You are right, but…In between, you can watch on demand.
My only issue is, as Justin alluded to above, it seems like everyone rubs their grubby hands all over the DVD. is it really so hard to hold it by the edges! Get your paws off the damn DVD or I will beat you to death with it, do you understand that???
I suppose that depends on where you live. In the DC metro area there are at least three Netflix distro centers.
If they get a disc from me on Monday, I get the replacement on Tuesday. If I watch it an mail it back on wednesday they get it on Thursday mail something back. I get that on Friday and mail it back on Saturday. They receive it on Monday and the cycle starts again.
That gets me two discs per week for each one in my membership. Of course if I don’t watch immediately, the count drops but that is not Netflix’s fault.
Aside from the fact that I get my disks next-day (i.e. 2-3 day turnaround from when I send to when I’ve got another one), you do realize that they overlap, right? If you have the “standard” 4-disk/month thing, you can get 20 per month via your numbers. That’s really the only reason to HAVE the multiple disk membership these days.
No actually. I’ve never heard of Zip.ca.
Missed the edit window.
I have another question about Instant Watch. When my kids want to download something from Limewire, for example, it can take hours, and hours. This is with a high-speed connection, but I am not sure of the specifics. So, how can you instantly watch a movie in real time?
We got it recently after canceling years ago for poor turnover and too many unusable DVDS (and we have a perfectly fine DVD player that plays our kid’s scratchy movies). We got it almost exclusively this time for instant view, but it’s been really disappointing. We just don’t find a lot we enjoy and it’s rare for them to have a decent newer movie. They’re good for kid’s shows though, and some interesting documentaries, so we keep it.
I don’t watch the streaming stuff too much, but I find the Netflix DVD service to be very effective. With a three-at-a-time sub (and a distribution center in the same city as the postal hub), I find I can have a new movie pretty much any time I want one if I just scrupulously mail back watched discs the very next morning.
If the USPS stops working Saturdays, this will be hurt a little.
I think Sherlock Holmes (2009) was the last one I saw promptly upon its becoming available, just a couple months after it had been in theaters here. I don’t need it to be faster than that. Anyway, the real value of Netflix is in the massive back catalog.
When you start to play something via Netflix instant viewing, the messages on the screen indicate that it is testing the connection speed and adjusting the quality appropriately.
I was watching a movie this past weekend and about halfway thru it stopped for about 10 seconds and a message displayed indicating that it was waiting for downloads. It buffers enough that variations in the connection usually aren’t a problem. Obviously the data speed to your home is a big factor.
I usually watch on the Wii, but even on the PC it only takes a few seconds. I find on the PC it has to buffer more and hesitates more, whereas on the Wii I never notice any buffering difficulties and it runs much smoother.