Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/07/the-netflix-library-has-half-t.html
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I’m not sure this is true outside the US, where Netflix is an easy way to access new markets without dealing with incumbents broadcast schedules. Several US “top rated” shows (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Designated Survivor) are day and date releases on Netflix.(UK Netflix)
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They even ditched Peppa Pig, season 1, some month ago, here in Germany!
My children are very sad about this.
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Well of course smart parents are using netflix’s childrens channel: commercials on regular tv are fucking toxic.
When advertisers aren’t conflating, dissembling or even outright lying they’re attacking self-esteem to sell their product.
Children don’t need that at all.
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While I own all the dvds of Psych, my daughter and I binge watch the show enough that we loved having it on Netflix and it left on Oct 1. Pissed us off.
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I’m still on the streaming + DVD plan, with access from the latter to tens of thousands of titles, more than Netflix streaming (4000-something) and Amazon Prime (6000-something) combined, which overlap even. Netflix carries a lot on streaming that they don’t carry on DVD, and even more vice versa, so the pairing yields me nearly everything. Delayed gratification is the tradeoff for a bigger library work with.
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this is why i never switched from my dvd only plan. i looked at my what was available from my 165 disc queue and in the streaming version there were 17 available.
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We have parental controls on the cable box, but they can browse Netflix on the Roku whenevs.
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I can attest that for Mexico, even more top-rated TV programming is throttled, often delayed for one season more than the U.S.
The argument that national/cultural differences affect viewing habits is bunk also. The major distribution companies know that the Mexico population fills the seats at the theater for a signifigant amount of U.S. and U.K. product, and sometimes big films are internationally released before they hit U.S. screens.
I also have a particular gripe about the limitation of subtitles by country. It’s quite vexing to want to watch a film that’s spoken in Spanish, and the only subtitle option is Spanish, when it would be most helpful to have a further range of languages.
Do I remember correctly that there are often several language options in the States?
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Yeah, it is getting annoying. I plan to keep using it for now, but eventually I may have watched all I care to watch. Their movie line up is weak as shit.
Here is my idea for media in the future:
A one stop shop - which will be impossible now, as everyone likes to do exclusive agreements - where you get your TV, music, and movies. Then you pay a nominal fee per month.
The providers keeps say 25 percent of it. The rest of it goes proportionally to what ever you watched/listened to. So if you binged watched Star Trek all that week and nothing else, all your money would go to holds those rights and royalties. If you listened/watch 100 things, it would be split up based on the time spend consuming it. This would probably work out to fractions of cent, but the one thing Superman III taught us, that adds up fast. If you listened to just one song that week, all of it goes to that one artist/label.
Companies make money by consumption, and thus so should the artists. The convenience and ease of use would make piracy more trouble than it is worth for all but the poorest.
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At least for physical media, it is pretty common to have either soundtracks or subtitles for English, French, and Spanish in order to sell throughout North America. It’s a bit more limited for streaming media, with many not having any subtitle/soundtrack choices and only having (English) subtitles for undubbed foreign films.
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Sure would make it easier for the censors if all of our entertainment media came through one outlet.’
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Honestly? I still have Netflix streaming, but I use it way less than I used to- it’s clearly been shrinking for some time now, and there’s just less and less there I want to watch.
That said, I’ve found my local libraries have totally decent DVD collections- and they do inter-library loan. So that’s working out pretty well.
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[quote]A one stop shop - which will be impossible now, as everyone likes to do exclusive agreements - where you get your TV, music, and movies. Then you pay a nominal fee per month.
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I agree that this is a good idea that may never be implemented, but for the time being, I wish someone had the wherewithal to collect the highbrow and arthouse film that Netflix and Amazon snub their noses at and offer it up for streaming in one package.
It may not be much of the market share, but I’d bet it would capture enough to stay afloat.
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Where’s the Long Tail of video I was promised? Why isn’t every TV show and movie ever made, made available to the public? Sure, nobody is going to spend $6 to watch a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie,but maybe for a $.50 - $1 they would. Maybe I’m curious about how bad “My Mother the Car” was and want to watch an episode. Maybe I want to show my daughter the great Foghorn Leghorn cartoons I grew up with. There is a market for all this intellectual property - you might not get rich off it, but it will make more money if somebody/anybody rented it that it will sitting in a vault.
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Yep.
Netflix is utterly useless for films, which is 90% of what I watch. But the public library is pretty great for that.
Jr likes a lot of the kids’ stuff on Netflix and, as with Amazon Prime, there’s enough TV to watch for someone who watches as little as I do, when I don’t have a film lined up.
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As we know, Netflix runs across many devices. My near-exclusive usage is on a Roku II streaming device. It’s my recent observation that Netflix is pushing certain content HARD, and by that I mean, on the Roku, you scroll up and down through horizontally scrollable genre bands of suggested content. Certain shows or movies appear repeatedly across these bands, as if they are being heavily promoted, whereas the “Recently Watched” band has disappeared.
If Netflix is trying to piss me off (making me do a text search with a Roku remote to find something I was just watching) they are succeeding. The Netflix on Roku experience is rapidly becoming as lame as the Amazon Video experience.
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Hulu has a lot of the Criterion Collection.
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Bring it down to 1% and you’ll have Netflix Canada.
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Two words, “statutory licensing”. It worked for radio in the US. Bring it on for film and TV distribution.
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