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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.

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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?

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.

$4-7

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.

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