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I will admit I found it hard not to read this comment and wonder about your sense of entitlement in the face of the vastly privileged situation we live in now in terms of media consumption. You pay $10 per month to watch high quality TV from the last few decades as much as you want, whenever you want (and, goodness me, if you have children, Netflix is an absolute godsend - fire up Paw Patrol and off you go...); to watch a large and moderately decent selection of films, often including relatively new releases, whenever you want, as many as you want; and as if that weren't enough, they even produce their own content, some of which is actually good.

I remember when, if you wanted to watch a film, you would drive to Blockbuster and rent it, and you had a couple of nights to watch it or the fees would start racking up - and their selection was never all that great, and the availability was limited to how many DVDs or videos they physically had. If you wanted to watch a TV series, you'd buy the boxset - and before DVDs, Friends took up about four feet of your bookshelf.

Sure, I've seen a bit of a movement lately from Netflix to Amazon Prime, but seriously, what we have right now in 2017 is so miraculously much better than what we had ten years ago (when I had a LoveFilm account and had to rely on films being sent through the post - which seems oddly even more antiquated now than Blockbuster does, frankly), that to describe it as "crap" and "garbage" just seems crazy to me.

> high quality TV

I think he's debating this part. Frankly, most of TV is mind-rotting crap.

You drove to Blockbuster? Luxury. I built a treestand behind the drive in theater and sat in it with a AM radio and can of mosquito spray. And they only had one film.

This is typical HN:

Nothing can please me because I am intelligent advanced than the rest of the crowd.

Instead acting like whiny baby. The suggestion that Netflix get rid of scale rating is pure conspiracy, without any evidence to back it up.

Reminders:

1. Youtube Red: 10 dollars

2. HBO Now: 15 dollars

3. Amazon Prime: 9 dollars

4. Youtube TV: 35 dollars

5. Watch a movie: 10 dollars on average.

Maybe the OP is suggesting piracy? That is the only way I could bring out of my mind for cheaper price for any (relatively) well produced content.

What's bothering me more than price (per service, I won't buy all of them at once), is the division of content across platforms.

With piracy it's still to this day more usable in the sense that you can back up all downloads to a private kodi-server (or similar), and have a single access-point.

Question: Does anyone on HN know about any ways to consolidate either music or video-content across multiple providers?

I think we're starting to see existing providers offering that.

YouView in the UK was the first I saw.

Now Fire TVs from Amazon display titles from apps (e.g. Netflix and a bunch of others I don't use) as clearly as first-party items. There'll be a square for House of Cards right next to American Gods.

Yeah. I have a Fire TV Stick and half the time I'm not even sure what service I'm watching something on - encouraged in part by the search function bringing up all results from different providers at once.

Piracy is not a bad deal actually - currently if I want all the movies and music I'd have to sign up for multiple streaming services, totalling about 50$ a month. And even then, there's no guarantee I will actually get all the music and movies I want - there's always that one artist/producer that doesn't want their stuff on streaming services for some awful reason. Not to mention region locking, etc.

I can't see myself giving up piracy just yet, but I would love it if streaming services cut the crap and improve their service.

So if Netflix increased their library, cut their prices and subsequently increased their debt even more you'd consider them?

If Netflix could provide all my movie watching needs then yes I'll consider them. As a consumer I couldn't care less about their debt, I just want a solution that allows me watch movies without stealing them, but until then I'll happily steal - it's a problem this industry created for themselves so it's up to them to fix it.

Crappy service doesn't give a license to steal. While the entertainment industry has done a lot of harm like all the DRMs etc. the ethical way is to boycott and not steal. For ex. if you believe in free software use GNU software - don't steal closed source software.

Stealing might not have been the right word here. Stealing means you take something away from someone and that someone no longer has the thing you took. In this case however I'm not taking anything away, I am merely denying them of revenue they wouldn't have had in the first place because I am not going to pay 50$/month for streaming services.

Personally I do not like the loss of the star system because it gave more granularity to ratings than I can detect now. One issue I think many have with Netflix is that if you are into superhero/comic books you are all set, if not, well not so much as it seems to occupy way to much space in their catalog.

It will be interesting to see the shakeout in the industry because I doubt it can sustain all these new costs. People bemoaned to cost of cable but its quickly becoming obvious that you can exceed it by having to hit so many subscription services.

One alternative is to use a service like HBOGo, record the seasons of the show you want and unsubscribe all in one month. While this might not be good for some who want to be current right now it can save substantial money when you only want one show.

I would also add Redbox to the list. $2 for a bluray rental.

library: free/taxes

You don't have to resort to piracy to get high quality content, just get some rabbit ears and pull in OTA TV, especially if you connect it to a DVR.

And the parent post mentioned kids and Paw Patrol. You don't have to pay for that: youtube.com/tvokids has Paw Patrol plus my 2 kids' favorite shows: Dino Dana & Odd Squad. (Seriously, Odd Squad is awesome, I enjoy it too).

We're lucky enough to live in Ontario Canada where TVO comes over the air, but I think PBS also has a great selection. TVO runs kids programming continuously until 7PM (and then it's kids friendly nature shows until bedtime).

"The suggestion that Netflix get rid of scale rating is pure conspiracy, without any evidence to back it up."

This has already happened, BTW, and a quick search would have shown you that, but I'm sure you were much too busy writing up your personal insults above to do any research.

https://deadline.com/2017/04/netflix-discontinues-star-ratin... http://ew.com/tv/2017/03/16/netflix-star-ratings/ http://www.businessinsider.com/why-netflix-replaced-its-5-st...

Why don't you mention the $0 alternative - piracy?

I switched from Torrents to Netflix simply because it was worth it as a product. With the current state of the library I seriously consider switching back full-time.

My apologies. I guess if you don't have any ethical qualms, you have lots of choices!

Like it or not, most real people - that actually spend their money, or not, and affect the course of the industry - don't either. If you want to have a meaningful discussion about industry-wide events, you can't pretend that majority of people care about violating copyright law.

"I will admit I found it hard not to read this comment and wonder about your sense of entitlement"

I see. I can't criticize a service in a way you dislike without having a sense of entitlement. I'll keep that in mind.

Same here. Ended my subscription last week.

First, the movie library in my country is very weak.

Second, the TV library is becoming filled so fast with so much crap that I don't even know what to watch.

Selecting the right show has become such a massive chore that I don't even try anymore. There is no way to "preview" a show (as I would on regular TV if I was just browsing around). I truly feel paralysis by analysis when I open my Netflix app.

Part of me wants to go back to old cable days. It was just so much more convenient to watch TV. Switch on, flip channels, catch something you like. Follow-up if you loved it, otherwise forget it.

With Netflix, the fact that I have to make a choice from its unending supply of mediocre shows makes watching anything harder.

Netflix seriously needs some sort of a radio-like, "always on" option that I can just put on my TV when I feel like watching something

A "watch something random" + "skip to next random thing" might actually give us everything broadcasting had to offer with very little efford!

It would have to be better than random, though. With "channel surfing" of the old days you would cross channels with themes but obviously Netflix has algorithms that would make this better.

The biggest UX issue, IMO, is getting the channel surfing UX perfect. It must not show buffering or loading but an instant change between shows as I flip through. That's so much harder with digital I can't think of the last time I felt something pull off something as good as the analog.

But yes this would be a HUGE help with my show selection as well.

Is it really that difficult?

Keep 100mb of cache, perhaps 10 shows, 10mb each, potentially overcompressed, as audio is the key. All starting at interesting place, not at intro.

Apparently, yes. I have never used Netflix, but Amazon cannot even start a video half of the time. I have to reload the page and usually it works.

A good fraction of netflix use is on underpowered devices attached to tv's.

Only the cable company can support channel-surfing on such underpowered set-top-boxes, because only the cable company gets the bandwidth to continually stream a whole lineup of shows independent of who is watching them.

I think it's difficult. That 100mb of cache has to be streaming in for X amount of shows / channels at once. If you start flipping through it has to cache your current show + some amount of the shows you're flipping though.

It's not always easy to transition an analog UX over to digital and not have it appear slower or worse.

I disagree. I think for $10 bucks and that I only watch 4-8 episodes per month it's perfect. I can barely get through all the good content.

That said a few years back I would watch way more and exhausted what appealed to me in Netflix's catalog, as it sounds you have.

I think the idea is you just gotta compare what else costs $10 bucks. Um lunch, maybe.

So if you have realistic expectations for what you get for $10 bucks and don't watch "too much" TV, it's perfect.

Ten dollar bucks.

This weekend I spent about twenty minutes using their terrible "discovery" interface then finally resorting to a third party web site to determine if any of the twenty to thirty year old movies I wanted to watch were available. All them were on Netflix, but only available outside the USA. Amazon Prime Video was just as bad.

A lot of very popular products these days have bad UI. I often find myself using Google to figure out how to do the simplest things. Managers just make random decisions.

They got rid of the star rating system which was the only thing sort of making discovery of the few non-garbage items possible.

It's quite interesting given that they organized a huge machine learning competition just for that.

maybe they should partner with IMDB to see what content that isn't available that their customers want, or even make Netflix free (with only the option to watch pilot shows or old classic movies) and additional option to put shows and movies into a wishlist whether it's part of the catalogue or not.

As IMDB is part of amazon this seems rather unlikely.

In a story posted a few weeks ago a user pointed out that Netflix doesn't need to show customers the best recommendations, but good enough ones too keep them paying. Ideally they could phase out pricey licenses and keep them at bay with Netflix originals. Which is a good recommendation system, but for Netflix' business model.