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Comment by rconti | Hacker News Reader

Netflix's catalog(ue) is a shadow of its former self. I'm a Netflix subscriber, and can pretty much guarantee that any movie I attempt to watch will NOT be available on Netflix streaming.

I have somewhat better luck with the previous episodes of American TV shows.

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I don't approach Netflix as "I want to see this movie so I go here," so much as "I want to watch something, so I'll pick from here." I'm never lacking a choice to watch, even with fairly specific criteria in mind.

If I know exactly what I want to watch (and don't get lucky enough to find it on Amazon/Netflix/Hulu) I pay for PPV. I don't expect magic for <$10/mo, especially when the going rate for a one-off viewing is nearly half that.

Yeah. My main beef with Netflix is that I'd like to just sort content based on the 5-star rating. I'll rarely want to watch something that is less than a 2.0. And I'll consider just about anything that is 4.5 and above.

Have you seen http://instantwatcher.com/

Same here. I also want Steam to let me see the average reviews of games that it shows me on the main screen. I only buy games that are "Mostly Positive" and above, and it's very grating to have to click every title to see that information.

At least they now let you view movies by basic category in the embedded clients, as opposed to whichever dynamic lists they decided to promote that day. Baby steps, I guess.

I'm with you that I'd like to sort/filter by rating, though I also recognize that tends to cause a snowball effect where you're either popular early or never watched at all.

My previous flatrate streaming plan had exactly that and just browsing the far end of "order by rating" was more interesting than watching the moderately dated mainstream movies that scored highest. "Might" be a matter of taste i guess ;)

But you can filter Netflix content by rating, at least on desktop. Just select a genre from the top left, and then select "HIGHEST RATED" from the "Sort by" dropdown on the right.

Or is that not what you are looking for?

I can indeed get more information from the website. I just want more of that from the Android client, which is where I spend most of my time. I'd also like to read the text reviews sometimes, so it would be nice to at least have a website link from inside the app, even if they don't want to put that directly in the Android client.

I do have a Windows laptop, but I rarely consume content on that these days. Mostly I am watching from my tablet, sometimes from my phone, and just very occasionally from my Blueray player (because the UI is terrible, slow, and buggy).

So many apps seem to lack the basic: Filter by x and Sort by x for all of the obvious criteria. What bastardized yearning for simplicity has led to removing such a simple clear piece of functionality? It's familiar, doesn't add excessive clutter and scales well between power-users and lesser mortals. Why is it increasingly rare?

Only guess I have for Netflix specifically is the fact that they have built clients for every device under the sun. This was and still is part of their M.O. It is just time consuming and difficult to write a heavier feature set in to all of your clients when theyre on every smart tv ever, Xbox, probably toasters, God knows what else

Content filters are ridiculously easy to implement though. As long as you already have the browsing view, all you need to add is a picker that changes whatever DB query you are using to select the data.

Like in SQL all you would need to do is change this:

  SELECT * FROM movies

to this:

  SELECT * FROM movies ORDER BY rating ASC

When I built a web app for film management, that was by far the easiest thing to implement.

> I pay for PPV

If only this were an option. I'd gladly pay a few bucks to stream a movie. But outside of the US and Canada I don't think PPV even exists at all.

Amazon prime isnt available in my country. I dont know of any other online PPV sites (anyone?)

If I can't stream it from one of these netflix-type sites (and as everyone else has pointed out, the selection is crap) my only options are drive to a DVD rental shop or visit thepiratebay.

And they wonder why piracy is rampant.

Google Play? I've successfully watched a couple of relatively recent films from the UK.

iTunes?

On iTunes you can buy movies. As in, to watch multiple times whenever you want. For instance, for NZ$18.99 I can buy Me, Earl and the Dying Girl.

That's ludicrously expensive if you just want to watch it once.

> I'm never lacking a choice to watch, even with fairly specific criteria in mind.

Do you mean that you get that content on Netflix? Or where do you watch?

At this point I'm fairly certain that I won't be able to find any movie from the list of things I'm interested in on Netflix. On Amazon maybe a few, for separate payment, which would be fine but half of their films don't offer the original audio track and instead force my local language. I absolutely don't want to see a dubbed version though. So, all things considered I think it's a mess if you have specific things to watch in mind.

I mean it's pretty rare I wander into Netflix with the intention of spending time on watching something (not a specific show/movie) and don't find anything I want to watch.

I agree that if you have something specific in mind and don't already know it's on Netflix, you more likely than not won't find it. But I knew that going in, and never expected that to be the case in the first place.

You sure used to be able to go there for specific movies. I understand why it's not the case anymore, but I miss what it was.

I honestly don't remember a time when that was true, and I'm pretty sure I joined the service sometime near rollout.

They've had a handful of times where bigger-name movies burst in based on some deal or the other (Starz being the original big one, but there've been others since) but by and large Netflix has always been indie + back catalog as far as I've experienced it in the US.

I would agree. I've been on since day 1 of streaming and I'm skeptical the movie catalog has gotten significantly better or worse. Movies come and go, but overall my queue has consistently had hundreds of unwatched movies in it at any given time.

Are you comparing the DVD service to streaming? It's unfortunately apples and oranges; the licensing is completely different for DVD and streaming, and even different between unlimited streaming like Netflix vs. pay-per-view streaming you can get from multiple other sources.

No, I never had streaming. Maybe it's my shifting preferences, but I remember being able to say "I'll just wait for it to come out on netflix" for the majority of things I was interested in. Not everything, but still more often than not.

The DVD service is still that way. That's why I still keep up my DVD subscription. They have everything, in the way the streaming service can only dream of. You have to be patient, but most of the movies I saw in 2015 were at home from the Netflix DVD service.

Oh, OK. I (and almost everyone else here) was talking in terms of streaming only. As mentioned elsewhere, the DVD service still works like it always did, and has a wide range of movies.

Derp. I meant to say I never had the DVD service. I only ever had streaming! That screwed the entire meaning of my response and it's too late to edit! oops :-\

Right, I agree. I was referring to the parent mentioning "the Netflix you all talk about". That Netflix is changing every day.

I used to use Netflix to ship me DVDs, then I protested the Qwikster move by switching to streaming-only, which was great for movies (for awhile) but has been shifting to TV content.

To be honest, I don't use Netflix much, but the value I get is still worth the $8/mo. Some months I don't use it at all, other months I binge-watch The Man in the High Castle.

When I want to watch a movie, I first hit Netflix (hey, free streaming!) to search for it... then I check Amazon Prime on my Fire Stick, because some titles are free. If it's available for rental, I'll pay the $4. If available for purchase only (or unavailable), then I'll hop over to the iTunes store on the AppleTV and hope it's available for rental.

Or I just go to canistream.it, which was about my only original invention ever, until I found out someone had already done it.

That site looked almost useful, until i found it doesn't allow me to search i.e. Netflix/Amazon Germany, as opposed to Netflix/Amazon USA.

Ironically, not useful in Italy!

It doesn't really work for Amazon US either (well, works for DVD/BD only)

The man in the high castle? With Netflix? Isn't that an Amazon Prime series??

canistream.it is you? Or you mean you reimplemented it?

I do use that site quite a bit. It's very useful.

No, I didn't bother since someone else did it first :)

canistream.it doesn't work for amazon and is missing movies :(

This guy had some good observations on that netflix effect http://www.vox.com/2015/11/20/9757186/netflix-video-rental-s...

It's really expensive when you approach it like this.

Well, they've certainly pivoted their focus from movies to TV shows. But most of their "good" movies were part of the Starz license, and that expired years ago now.

My theory is we, as subscribers, have hit rock bottom or close to rock bottom in terms of content on Netflix that is not produced by Netflix. This is okay with me. I like Netflix content. But I think Netflix original content is a stick that is useful. It proves Netflix itself can survive without licensing content, that globally available content is useful (see all the people trying to use VPNs to get content available in some markets), and that Netflix original content may become high quality enough that it competes with other networks. So my theory is Netflix original content is useful both in the short term to weather the content draught (due to high licensing costs) and the long term (as outlined earlier).

My fingers are crossed that this gamble is fruitful in bringing the cost to license content back down again to levels that are sustainable for Netflix. I also wonder if we'll ever see Netflix license Netflix original content to another network.

This is all conjecture purely as an enthusiast of Netflix.

It's not included for free on prime, but you can get House of Cards and some other Netflix produced shows on Amazon video if you're willing to pay for it.

I haven't been a subscriber for years, and this was the main reason I left. But I remember the disc catalogue was still strong. Is that still the case? (I'm in the US.)

I'm a disc subscriber and I think there's only been one movie in the last couple years that I wanted that they didn't have.

I think that was perhaps the reason they gutted our their cool queue system that was so popular. After they obliterated most of their catalog to cut the cost, people would have been horrified by number of things thatwould have dissapeared from their list. The current UX on Netflix is absolutely horrible. It's even hard to find your own list on tablet devices and do basic functions like prioritize it. The recommendations are same-old same-old stuff that never gets refreshed.

Their real catalog is on discs, not online. Many great movies aren't online even years after release. I'm on 3-at-a-time sub, can't deplete my disc queue in years.

In my experience, on the other hand, I've found that Netflix has a pretty good selection of movies that I otherwise wouldn't have known I wanted to watch. So yes, if I expected to find tons of hit movies and classics, I'd be pretty disappointed most of the time, but I do feel I get my money's worth of a good selection of left-field films, and my list of favorite movies is a lot longer because of it.

I've basically given up on Netflix for movies I want to watch and will rent one-offs from Amazon (digital) for older movies, or Redbox (physical) for current releases. The kids are our biggest users, though. It was a pleasant surprise for Netflix to pickup the HtTYD TV series and produce a new "season."

You can actually use a VPN and view shows from other countries without changing any settings. Just connect your preferred VPN provider to the country of choice and go to netflix.com

I think this is a move to address that. By making themselves gargantuan, they'll be forcing the studios to come to the negotiating table and grudgingly offer streaming licenses.

Hopefully.

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