{"id":16275,"date":"2012-06-18T05:12:48","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T10:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=16275"},"modified":"2012-06-18T05:18:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T10:18:13","slug":"the-slow-death-of-netflix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=16275","title":{"rendered":"The Slow Death of Netflix"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’m watching the latest Errant Signal<\/a>, which is about Max Payne 3. During the vid, Chris mentions Man On Fire<\/a>. I’ve never seen that movie, but I do remember wanting to check it out at some point. <\/p>\n

I hop over to Netflix and do a search… <\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hmph. Lame. The movie came out eight years ago. What are you guys waiting for?<\/p>\n

But this movie reminds me of another one I’d wanted to see, Book of Eli<\/a>. I’ve heard it’s not very good, but I’m willing to give it a go just to see Denzel do his thing. <\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fine. Whatever. Miami Vice<\/a> is also cited as an obvious influence for Max Payne 3. I should give that a look. I was a teen in the 80’s, and some retro-kitsch might be fun. <\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

The last movie Chris cites is Domino<\/a>. That’s seven years old so…<\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

Come on<\/strong>. Well, I’ve got the Netflix window open. Let’s see if I can find something. I really wanted to see Inglourious Basterds<\/a> when it came out. It’s only three years old but it might-<\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

X-Men First Class<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

Okay. That one was only a year old and I admit it was a bit of a longshot. Inception<\/a>? <\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

I need to go back further. At least 2 or 3 years. How about Repo Men<\/a>? Clash of the Titans<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

Strangely enough, Netflix has Iron Man 2<\/a>. It’s a really good movie, but I’ve already seen it three or four times, mostly due to the fact that it’s one of the few titles on Netflix that I want to see. I really am in the mood for something new right now. <\/p>\n

Heck, I’ll even watch something purportedly crappy, like The Losers<\/a>. Or maybe something only partly interesting to me, like Splice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Speaking of 80’s kitsch, how about The A-Team<\/a>? Might be fun to see Liam Neeson try to carry ninety minutes of dumb action schlock all by himself.<\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m going to hate myself for asking but… Ghost Rider<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Whew.<\/p>\n

Oh! But that makes me think of Nick Cage’s Bad Lieutenant<\/a>. I know<\/em> I saw that on Netflix at one point. MovieBob even said it was worth a look<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Not available for streaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

So I guess they REMOVED that one? <\/p>\n

I want to stress that I’m not cherry-picking here. I really am looking for a movie and I really am getting bupkis for every single attempt. There are good movies here, but not many, and I’ve pretty much seen them all by this point. <\/p>\n

I’ll go for a couple of weeks without checking Netflix. Then when I come back I’ll check out the “what’s new” lineup and find it almost unchanged. As far as I can tell, their library of streaming content is shrinking. They are pulling movies faster than they’re adding them. (At least if we’re talking real<\/strong> movies. They have a double helping of crappy B-movie schlock and abominable title-knockoffs like “Transmorphers<\/a>“. Ugh. Maybe the total supply of long-tail crud is expanding, but the supply of recognizable movies with recognizable stars seems to be dwindling.) <\/p>\n

As someone pointed out on Twitter, Netflix does have a good supply of oddball indie flicks and experimental stuff. Most of those are about dysfunctional urban twenty-somethings struggling against utterly banal and infantile problems, most of which are their own doing. I didn’t even like that stuff when I was a twenty-something myself. What I really dig is Sci-fi, and there is very little “indie sci-fi” in the world, and I’ve already picked over what little exists on Netflix. Protip: Moon<\/a> is a darn good movie if you like your sci-fi slow and thinky. I watched it last year on Netflix, although I see it’s gone now. <\/p>\n

I know, I know. Broaden my horizons and all that. I’m sure there are good movies in other genres. The problems with finding them is this:<\/p>\n

netflix_dumb.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

“Heather” in this case is the name Netflix has for my entire family<\/em>. My son is really into Mythbusters. My daughters are into laugh-track faux-comedy like Wizards of Waverly Place<\/em>, iCarly<\/em>, and Ned’s Declassified Not-funny Show<\/em>. They also watch a lot of Inspector Poirot<\/em>, Mrs. Marple<\/em>, and Dr. Who with their mother. When she’s watching without the kids, my wife is into Korean dramas. (She likes how Korean shows have a fixed arc, like Anime, and don’t just introduce a premise and beat it into the ground like American shows do.) All of them watch varying genres of Anime. <\/p>\n

And then once every couple of weeks I show up and try to watch something with superheros, space aliens, kung-fu, or people shooting each other. Because I’m all about the peace and love.<\/p>\n

The upshot is that Netflix insists on treating the five of us as a single person, which is a stupid and impossible task. <\/p>\n

(And before you tell me about sub-accounts: I don’t think sub-accounts work with streaming content, only discs. More importantly, logging in and out of sub-accounts is very inconvenient and tedious, particularly on the Wii. For a lot of reasons, sub-accounts aren’t really useful to us, and the only benefit they would offer is that they would make Netflix less stupid about suggesting and rating things for us. I don’t want Netflix to suggest or rate things for me. I can do my own thinking, thank you, as long as I can get to the information.) <\/p>\n

Netflix provides a rating based on what Netflix THINKS our gestalt viewer would THINK of the movie. This is a computer making a guess about the subjective preferences of someone who doesn’t exist. That might as well be a random number. The more interesting and useful number – the one that describes what everyone else in the world thought of the movie – is only available if I click through. This slows down my search, which is already slow enough because of how little information Netflix packs on screen.<\/p>\n

netflix_browse.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

That’s a good browsing system for on the Wii, but when I’m browsing on my PC that’s a ridiculous<\/em> waste of screen space. <\/p>\n

The point is, two years ago I could enter the name of a two-year-old movie and have a better than even chance of finding it available for instant view. Now the library feels empty and it’s a pain in the ass to dig around to find something worthwhile that I might have overlooked. I usually get bored after ten minutes of this and go back to playing videogames. <\/p>\n

I know most of this problem is caused by the fact that movie studios are pulling their stuff from Netflix because they don’t want to share all those sweet-sweet royalties with Netflix. So instead of making a small percent of my monthly subscription fee, they are now making 100% of… nothing. <\/p>\n

I know there’s Amazon movie-watch service thing<\/em>. But that doesn’t work on the XBox 360 or the Wii. Hulu works, but that’s mostly TV shows and I never want to watch TV shows. Also, I don’t like paying for individual titles unless I’m almost sure<\/em> I’m going to like it. With Netflix, I paid a flat fee and was able to sample things until I found something I liked. Is a movie slow? Boring? Preachy? Stupid? No problem. I can just hit the back button and try again. This is less attractive if every movie costs me $4 and I have to watch it in a fixed timeframe. Also, we already have Hulu and Netflix. I’m not interested in making a bunch more accounts and paying a bunch more monthly fees just to chase down all this scattered content. This would be like if, when television was rising to replace the radio as the dominant form of entertainment, TV stations suddenly pulled the plug and announced their shows were all going to be on their own proprietary brand of television. <\/p>\n

This is much less about price than it is about convenience. Scrupulous people like me are just going without. Everyone else is routing around this stupidity with torrents. I’m looking forward to the point where some of the mummified old-media relics retire and movie studios are run by people who have used the internet. I have money to spend and movies I want to see, but there’s only so much hassle I’m willing to endure to make this transaction happen. <\/p>\n

I really thought Netflix was going to be the Wal-Mart of digital movies. But then the studios pulled their wares from the shelves so they could sell stuff out of their garage. I’m sure they’re sitting in the front yard now, scowling at the lack of customers and cursing those danged pirates for ruining everything. <\/p>\n

Have fun, morons. In the meantime, I’ll be playing videogames. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’m watching the latest Errant Signal, which is about Max Payne 3. During the vid, Chris mentions Man On Fire. I’ve never seen that movie, but I do remember wanting to check it out at some point. I hop over to Netflix and do a search…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}