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Comment by SL61 | Hacker News Reader

> This is why the DVD service had so many more titles than the streaming service. At least when I was actively using it.

It still does. Just think of a movie or show and search for it, and they'll probably have it, although they seem to be missing the occasional season.

I think the DVD site would still be popular if more people were aware of the size of its catalog. Most probably assume it has the same catalog as the streaming service.

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I think it would be popular if they even attempted to grow that arm of the business. Netflix made it obvious they had zero interest in it when they tried to spin it off into Qwikster.

It would still be alive if it spun it off. I still don’t get what was achieved keeping it in one company

This is one of my general complaints about modern capitalism; a conglomerate will close a mattress factory because their shoe line had a bad quarter.

Investors should be diversified; firms should be specialized.

It's the quality of the image for me. I remember when DVD looked phenomenal (because compared to broadcast and VHS it was) but now it feels barely watchable.

Netflix has Blurays now, which look much better than over-compressed streaming to me.

They've had Blurays for what, 15 years now?

Agree that streaming never looks as good as what I get from Bluray.

That's why you go for the Blu-Ray plan.

How many people even own a DVD player anymore? That business has been on life support for years. There's nothing Netflix could do to revitalize it.

Judging from the crazy long waitlist every time my local library gets a popular movie, I'd wager a lot of people own DVD players.

If you own a PlayStation or Xbox, you own a DVD player.

Well, as long as they aren't one of the discless variants, anyway.

Oops. I just realized that I upgraded to one of the discloses variants. Its been months (years?) Since I bought it.

And here I thought I should go check out Netflix DVD catalog before it closes for good in September.

Lots of older people, plus homes in rural areas that don't have the best broadband

Some films are just not available for streaming. I used the Netflix disc mailer service relatively recently for this reason. It was a pretty good "catch all" for hard-to-find titles not on one of the major streaming subscription services and not available for streaming rental.

I actually didn't realize this. I absolutely would have been using it all along if I realized that the catalog was still good. Oh well.

Lots of people don't own a disk player anymore.

Players are cheap enough you could include one with a subscription.

For some reason, I had thought they already closed this side of the business.

I certainly assumed that its catalog was very similar, if not identical.

Not even close. There's so much more on the DVD service than the streaming side.

To me, the quality of the content was better in the DVD service.

I watch a couple of DVDs from Netflix each week. I haven't streamed anything from Netflix since 2020.

> There's so much more on the DVD service than the streaming side

This is something I've wondered about. I've never subscribed to either CDs or streaming but my impression of streaming is that there are hundreds of movies not tens of thousands. Wikipedia says that in 2005 Netflix had 35,000 different movies on disk, presumably many more by now. How many different titles does Netflix streaming have for the USA service ?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1110424/svod-content-cat...

That site claims that they've got about 3600 TV series and 3700 movies in their US streaming catalog, as of January 2023.

Interesting, thanks. I certainly don't know this but my impression is that outside of the US (specifically in New Zealand) the Netflix catalogue would be significantly smaller than that, around 1/10th of both categories ? ... this is just based on sitting in hotel rooms thumbing through the menu so it's possible my sense of what's available is off.

Netflix puts you in a bubble very quickly, and unless you specifically search for titles outside it you might not notice that a lot of the available titles never show up in any of the menus.

I purposefully create multiple Netflix profiles for myself to avoid that bubble. When I notice I keep seeing the same titles or when I notice one genre is taking over (started watching anime on Netflix recently - bad idea, every row is now nothing but anime) I make a new profile to start fresh. Usually find tons of new things I was missing out on.

Is there an analogous service, or are you SOL with them shutting down?

Your local public library likely has a decent selection of movies on DVD and with inter-library loan they can probably get you just about anything you want. I’m in the midst of transitioning my Netflix DVD queue into a list on the library’s catalog and thusfar, I’ve only had one movie/TV show (Rammbock) not show up in the local library system’s catalog.

California folks, worth knowing is that most (if not all) library systems in California will give a card to anyone with a California ID, even if they don’t live in district. When I lived in Santa Monica, I had cards for Santa Monica, LA County, LA City, Orange County and Beverly Hills.

Your local public library likely has a decent selection of movies on DVD and with inter-library loan they can probably get you just about anything you want.

My previous city library was a pretty good supplement to Netflix. But my new city only has new stuff. An only does inter-library loans for printed material.

West coast libraries are unusually well stocked for DVDs because occasionally (before streaming) a movie or other entertainment company will get caught doing some minor misdeed, and was able to pay the fine by dumping DVDs on rural library systems.

I finished my transition from a dvd netflix queue to creating a list on the local library system’s online catalog. I’m in suburban Chicago and of the 149 titles (a bit more when measured in DVDs) in my queue, only two were not available (The Secret Policemen’s Last Ball and Rammbock). I would have kept doing my $7.99 a month for potentially forever, but the announcement managed to get me to empty my queue a lot faster.

There's Redbox for newer stuff, libraries, purchasing new or used, and piracy. Which maybe sounds like a lot but adds up to there's no service where you can just subscribe monthly and rent pretty much anything in print with a search and a mouse click as used to be the case with Netflix. So you're not exactly SOL but there's a lot more friction now and I expect a lot more people will just shrug and watch whatever is available for subscription streaming (as a lot of people won't even buy a la carte streaming).

Pretty much SOL.

I don't mind buying the movies, but Netflix has some movies that aren't anywhere. Not even on ebay.

No: https://www.store-3d-blurayrental.com/

https://www.store-3d-blurayrental.com/

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