Netflix: only 35 of IMDB top 250 available to stream (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Netflix: only 35 of IMDB top 250 available to stream (2018)

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That's the tragedy with streaming and pay-per-view online systems. Piracy is still has the better catalog.

I would gladly pay 3, even 4 times more for a Netflix that would have everything.

Yeah don't worry you'll be paying that for the same Netflix you have now within the next 5-10 years.

Or paying 4x price for 4x services that have more content in aggregate.

Yeah you can have all the channels you could want with nothing to watch... How's that? Only 66.60.

That tiny convenience would likely come at the monumental cost of a single corporation toll-boothing all content and monopolizing the production industry with divine levels of clout.

The other problem is that netflix physical had both a better catalog and better quality so digital is a massive regression for them. Their physical system was a hack that exploited existing systems (retail pricing for dvds, cheap postal service) so it was too good to last but it is disappointing to see products regress.

it still exists....

yes, but hard to scale outside the US, and studios were hostile to it because it didn't pay them enough, so they pressured Netflix to stop promoting it and adopt streaming. It exists the same way AOL did EOL but it is not a factor in future growth.

Only in the USA. Netflix worldwide has moved to streaming.

> Piracy is still has the better catalog.

Piracy still delivers a better product too unless you're using edge or a netflix apps.

DRM continues to harm paying customers.

I'd rather watch whatever original content Netflix produces than feed the media giants that got us into this fragmented, user-hostile mess in the first place.

Netflix would like nothing more than to become another media giant.

So far, Netflix has been nowhere near as user-hostile as the others. I wish them well until then.

Netflix used to be a great deal. I remember I wanted to watch a movie some top 100 IMDB movies, and checked their selection in 2015. There were most of the ones I wanted to watch, and the price was < $8.

Now the price is going to $12-13, and the selection is abysmal. It's heavily geared towards "original content" which are mostly series of 10+ episodes I have not the time to commit to.

Still not bad for the occasional documentary and comedy special, but this is a bait-and-switch. They don't have too many more pushes before I unsubscribe.

You might be able to get Kanopy free through a local library. Limited number of views per month—mine's 12/mo, dunno if it varies. Tons of documentaries, art film, lots of classic films and Criterion stuff, a fair amount of popular recent-ish material too. Works on Roku, so probably most other platforms too since most are less weird to develop for than it.

Second time I've shilled for them on here recently, but I'm in no way affiliated. Just discovered them a couple months ago and really happy with the service. Especially for free.

Wow that is awesome! I had access to this all this time and had no idea.

You're 100% right. Most of the Criterion collection (and many other things) is available for free to most people in the US. Just need a library card or university affiliation.

Ironically, Kanopy is the only film streaming service good enough to pay for, and you can't pay for it.

They were touting in their new quartely results that they didn't think they were seeing any lasting consequential negative effects from raising the price again. Which is another way of saying to Wall Street that investors can count on Netflix to hit subscribers in the US again in the next year or two.

Negative $380 million in cash flow in the quarter (vs negative $287m last year), persistently worsening quarter after quarter, year after year. I can't decide who has the worse business model, Netflix or Uber. Their entire business hinges on the ability to hit US consumers with ever higher fees for ever less content.

Either $14 or $15 is where I unsubscribe permanently from Netflix, unless they want to give me a much larger traditional movie library to go with the perma hikes.

What's sad is I happily pay for HBO Now at a $15 price tag, but Netflix wanting 13 pissed me off. And I am absolutely on Netflix more often, because I use it to keep shows running in the background (no other service does this as well as Netflix). With HBO though, they have amazing content and a lot of it. And they own most of it, and rotate out solid movies that I probably wouldn't buy or rent myself.

I spend more time browsing the Netflix catalog than I do watching television, it feels like. I cancelled in the past but we recently re-subscribed and I'm regretting it.

in fairness, when netflix spends money on developing new content, they are building up a library. viewers in the future viewing that content will be very high margin.

Thats sort of a huge advantage for one of the long time content producers. say DIS spends 10 bil on original content and netflix matches, DIS has decades of previous content already built up.

I understand, however they can never stop that cycle of building the library. Content ages, plenty of it isn't very good or won't appeal to a wide audience, and people might watch it once if you're lucky. After that watch, you then have to feed them the next thing and the next thing, forever.

Disney generates $14.8 billion in operating income and has a real, sustainable profit. Netflix is actually losing vast, ever larger amounts of money, despite being at around 150 million paid subscribers. Which is a pretty blatant admission that they can never generate a profit with the current approach. And that's before the competition heats up a lot further with Apple and Disney, both of which have far deeper pockets. Amazon ($40b in cash) also now has far deeper pockets, thanks to their AWS & ad profit machines.

Perhaps the most interesting figure for Netflix is the quarterly interest cost. $132m in debt interest cost for all of 2015. $128m in interest cost just for 4Q18 alone. Soon their interest costs might match the size of their 'profits' at the rate they're going on debt accumulation (and assuming likely slower growth with their scale). They're looking at eventual debt downgrades and higher interest costs if they can't stop the worsening negative cash flow. The debt markets will get more skeptical. Long-term debt was $3.3 billion at the end of 2016. A mere two fiscal years later it was up to $10.3 billion. For a company their size that's an enormous jump. Given they've largely saturated the richer markets and the only thing they have left are fee hikes to try to improve margins, I fail to see how they can turn the corner given their financial metrics keep getting worse as they get larger. What new markets could they add that would spur some great positive cash flow turn? I suspect they're nearing the limits of price increases in the US, to make matters worse.

They've placed a bet on some magic corner-turning event based on scale, meanwhile two ferocious competitors with unlimited capital have just entered the race.

thats why I double downed on my DIS and do not own NFLX; though I wouldn't call someone a fool for owning NFLX. I actually think both have room to grow, just that DIS @ 110$ seemed like a catch

I agree with the Disney premise, it had gotten comically cheap.

I think Netflix is worth less than half what it is presently trading for. I'll note I have no position in NFLX (long or short). Most of the valuation is story-based. I'm skeptical the story entirely survives the hard reality of Netflix being drastically outgunned by their three largest competitors. Netflix essentially contends Disney and Apple entering the space full bore won't slow them down, it's an absurd notion to pump to shareholders. If Disney is smart, they'll finish eating Hulu and use it as further value leverage in the Disney+ push. Apple now views such service offerings as critical to their future, so they're likely in it to seriously compete.

CBS is worth $19b, with $2.9b in operating income for 2018, compared to $1.6b for Netflix (at a $156b market cap). I like to hold that up as an example of what the medium is often really worth (obviously not meant to be a direct apples to apples comparison between the two). This is especially true once you move beyond some investor fantasies that streaming with monthly subscribers is somehow special. The ever larger capital blackhole of Netflix is a nice demonstration of the hard economic realities in expensive video content production.

At this point it's understood that Netflix is a service for watching Netflix original content. Anything on top of that is a bonus, and may not be around a month later.

Except their top streamed show is The Office which isn't a Netflix original. Nor is Parks and Rec or 30rock or A.D., etc., which all get plenty of views. https://www.recode.net/2018/12/21/18139817/netflix-most-popu...

30 Rock wasn't on Netflix anymore, last I'd checked.

Friends is my most watched show on Netflix, but that's because there are 10 seasons with 24 episodes each (i.e. a lot of content) and it's just something that plays in the background while I do other stuff. I wouldn't care too much if it was removed, but I would if they took away Stranger Things, Ozark, Our Earth, The Crown, Altered Carbon, Narcos, Santa Clarita Diet, BoJack Horseman, Queer Eye, all the comedy specials and lots more.

Disney+ has the potential to seriously hurt Netflix, at least in the US.

I currently go through phases of Netflix and Amazon Prime. Once Disney+ launches, I can see us moving to Disney+ while keeping the Amazon Prime. Not 100% sure, but it's likely.

It's a misconception that Netflix is an online movie library. They have a constantly changing selection, so it's more like a random access TV channel.

I rarely watch movies on Netflix — moreso documentaries and series. But the endless browsing is becoming real when I want movie. Not sure whether I am being very picky, or the overall quality of the film inventory is average.

Maybe it's even moreso today, but it's never been great. A senior person there told me years ago when we were talking about their content library that "People come for the movies and they stay for the TV." And this was (I believe) before House of Cards etc.

The fact is that there's no subscription streaming service that has a great movie catalog. You can subscribe to DVDs on Netflix--still pretty good though the back catalog is rotting. Or just buy/rent a la carte either streaming or disc. Welcome to our unbundled future.

I don’t mind paying the 3 or 4 dollars to rent a movie off google play to watch a movie when I don’t find it on Netflix. But I guess I don’t watch too many movies so it’s not too bad. Anyone remember how much it used to cost to rent a movie at blockbuster?

$4-7

I remember it as being in the $3 range or so though someone upthread wrote it could be as high as $7. And there's gas/time and late fees. And no guarantee of availability.

For current content, there's also Redbox today.

Personally, I'm basically fine with 1 or 2 streaming services for a combination of general content and exclusives and renting/buying the rest in some manner. I should cancel my cable though because I never watch it even though it means that leaves me without live TV. Yeah, I know there's YouTube TV but I really don't watch enough for it to be worth it.

For movies, DVDs from the local public library are the best way to go. Everything else has restrictions, subscriptions, and other onerous crap.

I've found Netflix to often be the 21st century version of "100 channels and still nothing on". Strangely, despite the on-demand nature, I find I watch it a lot like broadcast TV+PVR or discs: there is the occasional show that I enjoy, sometimes including something I found via Netflix itself, and I typically watch new episodes of those not long after they are released or maybe binge-watch a short dramatic mini-series over a few evenings. However, if I'm browsing for something new to watch, a lot of the series are mediocre to poor, and for movies, the big names arrive far too late to be relevant for me and the rest are mostly straight-to-video quality at best.

I’ve become super bearish on Netflix. At some point the masses will realize how bad the selection is for the money you pay.

Netflix just released its Q1 numbers.

They've added record 6.9 million subscribers. That's new subscribers - defectors.

I'm not sure what would cause the "masses" to re-evaluate the quality of selection, especially taking into account the fact that Netlifx is now adding tons of content they'll own forever, so 10 years from now "The Crown" and "The Stranger Things" etc. will still be there plus all the shows and movies they've added in those 10 years.

Competitively Netflix is safe because to watch those 250 top movies online in one place you can go to... nobody.

That's an opportunity. If someone would only figure out how to get th classics all in one place. Netflix is just a new HBO with a better interface.

FilmStruck tried. R.I.P.

I was a Filmstruck + Criterion subscriber still when they closed down. I was planning on subscribing to the new Criterion Channel that looks ready to fill that niche. But it seems that I should try Kanopy first, based on other comments here.

I would need to watch an unhealthy amount of Netflix to run out of things to watch and I already watch one episode per day.

If you seriously can't find anything to watch on Netflix, I suspect you either are uninterested in trying new/unknown things or are so hard to please that no service could satisfy you. I can't imagine either is a demographic all that large or rewarding to pursue.

I don't mean that in a bad way. Rather, I don't think it's in our best interest for any single company to own the entire catalog that would appease these demographics.

People have been foreseeing a mass exodus from Netflix for years now though, often when Netflix loses their hobby horse show. Yet Netflix only grows in net subscribers. Since everything always comes to an end, surely you need to put a timescale on your claim if you want to receive credit when Netflix finally collapses. Even Chicken Little is eventually right.

Part of the problem is often people want a specific thing. If I want to listen to a specific song, Spotify almost always has it. If I want to watch a specific movie...

True, but Netflix competes with nobody who can offer that either. And Netflix's coffers clearly aren't losing to piracy.

And, if you look at piracy for the lay person, it's not all that attractive. You have to somehow be able to sift through the bullshit streaming and torrent websites will throw at you. Somehow click the right links along the way that don't dead-end in a fake paywall or ad. And after torrenting something, you might get a scary letter from your ISP which happened to my sister in Austin with Comcast.

Exactly. I'm a fairly sophisticated user and I know how to use VPNs, etc. I also make a comfortable tech wage. TBH, piracy is an absolute last resort. Even if it comes down to buying a $20 DVD off Amazon, that's probably what I will do if it's something I want to watch enough that I've gone to the trouble of even thinking about searching the torrents for.

Do I wish there was a video equivalent of premium music services for video? (i.e. had most content) Sure. There isn't. So I'll pick some streaming services and I'll buy a la carte in various formats and just accept there's no single bundle that gives me everything for a monthly subscription.

>I don't mean that in a bad way. Rather, I don't think it's in our best interest for any single company to own the entire catalog that would appease these demographics.

Well, best best interest would probably involve mandatory, open-to-all-interested-parties licensing terms/fees in order to enjoy copyright protection, and outlawing vertical integration of end viewer distribution with production. Also I'd like a pony.

Oh, we'll definitely have that though -- the year of the linux desktop will usher us into that era.

The problem with this is Netflix appeared as a one stop shop. That was what people wanted. Now that the streaming market is splintered you need 3 services for all the content a typical person wants to see. I can see this contributing to a comeback of pirating. Now the primary reason for keeping Netflix around are its originals which I don't think will keep people on the hook as they continually bump the subscription tiers.

I said this in a sibling comment, so I risk belaboring the point here, but I don't think piracy is all that competitive for the lay person.

Put on your non-tech-savvy hat and google "watch <movie> online" or "torrent <movie>" and try to navigate a streaming website. You need to be somewhat tech savvy just to navigate the minefield. For example: https://pelispedia.tv -- it's confusing, frustrating, and full of popups/ads.

The layperson depends on someone more tech savvy to give them instruction. But even then, I once showed my sister how to download torrents and she got a scary letter from Comcast in Austin. My guess is that Comcast simply participates in the seeding process of the top 10k torrents and waits for its customers to connect. She hasn't tried since.

I've seen sharing Plex libraries from people who couldn't close a pop up on Facebook lately.

Not to mention all the side-loaded Firesticks with Popcorn time.

Serious question. Who's better? Amazon Prime is OK and it's "free" if you use Amazon Prime for other reasons. But I find it inferior overall. We're just collectively reinventing the cable bundle in a new form.

This depends quite a lot on how you define selection.

If you want highly rated content of all genres and formats (TV and movies), you get more than you could ever hope to have time to watch.

If you want to watch one specific thing, then yeah chances are good it's not there.

> ...for the money you pay.

That's where I'll have to stop you, as its still a very cheap service comparatively.

I worked at Blockbuster toward the end of their run, it was about $4-7 dollars for a single rental.

Current streaming rentals on Amazon range from $4-8 as well.

Netflix, streaming only, is currently $13 per month.

The only alternative I think is very good is HBO, which is $15 per month. They usually have before-cable-run-but-after-initial-rental-period movies. And they have a handful of stellar TV shows. We still struggle to find something to watch on that service.

Blockbuster is irrelevant. They had to pay for real estate and retail employees, and had a much better selection. Streaming is a completely different business.

Netflix disks are a better comp. They cost the same as streaming does and while the selection is far better, the limited capacity is far worse for most people.

The real competition will probably end up being piracy, eventually. Netflix streaming is getting worse content. And if this decline continues, piracy will become much more favorable.

I am a habitual pirate. I'm the kind who wants to pirate media because I believe that the media system is a lifesucking waste exploiting the rest of society. If I can drop their profits then maybe they will spend more on the cheap stuff (good writing and ideas) and less on the eyecandy and marketing. At best, they fade out of existence and we go back to swapping stories orally.

So at some point I decided that a subscription service with almost everything I was interested in would socialize things appropriately and reduce the transaction costs so that piracy and this anarchic tendency wouldn't be worthwhile. After a few years of using the service, I feel that it is only a moderate convenience. In the end my watching habits haven't changed. I am saving some time downloading random things from random horrible websites. But the selection is horrific. There is no way to actively decide to watch something. There are just a handful of options. There are no classics. It's worse than the selection on an international flight. And it's getting expensive.

> I worked at Blockbuster toward the end of their run, it was about $4-7 dollars for a single rental. Current streaming rentals on Amazon range from $4-8 as well.

Blockbuster at that price isn't a great example. Redbox Blu-rays are $2.12. I live in an area with a relatively low population density and there are three Redbox machines within short driving distance. Each with a solid selection of new releases (Aquaman, Glass, The Mule, Into the Spider-verse, Green Book et al.). Redbox has ~34,000 locations.

So assuming a movie or two a week you're paying maybe a few dollars less than Netflix? And you have to drive there? Netflix sounds way better than that.

Famil Video has rentals for $2-4

~$10/month is still ridiculously cheap for what they offer. One single show in their catalog you like will probably make it worth it. They can still raise prices by a LOT before people stop being interested.

I've been thinking it will only take a couple more subscription price bumps. I've already lowered my subscription to the lowest available and will likely just get rid of it altogether in favor of other means of procurement. If they inch towards the 20$ mark for basic I think they will start to decline.

I've already seen many people who I would never believe could pirate anything reliably turn to sharing Plex libraries.

I signed up for Netflix once because I wanted to test how it worked on linux when chrome first added support for it and I had it for about 18 months (never watched it) until my credit card expired because they require you to call to cancel. Don't underestimate how much money you can make off of subscriptions like this. $10 a month is not a lot of money and not worth potentially spending 30-60 minutes on the phone for a lot of people.

"Inertia revenue" "inertia rentals"

eg 3 year lease that's a decent deal but if you don't cancel and take a 4th the lessor makes a large profit. IT equipment leasing is frequently like this.

I mention by name it in case anyone wants to dig deeper with this idea w.r.t their own business...

It's pretty rare that I watch a movie on Netflix these days. I pay for the original content they produce and some of the documentaries that end up there. For my purposes, there is enough content along these lines to justify the expense. Once in a blue moon I see a movie there that I want to watch, but I consider that a bonus.

I’ve watched all the movies on there that I was remotely interested in. Once in a while a new one comes on, but most of the movies are crappy ones.

I watch some movies on there, and it's mostly because I find that Netflix has the smoothest streaming even when my internet isn't great. But it's really about the shows, and even that is taking some serious hits.

I love that I have the Office on demand always, but that used to be true about It's Always Sunny, which is no longer there. So I can't even trust that the shows I keep Netflix around for will still be there. Including their original content like the Marvel stuff. Nothing is a safe bet to stay on Netflix.

same for me, but that's beginning to get tiring. most tv shows I am already caught up on or dont want to currently move forward in, and I do not want to commit to a new tv show just yet. sometimes I just want to watch a quick movie and be done with it, but that's very hard to do on netflix these days

Netflix generally has movies around about the time the sequel is coming out, as a kind of marketing tie-in.

Documentaries are one of the most dissapointing segments on Netflix, their catalog seems to be mostly crazy aliens, conspiracy theory and biblical stuff that ruined discovery and history channels a decade or so earlier.

Every time I find out about a movie outside of netflix, then go check to see if it is available to stream, it is not available. Seriously every single time. I look up movies as a joke at this point. Having said that, I still think its worth the $13/month for the TV shows and movies that actually are available.

You don't license the good stuff with the rest of the slop, that you want to rent out a la carte.

It's also why you don't see certain prestige shows on streaming such as Fargo, Twin Peaks: The Return, Preacher, or Legion. They know that people will pay top dollar to rent/buy the really good stuff.

Fargo is on Netflix (UK).

Also in Mexico

In Brazil I got Fargo, Twin Peaks, and Legion on Netflix and Preacher on Amazon Prime Video.

Lucky!

Those shows are on HBO, except Preacher. They have both the old and new Twin Peaks.

Netflix the once great hope, the central video store, the one-stop-shop-for-movies is now just a channel.

prime, another channel.

disney's thing, another channel.

so, if this is now the norm, what is the next next thing that will "disrupt" these old guard?

it seems like a bad choice for a content producer to let netflix stream their material.

as a content provider, you have an edge in that your library is larger than theirs. by allowing them to stream your content, you make profit today, but subsidize a competitor building their library.

and in the transaction, you loose the most valuable component of the sale, the customer data. now your competitor has viewing habits of your customers, to which you are now blind.

10 years ago, it was really hard to stand up a streaming service for many companies, but that barrier is much lower now. 10 years ago, it was mostly tech companies that realized the value of data, now others are catching up.

what is the next thing to disrupt the old guard? probably something not movie/series related. all this stuff, listening to music, watching a show, posting on fb, reading on hn are all actually competing for our time. we are running into an era where our times are stretched thin and we finally see unrelated things compete. so the next disruption may be something completely new.

some said people posting content on youtube is that next thing. I am not so sure, I dont always want to watch someone rant about how bad the new star wars is.

The problem isn't the top, but the long tail: where can we legally find the greatest directors films from the world that aren't blockbusters.

The Netflix DVD catalog is still pretty good although less so than it used to be. Your local library is one option. A la carte from iTunes and Amazon is another. Or, as a last resort, buying off Amazon or a more specialist selling site. By and large, if something is available on DVD (or VHS), you can probably buy it for a semi-reasonable sum.

Local public library.

Someone else can find the source, but Netflix themselves have stated that the lions share of viewing on their platform is aimed at TV shows, so it doesn't surprise me that they haven't invested in quality (and expensive) movies. Why would they if no one is watching them?

TV is pretty much in the same state on Netflix (AU at least). Search for a show and chances are it isn't there, even if it has been in the DVD bargain bin for years. Other shows disappearing (say, Downton Abbey, which was taken off just as my mother in law got to season 5). Lots of new shows a season behind, lots of newish shows never arrive.

I have been waiting for them to update their Apple TV app to support their own original interactive show black mirror bandersnatch. How hard can it be to add a button? They are more focused on expanding to new markets than providing quality service to existing ones.

The first sale doctrine didn't survive the transition to the Internet era. If "buying" one copy of a film still allowed one to resell or rent it to someone else, despite it not being a physical object, Netflix would have all 250 titles tomorrow.

We would all be better off if there were a flat universal fee for feature films and tv episodes on streaming platforms.

Seems like part of the plan really. Why pay license fees to other studios when they can make their own movies?

Their content is very hit or miss. A lot of copycat anime shows, low quality kids TV, middling sitcoms and drama series with only one season, and a very small pool of popular series.

Contrast with Amazon which has an incredibly deep library and is "free" to some extent with Prime.

Netflix is in trouble.

their catalog keeps shrinking... soon they will only host what they produce... but even if I pay for Netflix and something I want to watch is available on Netflix, I download it from some other sources, most of the time.

From September 2018. Maybe someone can do an update?

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