I keep seeing these reviews for TV shows on NetFlix. They boil down to this: "Why isn't __(my show)__ on instant viewing any more? You B@st@rds! You up my rates then take away my shows" or "Why isn't season ## up on instant view yet? The DVDs came out last week." Um gee, why would NetFlix take a show off instant viewing... Well, Showtime realized what a bargain they were giving, and decided to up their rates for shows like Dexter, to the point NF didn't think it was profitable any more. So, it was SHOWTIME'S FAULT, not NF. Also, there's a general rule that they can't have anything up until the DVDs have been in the stores for 2 months. Oddly, the DVD manufacturers want to get people to buy their product. If you are that impatient, and that interested in the show/movie, you can just go and buy it. And, even after it is available to rent, NF has to wait a proscribed amount of time before they can put it up on instant viewing. Sometimes, it is the source company that slows this down by not making the files available. Seems so simple, but still more and more people complain, like spoiled children. I find it fascinating, sickening, bizarre, and repugnant. And it isn't just one or two, but there are dozens and dozens of these people... They care enough to whine and cry and complain and type up their malice, but not enough to look into the reasons behind the situation that is making them unhappy. Spoiled brat children. The only thing more weird was someone who complained that Green Lantern:Emerald Knights wasn't the live action movie s/he'd been expecting. The review was posted within a week of the theatrical release. Did s/he really expect NetFlix to have available for rent a movie that was only just out in the theater? Did s/he somehow fail to notice that the voice actors did not match the live-actors? And the big label about it being an Animate Feature printed in bold letters across the top of the image somehow didn't register either, I guess.
Welcome to America. [image=http://mergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/walle-e-humans-in-the-spaceship.jpg]
Netflix, at least in Canada is essentially a waste of money. Horrible selection, you must pay a fee for something you could get online faster, and it still does use bandwidth.
A year ago I probably would have agreed with you on the selection but it's a lot better now. It's definitely not the greatest but I'd say it's good enough.
Agreed, while we certainly don't have the library that American Netflix has, its improved a great deal and continues to get better. I find new treasures everyday and have no shortage of things to watch. Actually my problem is the opposite, I never seem to get around to watching the shows I want to before Netflix takes them down. I mean they now have four, count it, FOUR Animated Spider-Man series...FOUR!!!
Netflix is like malt liquor... it's cheap and readily available. Why people expect it to be comparable to premium cable channels, I don't understand. It's just Netflix.
Canadian NetFlix is different than American Netflix? I had no idea. Are Canadians somehow blocked from using American NF? I thought the internet was supposed to tear down silly barriers.
It only arrived in Canada a couple of years ago and is currently streaming only. Zip.ca, which is more like US Netflix, has been around for a lot longer but I've heard very mixed things about their services, especially recently.
Netflix has a lot of great documentaries. I just watched "Grizzly Man" again for the first time in half a decade. Apparently in his death audio Tim Treadwell whined a bit when the bear ate him.
Canadian film distribution is a whole different ball game and American companies have to strike different deals here for their films to be distributed either in theatres or for the home video market. So when companies like Netflix come here, I believe they have to re-nogiate new deals with the companies that hold the distribution rights here.
Some people are just that stupid and/or clueless. I've heard about people who think movie tie-in video games are the actual, honest-to-goodness movie itself! Not to mention the Mensa rejects who thought a cheapie, direct-to-DVD ripoff version of The Princess and the Frog that some small-time animation studio made to fool clueless parents was the real deal, even though The Princess and the Frog was still in theaters at the time. I could do a thread like this, but about stupid Amazon reviews, but I'm not masochistic enough to do that.
Huh. I mean I guess that's obvious when you think about it. I just never realized. Canada's on my short list of countries to move to in a decade or so. Guess there's more to the research than I realized.
The thing is, if it's available for instant, chance are that the DVDs are available too. (there are exceptions, but still, for most of what people are griping about...) Now, when I send back a disk (call it day 1), NF gets it the next day (day 2) and ships the next disk in my cue (still day 2), and the disk arrives in my mailbox the next day (day 3). So, a 3-day total turnaround. So, since I subscribe on the 3-disk plan, I can have a constant supply of disks, except for Sunday, but would then get 2 disks on Tuesday. So, these people are griping about having to wait a day or two to get the episodes. Granted, I live in an area with excellent postal service, with a major NF hub just 2 cities (less than 20 miles) away. But let's say you double the postal time. If the subscriber shipped Monday, the next disk would arrive Friday. Is that really such a big deal? And if they staggered, they'd still get 2-3 disks per week. So, I'm really thinking that this is just a syndrome of whiny spoiled brats who have had everything at their beck and call for too long, with unreal expectations of the world, and no sense of patience.
You wouldn't even notice the difference, its mostly a behind the scenes, industry thing. Otherwise the country is great if you don't mind the cold weather and socialists.
Hey as long as Netflix keeps Buffy on instant I'm cool. I have one more season to go. Because of netflix I've watched movies I otherwise would never have watched. In fact that was my intent when I got NF the second time. Casablanca OldBOY The Trail of Joan of Arc Dollars Trilogy Office Space Arrested Developement The General(buster keaton) Clerks Dazed and Confused 8 1/2 100 Blows(which I didn't like) Lawrence of Arabia(which I hated) Cobra Once Upon A Time In The West(favorite movie now) Taxi Driver Raging Bull Seven American Beauty Flash Gordon and the list goes on and on, all stuff I had never seen until I got netflix. So save for watching 18 bucks leave my account every month, I'm a very happy customer.
I love instant for PBS, British stuff, TV shows (though a lot of my favorites are missing), and documentaries. But the movies selection is awful, so I cover that with Blu-rays and DVD's. And the date the disc is available for rental depends on the studio. I've been renting 2011 films lately and a lot of them are available the day they hit stores. I don't fault Netflix for not being able to negotiate with (probably) greedy studios when it comes to instant content. I do fault them for putting emphasis on instant, despite its major problems, to the point of attempting to kill-- sorry, I mean "split off"-- the disc service.
You have good taste. I do a bit of the same as well, besides the documentaries and TV that I stream. Last night I watched Alphaville by Godard, because it was one of the things in my queue that was scheduled to leave instant today, and I really liked it. I probably would never have gotten to it (or at least it would have taken a very long time) if those circumstances hadn't been the case. It also made me think that maybe I should take the whole "watching stuff quickly because it's scheduled for deletion" as a strategy for some things. Apparently Samurai Champloo, an anime that I've seen a bit of but have been meaning to check out thoroughly for awhile now is scheduled to be taken down in about ten days (thanks Jazib for the link; it will come in handy), so I might want to get to watching that as quickly as I can, It'll have to wait till Sunday because I've got plans, but if I binge I might make it
Meh. Your socialists are more fiscally responsible than ours. Wasn't always the case, but that's true now. The weather I'm ready for.
What ZAP said re: Once Upon a Time in the West. One of the greats IMO. I didn't realize they had so much older stuff on Netflix, like Buster Keaton and Casablanca. Sometimes I wish I had a NF account, and then I look at how much time I already waste and go, "nah."
Practically everything that has been released on DVD in the United States is available from Netflix. Casablanca is not and, as far as I know, never has been on streaming and I think only one Buster Keaton film is.
