We have Netflix, mainly for the grandkids. I thought I’d rewatch a movie I hadn’t seen in a while. I searched for:
Prince of the City
Butch Cassidy
Last of the Mohicans
Little Big Man
And none were available. WTF?
Uh, OK? Was it your expectation that Netflix has streaming licenses for every movie ever made?
No, but these are mostly well-known mass-market releases. Just surprised. And disappointed.
If you have Amazon Prime, Little Big Man is available to stream for free. (If you’re not a member, you can sign up for a free trial and watch Prime Videos free for a month)
Thanks. I had Prime for a while, wasn’t worth it for me. I seem to remember periodic warnings online that certain movies would no longer be on Netflix. Whatever. As long as I have headphones, I’ll keep it for the grandkids’ insipid pre-teen fare.
I’ve found that Netflix streaming has a laughable bad classic movie selection. Their disc service is better at this, but of course is a separate fee. Amazon’s streaming classic movie selection is better, but is also filled with a lot of obscure B movies, with very sub-par recordings.
As a Netflix streaming example - They currently have 1 John Wayne, no Errol Flynn, 1 Humphrey Bogart, 3 Katharine Hepburn and zero Marilyn Monroe movies available.
I love old movies. If TCM ever offers a stand alone movie streaming service, Netflix is SO out of here. If Amazon ever improves their interface to match the utility of Netflix, that would also probably lead to Netflix being booted.
That’s why you buy DVDs/Blu-Rays. What streaming services giveth, streaming services can taketh away.
One of the reasons why Netflix started producing its own content is that they foresaw this happening. Once other services entered the medium, there was going to be a fight over content and it makes more sense for them to do original series and movies than have to outbid other content providers for each film.
There’s no reason why they have the have every film available. It was their business model when they were renting CDs, but they could just buy the CD and it didn’t matter if someone else was renting them.
Also, the rights for classic films can be complicated. It took years for Rear Window to get a DVD release, and I’d bet renegotiating streaming rights can be even more complicated.
All of those are available on the DVD side, sometimes multiple versions. The Last of the Mohicans, for example, is available in different remakes, going back to the 1920s.
Whenever I do Netflix for a short while I am astonished with the poor selection of movies that I’m interested in.
Want a Truffaut? 1 of his better ones if you’re lucky. A Bardot film? Forget it completely.
Recent-ish quality indie movies: pretty much forget it.
And on and on.
If you want to watch the usual 2+ year old popcorn crap, they got you covered.
They are basically becoming a TV show content provider. Which makes their fee way too high.
Once Netflix’s streaming service took off, the studios increased their licensing fees nearly thirtyfold ($180m in 2010 to $5b today). Also, various companies started holding their better movies back for their own streaming services such as Universal films for Xfinity’s services. So it’s harder for Netflix to get streaming licenses for popular films and much more expensive when they find studios willing to license them. This has been a primary factor in Netflix’s push to become a content producer rather than just a distribution channel – they get unique programing that they own forever for less than the costs of licensing over time.
Netflix is pretty disappointing if you go looking for a particular movie/show. Just start browsing and you’ll find things to watch though. I probably spend as much time browsing as watching though.
Instantwatcher is a good site to search Netflix titles. It can also do Amazon, but to specify Prime only you have to check a few boxes.