Comment by calvinmorrison | Hacker News Reader

Comment by calvinmorrison | Hacker News Reader

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Here's what I don't get... there's more media than EVER in history (well, by definition there always will be). Netflix started out as a place I could get any movie. I remember my neighbor got "Kellys Heros" in the mail from Netflix and we ate Chinese Food. I felt bad but they offered it. In my family we had no TV and NEVER got takeout. To this day, it's one of my favorite flicks.

So many films, so cheaply to be had. Clint Eastwood did what, 500 films? Surely they can fill up a good catalog.

All this spending on Netflix's own studio is ludicrous cheap-money investment banking startup lunacy.

Just give me a big catalog of films, and give me all the stupid tv shows too. MASH, The Office, whatever. Pay HBO for sopranos and move on.

Or, just be a carrier. That's what Netflix is good at. Delivering reliable and easy to access, good quality streaming. Don't worry about the rest. I love my Roku because I can search and it'll tell me what service has the film or show I want to see. There's a good number of Cary Grant films I get for free consistently.

All that to say, Netflix seems to spend money on stupid stuff.

Studios launched their own streaming services, and will not allow Netflix to carry their shows and movies. They want that money for themselves.

Which is why they should focus on being a carrier. Get the netflix catalog + if you want HBO you cant get a package for X price. Their expertise is in streaming. They should have been selling the technology stack to Paramount, Disney, CBS, whoever.

I think Amazon might be doing what you're describing. You can sign up for Showtime, Starz, AMC, etc inside of Prime Video and get all the content in one interface. But HBO for example has pulled their stuff, so sometimes companies just don't want to play together.

Edit: You know who else is doing this? Cable companies! You can sign up for HBO and get that content right in your Xfinity app, or search/browse on your set-top box and stream "on demand".

I’ve seen a lot of negativity about Netflix’s library lately in quite a few comments. And I just don’t quite get it. Netflix is still the one service I don’t even consider canceling, because of the breadth of the library: they have American sci-fi, Korean dramas, Danish comedy, and Japanese anime. Hollywood movies now are all the same — especially the superhero movies — but international stuff is different. Am I just on the long tail?

I think its a recency bias. Netflix has produced some very good content in the past like House of Cards, Dark, and Black Mirror, but recently it has not produced anything noteworthy at all.

Personally, the fact they havent even made a new season of Black Mirror in years is offensive enough to me. Like its such a cultural hit. Double down and make more of that instead of giving us dumb stuff like the Floor is Lava.

Calling it a recency bias implies that people are incorrectly concluding Netflix doesn't produce good content because they are biased to think of recent productions. But Netflix subscribers pay monthly, they are entitled to continual good content. If you've already seen the good stuff Netflix has made, why would you keep paying for the trash?

I think it’s more likely that the Netflix algorithm has failed you than you having seen all the good content. Have you seen Borgen and Hotel del Luna and Shaun the Sheep and Midnight Diner and Kath & Kim? Have you even heard of any of them?

Those are all different genres, made in different countries. Algorithms tend to want to match us to more of the same. But just because I like South Park does not mean I want to see a bunch of manatee jokes on Family Guy, right?

No, I don't subscribe to Netflix or watch their content. I just think it's not correct to say that it's a "recency bias" if someone complains that Netflix has bad content.

Bias may be the wrong word but i didnt intend to make it sound like an excuse for Netflix - just a reason why consumers think Netflix sucks. Trust me, i have cancelled Netflix precisely because it has stopped producing as much good content.

Technically, wasn't Black Mirror a BBC production, but then Netflix paid to have an additional season made. Plus, a holiday special IIRC. If you can't get the original production peeps to do more Black Mirror, then it's not really going to be the same. Something along the lines of maybe, but at that point, it's not the same so why bother?

> Personally, the fact they havent even made a new season of Black Mirror in years is offensive enough to me. Like its such a cultural hit. Double down and make more of that instead of giving us dumb stuff like the Floor is Lava.

This is due to a row over rights as well as Charlie Brooker's working on other things and hesitancy to create a new series in the first place. But a new series did get announced last month, so...

I much prefer the "British model" of slow releases over longer spans of time to the "American model" of just endlessly cranking out stuff like a factory.

Netflix has a great international catalogue, and unlike torrented content, it's all reasonably well subtitled.

However, their English language catalogue gets worse by the day.

> it's all reasonably well subtitled

It's not bad if you want full subtitles, if they're available in the language you want. The lack of forced subs however is quite annoying.

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