Comparing quality of films in the iTunes & Netflix libraries | Hacker News Reader

Comparing quality of films in the iTunes & Netflix libraries

blog.goodfil.ms

79 pointsjohnb37 comments

Comments on the data visualization/interface:

1. Differentiate netflix/itunes by color or marker.

2. Find a better way to show density. Messing with the opacity would help, as would contrasting colors. Nothing fancy like 3D, just a way to convey the density of points.

3. K nearest neighbours is counter intuitive at first. A better layout/ui could have been that when you hover over a point, it shows up to the right as one big poster, without any neighbours.

You have good data that is trapped in that scatter plot.

Ahh the data points aren't disjoint sets with respect to netflix/itunes. Interesting.

Rolling with the whole talking to myself thing, I went investigating and implemented some of the suggestions with d3 and pilfered assets:

http://cold-mountain-3633.herokuapp.com/ (tested only in chrome)

1. Does "hover and update only one poster at a time" right. If goodfli.ms had built there website as something that communicated via json instead of HTML, I would have rolled this sort of page into the graphic as well:

http://goodfil.ms/film/89441-cars-2

2. Attempted to make a visual difference between netflix and itunes. I couldn't figure out how they determined whether something was in itunes, so the colors are more of a proof of concept than anything meaningful.

3. Rolled out a trick using fisheye distortion to allow people to explore density spatially via their mouse. To learn how it was done, think about how this works:

http://bost.ocks.org/mike/fisheye/

Overall, this is quick, dirty and probably missing the point of the original graphic.

Self serving plug: if you, fair reader, have data you want to be smeared in d3.js lipstick, I do requests: https://www.odesk.com/users/~~80bea7ba2750c34b

Doesn't it make sense that if there will be 100,000 available titles, then the average percentage will be even lower? Why is he trying to suggest that just because Netflix has more titles that means the quality is poorer so people watch fewer movies on Netflix?

That's true, but given that Netflix and iTunes have libraries of similar size (~10k), the comparison is meaningful. For subscription services, there's a lot publicised about the number of titles they offer for their fee/month, sometimes incorrectly.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1830524/the-juiced-misleading-siz...

The point is, even if Netflix did offer 100,000 titles, would they offer any more of the most popular films? I'll be running the numbers against Amazon prime and Lovefilm soon, so we'll see how they compare.

Now+Free makes up for a for a whole lot of quality.

Joking aside: Comparing only movies really skews the quality focus of the marketplaces to purchasers vice subscribers. Subscribers would be more motivated/less inhibited to watch TV series and would receive better value, than a purchaser. If that is true then iTunes would have a greater motivation to drive quality movies instead of series, and Netflix would have the inverse motivation.

I guess my point was that less arbitrary categorization would be a more accurate study. Delivery, Audience, Length, and Top Level Genres may provide more insight into the comparability of the 2 libraries.

One point that you may want to consider is that a Netflix subscription + selected a la carte services is a powerful and cost-effective combo. In my household, Amazon & iTunes aren't in competition per se with Netflix. Netflix gets its monthly fee regardless. When the 3 year old wants to watch something, it's Netflix. When I'm browsing around, it's often Netflix. When we want something in particular and won't wait, it's Amazon or iTunes a la carte.

While I wouldn't mind if Netflix would start offering a la carte as well, personally it's not much of a bother. The videos play either way.

So the whole "vs" approach may not be the most accurate. I'm not limited to any one of them, and with a month of Netflix costing less than a single top-tier movie "purchase" on iTunes it's not hard to justify a bit of mix and match.

Do you know anything that can help you search through all of the different libraries? Searching individually is a huge pain.

This site will search all of the streaming services in one interface, and I use it for Netflix/Amazon if there is a particular movie I'm looking for: http://www.canistream.it/

Thanks! That is exactly the type of thing I was looking for.

I have two issues with this:

1. Netflix doesn't get to choose what they can offer; the studios still dictate to them, and many times I know I can't find something just because some executive has a hair up his ass about "release dates".

2. You're assuming that popular == good.

Wife and I spend a few hundred dollars a year via itunes on shows and movies we love and want to own in high quality.

We also pay netflix under ten bucks a month and for that we save a few hundred dollars each month vs what it would cost to itunes all those shows.

Can anyone say how Amazon's streaming offering compares with netflix? Is it basically the same shows and movies (meaning we should go for one or the other?)

Amazon's catalog is smaller than Netflix'. I also find the discovery aspect is difficult. (i.e., you go to related recommendations and now you're out of the stuff that's available for free streaming to Prime members.) I signed up for Prime when I dropped Netflix streaming and I've found it to be mostly a disappointment in that respect--although the free second day shipping has been a bigger feature in practice than I expected it to be so I'm happy on net.

This would be more interesting if goodfil.ms actually had TV shows. The top 40 or so of my Netflix instant streaming are TV shows and I've already watched a ton previously.

Movies, I don't care so much about... otherwise, I'd just use Redbox.

Does anyone know of a site that shows this sort of data with Amazon Prime movies?

I'm curious about that too. I browsed a bit around Amazon Instant after updating my PS3 yesterday and was surprised by the great selection of TV shows and films, way better than both iTunes and NetFlix. Too bad streaming is not actually available yet here in Brazil :/

We're going to add it soon. We just wanted to ship what we've got now.

Sometimes it's a little tricky for us to gauge what's popular with streaming, as we don't get many of the options down in Australia.

I've found Apple and Amazon beat Netflix on content, and Amazon always beats Apple on price.

Whenever I want to watch something I search for it on Netflix, Amazon then iTunes in that order. I've found its worth it to keep a Netflix account around because:

1. A few times a month they actually have something I want to watch. It doesn't take very many occurrences of this to save me money over Amazon/iTunes.

2. Occasionally I just want to watch something, and don't really care what. Its nice to have a decent sized library of content that is available at no additional cost.

Yeah, it doesn't take much to break even on Netflix at $7 a month. They have BBC Sherlock for instance, which iTunes wants $7 an episode for. So that's three months right there.

As a person that watches Netflix almost every single night, for often times hours on end, how does Netflix's unlimited streaming compare in price to Apple's offering?

The 8 or whatever dollars a month is VERY well used by me; and, I go to vudu or Red box for the things I might want to watch that aren't available.

If you watch hours a night and find content on Netflix (or some other all you can eat streaming service) that meets your requirements, that's going to win hands down against an a la carte service every time. Personally, my viewing is more on the order of 5 or 6 hours a week so I tend to gravitate towards services that let me buy exactly what I want even if at a premium. I dropped Netflix streaming when they changed the pricing (I still have the 2 DVD per month plan) and occasionally am tempted to resubscribe but never quite get around to it.

I haven't tried Netflix, but I love that I can now see all the films in my queue that are available on iTunes.

I'd like to see netflix's library compared with films on imdb above a certain rating and number of reviewers. I'm pretty sure you'd see similar numbers like %1.5. Would also be interesting to filter this by dates. I'm sure there aren't many new movies on Netflix of high quality. Kind of a shame.

Here: http://instantwatcher.com/

I wrote a web app that will automate iTunes movies & shows searches for you. I wrote it to know when Game of Thrones Season 2 is available on iTunes (among other things).

http://upcoming.anticlever.com/

What useless data points, totally subjective and boil down to popularity almost immediately.

Agreed. I don't have that much time to watch Netflix, but just seeing what my kids scroll past really tempts me. My tastes just differ: I'd really like to watch the old 60s "Thunderbirds Are Go!" for example.

Good to see that "Aguirre Wrath of God" is tops in quality and rewatchability.

Agreed!

I'm really interested in watching this space, in Australia there's a few Netflix competitors (QFlicks I think, which I have on my PS3), and there's literally very little of interest in their library.

On the other hand, the Apple TV is $110 now, and the library is quite large, and the quality is great!

We don't have Netflix in Australia so it's pretty much a one man show in terms of viable alternatives.

It depends on how much you watch but for most, these two optons can't even be compared cost wise. Unless you watch less than 2 movies per month, the Netflix is way more cost effective as compared to iTunes at least here in the US.

The size of the library is important, but more relevant is creating value for the customer. In my case, both Netflix and iTunes shit the bed. I want an interface where my wife and I can sit on the couch and collectively pick out a movie to watch. iTunes and AppleTV offer a large catalogue, but never "sells" the movie. There are no user ratings or any other information to give us confidence (false or otherwise) to buy. Content is available, but not discoverable in iTunes. Netflix was once solid, but they oversimplified the interface and now there is no way to browse by genre.

That being said, I think there is an opportunity for something like "goodfilms", but I signed up and it combines the worst parts of itunes with the worst parts of netflix. I am not sure who it helps. Even the cute chart they present is deeply flawed from a UI perspective. They could have at least color coded the dots.

iTunes has user ratings and reviews, although they seem to be read-only on the Apple TV (I believe you need iTunes to write your own). You can't sort by user rating, which is also a problem in the app stores.

Netflix on the Apple TV has genre listings — I believe Apple designed the interface, so it may be a little different from other versions.

If Netflix would give me a $20 / month streaming option that enabled me to get access to a good library of movies, I'd pay it without hesitation. Their selection is shockingly horrible. Feels like walking into a second rate VHS rental store in the 1980s.

This a hundred times. I just set up my parents with a Hulu account so that my dad could devour what little of the criterion collection he hasn't already seen at least twice. If Netflix could find a way to offer all these, with commentary or other dvd features, I'd say there's a pretty healthy market. Evens if that market is relatively small, it's the leg up they need against Hulu's (and iTunes, Amazon, etc) movie offerings.

Buried for not being an analysis of PICTURE quality.

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