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Comment by rickdale | Hacker News Reader

Netflix is terrible. You spend more time looking for stuff to watch than actually watching stuff. I know a movie is bad if it's available for streaming on netflix.

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  You spend more time looking for stuff to watch than
  actually watching stuff.

Ever been to a video rental store? That's how it used to be done. Browsing through the collection and reading the synopsis on the back of the cassettes was a big part of the whole VHS rental experience. One video store where I grew up even gave out small bags of popcorn to eat while in the store.

Never been to a video rental store that has taken more than 15 minutes to select a film. That would be absurd.

I've never spent more than 5 minutes to select a film on Netflix streaming. That would be absurd.

In all seriousness, the suggestion feature of Netflix is amazing. I've seen and enjoyed a much larger variety of films, documentaries, and TV shows than I ever would have had I been left to pick from the massive library myself.

The most interesting thing about your comment is you consider Netflix a streaming-only service. Kudos to Netflix for being ahead of the curve here, despite the fact that streaming is much harder to implement and probably less profitable than their core DVD rental business.

Actually their core DVD is less profitable. It costs them something like $1 to send you a DVD, and a nickel to stream you a movie.

Notice that the Netflix site actually hides their premium packages (3+ disks at a time). People who aggressively watch and return DVDs to Netflix probably cost the company money.

Are they getting special EC2 negotiated rates? A two hour movie streamed to me costs 5 cents in computing power and bandwidth AND Amazon is still making a profit?

[UPDATE] http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing

This says 8 cents per GB data transfer out.

Reed Hastings has on several occassions said it is about a nickel per movie.

“It costs us about a dollar, round-trip, to send DVDs by mail. It costs us less than a nickel to deliver by streaming.” Netflix now spends $600 million a year on the postal service [note to Jim Cramer: short USPS now!] and lots of hourly labor checking DVD quality.

http://newsonomics.com/reed-hastings-six-lessons-for-the-new...

Streaming is not hosted on Amazon, it's CDN based. http://qcontokyo.com/pdf/adriancockroft.pdf Slide 20ish

From your slide set, page 21 says Amazon receives a master tape from the studio then converts it to a high-quality format on s3, then stores in 50 different formats and pushes those to the CDN. The more times someone stream a specific movie, the more these "fixed" costs are recovered.

According to the chart you referenced, the CDN is still a part of the Amazon ecosystem.

Amazon Cloudfront is 3 cents a Gigabyte (once you're over 1000tb)

I only use Netflix for streaming and everyone I know has the same problem with Netflix that I do. The streaming content is absolutely LAME. Thanks for all the downvotes though, glad to know there is a Netflix fan club somewhere.

Did you read your post? The downvotes aren't due to some Netflix fan club. Talk about what you don't like about the selection on Netflix instead of just calling it and its movies terrible.

"I know a movie is bad if it's available for streaming on netflix."

Many of the best movies ever made are available for steaming.

"I only use Netflix for streaming and everyone I know has the same problem with Netflix that I do. The streaming content is absolutely LAME."

Yet you still use Netflix?

I disagree, they have some great stuff and it's getting better all the time as they sign new contracts.

In terms of discovering content, this is a great site for anyone who uses Netflix streaming regularly: http://instantwatcher.com/

You shouldn't have to look for stuff to watch. What you want to do is to rate content first and make up a que of stuff you want to watch. Then go through and sort the movies based upon what they think you will like (or just click the recommendations tab) and add those to the que. Just by doing that I have more than a year of dvd's and a good dozen in my streaming always waiting to be watched.

Netflix allows you to stream on up to 6 devices but only allows recommendations for one user. My moms crappy dramas and my action/adventure movies usually lead to Netflix giving the highest rating to Anime movies, a category no one in my family watches. After down voting some films it becomes obnoxious. I would rather sit on my couch and flip from CNN to FOX news at that point. Netflix is annoying at best.

There is vast room for improvement in their recommendation system. Vast room.

Having participated in the netflix recommendation contest I can say that the core engine is very good, but the presentation could be so much better.

Some instant ways to make things better:

- Let me know when a movie on my que is available for streaming - Let me know when a movie is about to be taken off the streaming list. - Let other profiles see if movies are available for streaming (even if they can't do it on their account) - Do some UI testing on the wii/ipad/etc apps and make them better. - Sort "new movies" and all of the other lists shown on my tv by what it thinks I will rate them so I see the better movies first - Let me connect with friends so I can see what they just watched. I will be socially more ok with watching a "ok" movie if I get to chat about it with someone else the next day.

Some bigger ideas to try: - When streaming a new TV show add one episode every Friday at 8 (or other time). I will be more interested in watching if there is just a little bit of content to keep up with. - Provide a "live" channel that continuously just plays through content such as TV shows, kids shows and movies etc. When I "watch" that channel it just ff'ds to where it would be at that point in the movie.

Rickdale has a point. The search functionality and the recommendation engine combined with small amount of content makes Netflix streaming a sucky service. U should not down vote someone just because you disagree with them.

You are not alone in your dissatisfaction. May I recommend using http://www.Jinni.com, the taste and mood basaed personalized recommendation service? The recommendations are amazing, you can connect it to your netflix account for discovery over the netflix catalog and your reccs won't be influenced by other household users (*Disclaimer - I work for Jinni.com, but seriously it's awesome!) Let me know what you think!

Also, the recommendation service doesn't work for a family that ranges in ages. Different people like different types of movies and shows and I find that the rating system is actually pointless because my older sister, my younger sister, and my mom all use the service extensively.

I downvoted you for not explaining better what you mean by spend more time looking for stuff. Are you a subscriber?

If you type in a movie/show's name, it shows up if it's available. And usually they show a list of similar shows/movies. And to save time, they even show a mini-synopsis when you just hover over any title (no click; no new page).

I've found some real gems by clicking around and hovering.

Btw, it's possible to rate a movie without having watched it (at least on my Roku). So you could go ahead and rate some of your fave movies and see what else they recommend.

And here's my chance to plug the BEST wildlife documentary I've ever watched (recommended by Netflix): http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/National-Geographic-Eternal-...

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