Netflix tried to spin off DVDs a few years ago and users had a fit, now they have created a worse with the reformatting and I do not see a hint of protest. Have we old users with our pc platforms no recourse?
Netflix tried to spin off DVDs a few years ago and users had a fit, now they've a worse mess and ...
What did they change?
Large format change to the website. As with anything that changes anywhere, there is a vocal population that will always decry even the slightest change. Supermarket moves garbanzos from aisle 6 to aisle 9? Start a petition and organize a protest. I suspect that the majority of users just adapt.
Garbanzos are now in aisle 9??? Fuck me!
mmm
The new format on Netflix is far superior. I can’t imagine what one would have to complain about.
FTR: Amazon instant streaming has changed their player. I’m less thrilled about this change. But I still think it’s a better design than the old one. (Even though it took me a minute to get used to the idea that the full screen button is at the top right of the screen instead of the bottom.)
I just checked out the site, and while there are some differences in appearance I don’t see much change in functionality. Could you explain exactly what you think the problem is?
There was an article about Netflix recently in the New York Times. The streaming service has about 65 million customers in more than fifty countries, but it’s only breaking even, more or less. They’re pouring money into streaming rights, original productions and expanding to new countries (and it must cost a fortune for all of that network traffic). Meanwhile the DVD-by-mail service has about 5.3 million customers (down from a peak of 20 million customers) and is making profits in the hundreds of millions each year. It helps that they’ve developed a machine to largely automate processing returned DVDs. They’ve also reduced the number of distribution centers from 50 to 33. The two sides of the business are operated completely separately, though.
I haven’t noticed any major changes… there’s always little tweaks here and there but I have no idea what the OP is going on about.
Dude, website is fine. If anything, it’s better than it used to be.
Netflix is a textbook example of how to adapt to changing times. They may have stumbled here and there, but they come back stronger. They are far from being in a “worse mess”.
I’m kicking myself for not buying the stock when they announced the stupid plan to spin off the DVD business and the stock tanked. The stock has since regained all of the losses and gone on to grow five or tenfold.
One minor gripe…it does take me one more click to find out if a foreign film or series has an English language dub. I never just watch TV, so subtitles are useless for me. Who do I burn in effigy for this? Is it Reed himself, or is one of his many minions responsible for this?
Ah hell, burn 'em all!
Are we talking some regional variation to the site? In the United States (California) and I just checked and the website and player seem to be exactly the same as they have been for a while now.
I’m not sure what the OP is on about either. I access only through the website via PC only. There was a format change, what, over a month ago maybe? So it’s a little different, but not by much or in such a foreign way that it’s not obvious and easy to adapt. I like it better. I wonder if the change was to the main website only, and people who access it via their TV or other player haven’t seen it.
My only gripe was that I went to watch a movie this weekend and got a “Your selection will begin in a moment” while they showed me a commercial for one of their original productions. I didn’t think they showed ads.
Perhaps I am overlooking something. The old feature that I used often was the sorting of lists. Example I could once browse>classic>drama>sort by date and get a list that was easy to use. Now I get rows and rows of large thumbnails(?) and it more difficult to locate the date.
The features boasted about in the 2013 announcement like shiny black, the sort of thing “” ‘’ Described in a less-than-modest promotional video as offering “a brand-new TV viewing experience… visually rich, intuitive, and captivating,” it certainly makes the current layout look comparatively clunky""’ , is just something we learn to ignore.
It may be my problem but on some scattered titles Netflix is showing me a grey rectangle labeled ‘‘play’’ I cannot go to ‘’+list’'.Netflix is showing me a grey rectangle
[Ideally one might want to search, like we could get on the now defunct Greencine, for example:Searching on: AND MPAA rating:Any AND genre:3 AND era:1960s AND language audio track:Any AND subtitle language:Any AND media type:all. ] Netflix was never that good. Ironically this search still works even thought the site went down in February.
Netflix did what virtually everybody else is doing–redesigning their web site to be more mobile-friendly. Cleaner layout, no tiny details that you can’t read on a phone, easy to tap with your fingertip, scroll to see new content instead of loading another page, etc.
While I’m not a fan of the website redesign, that’s hardly comparable to the proposal to split DVD and streaming into two entirely separate companies and websites. One of them in a minor inconvenience. The other destroys the only value NetFlix has for me over its competitors.
I’m on the three-DVDs-at-a-time plan and each week I’d get three email messages that each of the three discs had been received, and then three email messages that three new discs were being sent out. Apparently there was a cost to sending out six email messages, because now they’ve consolidated this information into one message that summarizes what they’ve received and what they’re sending.
Yep. I don’t love what they’ve done to the website, but it’s not nearly as big a deal as their other plans were.