Comment by rebootthesystem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rebootthesystem | Hacker News Reader

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rebootthesystem

Netflix streaming, in my opinion, has degraded significantly in terms of programming choices.

A few years ago when we got the service you could find tons of fantastic movies and tv shows to watch. Today I've switched away in frustration after spending 30+ minutes browsing and searching for something to watch. The menu is mostly filled with crappy 1 to 3 star content. You can't even find good movies from the 80's and 90's. Sure, maybe a few here and there but, for the most part the experience is an exercise in futility.

My kids are watching a Spanish kid's show to improve their language understanding. They are 60 episodes into a 260 episode show. When they are done I think I might cancel Netflix and move on.

Here's the criteria: When I find myself browsing regular TV listings to record good movies to watch and endure having to commercial-skip every two minutes to watch them. What that happens. And you actually end-up with a bunch of really good contemporary movies recorded. That's the moment when you realize Netflix, today, has a bad product. And that's already happened multiple times.

> Netflix streaming, in my opinion, has degraded significantly in terms of programming choices.

One exception I'd say is that Netflix Original Programming is getting quite good. Narcos, The Crown, and Stranger Things are all fantastic.

But yes, in general their selection of quality 3rd party titles is horrible. It's rare to browse Netflix hoping to find a specific movie and not be disappointed.

They've never been very good for movies on streaming. And, unfortunately, their DVD back catalog is being allowed to degrade as well.

I haven't paid much attention to Netflix originated content. Any more I absolutely dread switching over to Netflix because I know it'll be a 30+ minute exercise in frustration. My wife and older kid ignore it completely.

Unless things change I'm cancelling by the end of the year.

Amazon Prime seemed a bit better but lately it seems to be filled with the same kind of crud. Bad "B" and below movies.

Seriously, who watched this crap?

There are thousands of good movies out there. Maybe it's a revenue struggle with the studios, I don't know. The fact that you can't even find "The Marx Brother" or "The Three Stooges" or "Abbott and Costello" on these services might be a clue. In other words, you can't find popular black and white movies that by all accounts should fill these services. Or good 80's, 90's and earlier TV series. Not there. Maybe a few here and there, but not en-masse as they should be.

I was looking for Battlestar Galactica the other day. Not the goofy one, the other one with Edward James Olmos. It was there a few years back but no-longer available. My oldest kid wasn't old enough to watch it then but he could now (and it is a good series). Gone. Not sure why.

It's gone because they know what they pay for the rights and they know how many people watch the content, and at some point either the rights got more expensive or the viewership went down, and they presumably get more eyeballs for their buck elsewhere.

I would imagine the viewership for old black and white movies is infinitesimal, even if the rights are cheap. The value proposition apparently doesn't make sense.

The movies have always been pretty bad on netflix Streaming. The TV shows have declined somewhat, but it's still a great deal.

A senior Netflix technical person told me once (and this was mostly before their original content) that "People come to Netflix streaming for the movies and they stay for the TV."

I agree that the non-original TV show content seems to have declined somewhat but the good original programming makes up for it.

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