For example, we sometimes watch a show/movie with subtitles. But netflix frequently gets confused about whether subtitles should be on or off and with which language they should be in, even with simply stopping viewing and coming back later. We sometimes use English subtitles, but then they get turned on automatically in various languages for other shows/movies.
How much content are people expecting for $10?
For $10 a month at that time I gained access to basically every DVD ever released. There were a few art house type movies that were out of print that took forever to get copies of due to being in others' ques, but for the most part, I had access to all commercially released video for the past 100 years for $10. Adjusted for inflation, that's $12.45 today.
I noticed this, they removed the categories browser for me, it still shows up occasionally but it's hidden very deep in recommendations I can't find a way to directly go to it other than pressing down for a few minutes till it crops up.
Guess it makes sense for them, I used to boot it up and go straight in there and devour everything new in categories I cared about while still ignoring everything I passed over previously.
These moves to try and remove the choice from what I watch in the hopes of getting me to watch things I wouldn't watch out of choice seems so bizarre when the initial pitch of Netflix vs cable/terrestrial was being in control of what you watch.
No, they ran into the problem where once a distribution pioneer proves a market, the content owners they rely on no longer license cheaply in that market, in part because they want to capture the proven profit opportunity and in part because distribution competitors spring up a bid up the prices.
Compare that to Spotify, which will have a song I want 95% of the time or more.
The value of Netflix is not that high for me right now. With ads it will be even lower.
Having 100 million subs (Netflix has 120 million atm) would then give you 1 billion per month -- which sounds decent enough to support a comprehensive movie archive, especially since most of it would be a long tail of movies that make tiny or no profit today and that would cost next to nothing to store for the occasional user.
And for the popular titles, you could even opt for a distributed (e.g. bittorrent like) serving, to further lower your costs.
The content in Europe is woeful compared to the US.
And I totally blame Hollywood and the Media Industry, esp. Disney, for making hostile exlusive licensing deals.
In many cases, I cannot even watch a movie until it's dubbed in my language, even if I don't want to watch it dubbed but in OAT. It's frustrating. And then it's also likely on the streaming service I currently use, but on another one.