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Comment by Tor3 | Hacker News Reader

Netflix not only stops shows before you even got a chance to see it (I'm not among those who look for new content all the time - I try to follow what I'm currently watching), but Netflix also removes movies, some of them classics, after some time. So when my wife says she would like to watch something she's been wanting to watch, and I look it up, I find that it used to be on Netflix but it's not there anymore. It's been like that for every movie she's asked about. I'm wondering why having Netflix at all. It feels like a pointless waste of money, something my wife now keeps mentioning, and I'm very close to terminate the whole deal.

Netflix, you're wasting my money. I'm not getting what I expected to get from you. I will be spend my money on something else than you.

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Netflix is horrible. It's slowly turning back into broadcast TV. And this whole data-driven approach to everything is infuriating. Complain about how something works? Netflix says the data proves you wrong. How long did it take them to add an option to get rid of those automatic video previews that had users enraged? I would have canceled long ago if my wife didn't like watching all the Asian novelas they have on there.

I recall reading something from some Netflix analytics-obsessed pinhead about the automatic previews where they said they wanted it to behave more like regular TV where something is on as soon as you turn it on. Then they have it automatically play the next episode by default. I recently read about some other feature they were testing where it would just continuously play whatever their recommendation engine thinks you would like. Then you've got the more frequent churn of content.

Netflix today resembles a personalized stream of an old school premium cable channel like HBO. It's designed to help you quickly find something to watch and then send you down a rabbit hole with continuous content that autoplays as soon as the last video ends. On the one hand, I admire them for doing something different than every other streaming service that popped up after they invented the category. On the other hand, I just don't like the experience at all.

> Netflix is horrible. It's slowly turning back into broadcast TV

It's amazing how this describes a number of the tech 'industry disruption' companies... Amazon used to have better quality standards than eBay or Wal-mart, Uber used to be cheaper and have cleaner cars and drivers than Taxis, Netflix used to have a larger variety of classics but now largely makes their own content

Maybe it's an inevitability of scale?

It's an inevitability of incentivizing growth over all else. So scale per se is not the problem. The problem is incentivising the first derivative of scale.

> Maybe it's an inevitability of scale?

Increased quality is a good marketing ploy for growth, producing shit is a good way to increase margins. I notice a lot of restaurants have great food opening week, and then a return to median over the following year until they go bust.

So true. It's like they forget what made them popular in the first place.

What was special about Netflix was this large library of on-demand content and things you may not find anywhere else. I think what early adopters liked about it was you could be deliberate about sitting down to watch something. You'd put some thought into creating your list. We were trained to do this going back to the DVD days - probably even more so during the DVD rental days. And remember that Netflix had that massive collection of quality movie reviews. I suspect that early adopters had much different viewing patterns than the people who hung around on cable for longer.

So what does Netflix do? Make it more like a broadcast. Maybe that's what they discovered was necessary to attract the masses. I don't know. All I can say is it's much different than it used to be and, aside from some really good in-house content, I don't like it anymore.

Prior to on-demand content, I was a faithful "red envelope" subscriber because not only was it convenient (and I didn't really have to worry about returning a RedBox DVD), but Netflix kept _all_ my ratings for _all_ the movies I'd seen. They still have that data last I checked, but it's very much hidden in the account settings and they've long since deprecated user reviews. They now say "98% match." Match to what? We pretty much use a single user account across two households; what is that statistic referring to?

Nowadays, I never find anything I want on Netflix and am glad I'm borrowing an account, otherwise I'd drop it. Hulu's trying to catch up, but Netflix is easily the most user-hostile media interface I've ever used, and that includes hotel channel guides.

I'm actually a big fan of Netflix exactly as you articulated you don't like it—if I have an empty head, I sit down and click through to find something to watch. Not currently subscribed, though, and I wish it came at a slightly lower price point as I don't watch the vast majority of netflix content.

I appreciate their attempt to do this. I'd love such a thing. Unfortunately, their algorithm is woefully immature, they lack content, and can't double down on shows that get a slow start. In the short term this helps them grow at the expense of alienating early adopters, die hard fans, and their more flippant subscribers.

My biggest peeve is that Netflix keeps dropping and cancelling shows I'm really enjoying. I'm close to dropping them, and every other service. Months close. The hassle and cost of maintaining 10+ subscriptions is a worse experience than the prenetflix days of broadcast. If the industry could get their act together and go the way of music and pay royalties per stream then Netflix would probably have the biggest advantage with their algorithm. But their ux is still painful and proper discovery is completely lacking. I yearn for a Dewey decimal like video categorisation system, and way more high production value sci-fi shows.

Turning off autoplay on YouTube was the one of the best things I have done for my personal happiness in the last few years. It's amazing how having to take a moment to choose the next the next action after finishing a piece of content has contributed to my mindfulness, and raised the quality bar in terms of what I consume.

Automatic netflix previews are the thing that infuriates me the most about it. (And the reason I'll probably never pay for it.)

Other than opening the settings screen, or playing a video and hitting pause, there is no way to leave netflix alone and not have it make noise/play video. Three seconds after you stop hitting buttons, whatever's selected on-screen becomes a full-video ad for that thing. (with all of the annoying traits of ads, like loud attention grabbing sounds)

I've idle-mindedly mashed buttons to prevent this on console-netflix while trying to have a conversation about what to watch, with no attention being payed to what was actually on the screen.

You can turn them off.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102

> Netflix also removes movies, some of them classics, after some time. So when my wife says she would like to watch something she's been wanting to watch, and I look it up, I find that it used to be on Netflix but it's not there anymore

This is a different matter. Netflix has a finite budget to license content. It's not clear that it would be better for the consumer if they had a policy of never removing films from the library, as this would have to be counterbalanced by fewer new films being added. I suspect this approach would be much worse for the consumer overall.

Also, unlike when a series is cancelled, those films are still available to stream on an à la carte basis from Google/Amazon/iTunes/etc.

I have been giving Netflix a try for a couple of months now and I am really thinking of dropping it because of this. I think I’d rather rent something from one of the on demand services and watch what I want, than being forced to watch whatever Netflix happens to have on offer this week. Especially because I generally prefer to watch a movie over a TV series.

It sounds like your complaint isn't that Netflix has a 'churn' of available content, but that they don't offer much content of interest to you. If that's the case, then sure, it makes good sense to cancel and either go with another subscription streaming service, or buy/rent what you want to watch. There's not much Netflix can do about that, short of just spending far more money on licensing content, which would presumably mean raising prices.

I've found that disc rental (by post) can be a surprisingly good option, even if it's been mostly forgotten with the rise of streaming. The available library is better than any streaming subscription is able to offer.

> I generally prefer to watch a movie over a TV series

Shouldn't this mean you're less inconvenienced by content churn? If you're part way through a series and it gets removed, that's annoying, but this doesn't really apply to movies.

That’s just a streaming rights thing. I don’t think Netflix is taking away any movies just to take them away. It’s because agreements expire and on renegotiation the rights owners want a bigger slice. Netflix’s streaming used to be a free tack on to the disk shipping business because they got a bunch of cheap rights because no rights owners thought anyone wanted to stream.

>I'm wondering why having Netflix at all.

For Netflix shows. Netflix is now a network channel producing its own content, in the mold of HBO. If you don't find value in HBO, then you don't subscribe to HBO. Same with Netflix.

Licensing content from turned out to be a terrible business model because a) licensing fees would bleed you dry of all your profits, b) content owners would yank their content anyway to compete with you because it turns out, creating a streaming infrastructure isn't that hard and much cheaper than owning and producing content.

While there's obviously licensed content on Netflix, HBO, and elsewhere, it's increasingly about rounding out their own studio content or other exclusives. I'm not going to subscribe to HBO for whatever non-HBO movies they may have.

If you're not interested with what's on the "channel" at all, you're probably mostly better off with just buying/renting a la carte.

In fairness, I can't imagine "classics" garnering anywhere near the watch times of a new show. Whilst you'll get some new viewers from the people who've heard it's a classic or those showing their kids a movie from "their time", but the majority of viewers will be those who've seen it before and want to watch it again, and given the age of some of these classics they likely already own it on DVD etc.

DVDs are easy to get. DVD players are not so much. It gets expensive to attach one to every screen. And on my phone/tablet?

plex

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