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C. I'm a member of Netflix's DVD service. It's not nearly as bad as their streaming selection, but it's not great, either. A sample of the DVD's I'd like to get but they have permanently unavailable: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)", "Gung Ho (1986)", "Flash Gordon (1980)", "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996)". My video store had all of these. If they didn't have something, they'd buy it so that I could rent it.

Again, you’re comparing apples and oranges. Netflix isn’t a rental service. They aren’t selling access to a deep and comprehensive catalog. It’s instead supposed to have an ever-churning supply of entertainment for a subscription fee, most of which you won’t care for, but enough of which you’ll like at any given time to make it worth your while. But if you look at actual rental services...
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): available to rent for $2.99
- Gung Ho (1986): available to rent for $2.99
- Flash Gordon (1980): admittedly not available to rent, but you can buy it for just $8.99
- Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996): available for free on YouTube

I obviously can’t speak towards the particulars of your local video store, but I can say with certainty that there’s no way its catalog was anywhere near as deep or had nearly as many high quality movies as what you can find today via streaming. Even if 90% of iTunes’ content happened to be crap, that’d still be 6.5K high quality films, which is more than you could actually display in any retail setting.

C. I'm a member of Netflix's DVD service. It's not nearly as bad as their streaming selection, but it's not great, either. A sample of the DVD's I'd like to get but they have permanently unavailable: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)", "Gung Ho (1986)", "Flash Gordon (1980)", "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996)". My video store had all of these. If they didn't have something, they'd buy it so that I could rent it.

Again, you’re comparing apples and oranges. Netflix isn’t a rental service. They aren’t selling access to a deep and comprehensive catalog. It’s instead supposed to have an ever-churning supply of entertainment for a subscription fee, most of which you won’t care for, but enough of which you’ll like at any given time to make it worth your while. But if you look at actual rental services...
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): available to rent for $2.99
- Gung Ho (1986): available to rent for $2.99
- Flash Gordon (1980): admittedly not available to rent, but you can buy it for just $8.99
- Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996): available for free on YouTube

I obviously can’t speak towards the particulars of your local video store, but I can say with certainty that there’s no way its catalog was anywhere near as deep or had nearly as many high quality movies as what you can find today via streaming. Even if 90% of iTunes’ content happened to be crap, that’d still be 6.5K high quality films, which is more than you could actually display in any retail setting.

C. I'm a member of Netflix's DVD service. It's not nearly as bad as their streaming selection, but it's not great, either. A sample of the DVD's I'd like to get but they have permanently unavailable: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)", "Gung Ho (1986)", "Flash Gordon (1980)", "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996)". My video store had all of these. If they didn't have something, they'd buy it so that I could rent it.

Again, you’re comparing apples and oranges. Netflix isn’t a rental service. They aren’t selling access to a deep and comprehensive catalog. It’s instead supposed to have an ever-churning supply of entertainment for a subscription fee, most of which you won’t care for, but enough of which you’ll like at any given time to make it worth your while. But if you look at actual rental services...
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): available to rent for $2.99
- Gung Ho (1986): available to rent for $2.99
- Flash Gordon (1980): admittedly not available to rent, but you can buy it for just $8.99
- Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996): available for free on YouTube

I obviously can’t speak towards the particulars of your local video store, but I can say with certainty that there’s no way its catalog was anywhere near as deep or had nearly as many high quality movies as what you can find today via streaming. Even if 90% of iTunes’ content happened to be crap, that’d still be 6.5K high quality films, which is more than you could actually display in any retail setting.

I treat Netflix like I treat YouTube; I only use it to watch the actual content, not browse the library.

Netflix is horrible at presenting their library and the interface is crap.

I can highly recommend https://www.justwatch.com/ instead.

It's called netFLIX. not netTV. not netSERIES. netFLIX. Where are the flix? Gone. They don't have any good ones.

Um, they still have good ones but they are just fewer. For example Captain America Civil War, Doctor Strange, Rogue One, etc are still on Netflix. Again "fewer" does not mean "none".

At least in my sphere of the world, JustWatch has cornered the market for streaming listings. There hasn't really been a need to use anything else. So while the MPAA's effort was half-hearted to begin with, there really isn't a need to keep it up when there are other, better options.

Moreover, the experience involves "having all the things in one place". No going to Netflix for this show (except that one episode where there's a license discrepancy over a song's usage so it's unavailable), then Hulu for that one, Crackle for the next, then CBS All Access for yet another one, HBO Go for still another...it doesn't matter what show someone wants to see, all the episodes are available, on demand.

I've found this website very useful as a single place to go to see what the different services have: https://www.justwatch.com/us

Finally, I've always kinda wondered what's in it for the sites who serve the streaming files. At least torrent sites can say "community" and "advertising/donation revenue", but the sites that serve the streams can claim none of the above, have to pay the bandwidth and server bills, and have a bullseye painted on them from the *AA...so, all of the liability, none of the perks. I don't get it :/.

Where's the money to pay for all the infrastructure required to stream? My guess is that it comes from ad revenue that's provided from state sponsored ads that contain zero-day exploits that most reputable ad services wouldn't show. It makes sense to me that these state sponsors or criminal organizations would be willing to pay higher premiums to serve these ads.

If it's not on Netflix or Amazon Prime Streaming, it doesn't exist.

Almost no one is going to discover it by accident and pay for it on a per-episode basis.

https://www.justwatch.com/us/t...

I have no idea if it is available easily via kodi 3rd party sources or not.

There's actually a web site that pulls in content from most streaming services and provides links to their web site. I works most the time and when it doesn't at least it helps me search for and find what I want to watch and where it's at. https://www.justwatch.com/us

I can really recommend https://www.justwatch.com/

It got filters for searching in several streaming services.

> Netflix has very little that would be playing currently on most cable channels people pay to watch

At one time, Netflix digital content was full of grade A movies instead of the mix of A, B, and C movies it has now.

Then the MPAA wised up and learned from the RIAA's deal with Apple's iTunes and decided they didn't want to cede content distribution to a single mammoth provider ultimately ending up with DRM-free music sales.

Netflix tried to split DVD and digital into two companies (Netflix and Qwikster) to allow them to bargain better with the studios, but the split failed and Netflix ultimately caved to MPAA demands to delay new releases on DVD in exchange for discounted DVD prices and the opportunity to be allowed to negotiate for streaming rights. (Notable competitor Redbox has not agreed to this release window and just pays retail price for new release DVDs.)

The studios renegotiated their contracts to make digital content prohibitively expensive for Netflix.

http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

This is why there are so many web sites with competing catalogs and no one place to easily watch anything you want. Hulu, Vudu (Wal-Mart), Amazon, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Funimation, Daisuki, iTunes, Crackle, Google Play, etc.

Some sites have tried to catalog into an easily searchable interface:
https://www.justwatch.com/
http://www.flixfindr.com/
http://www.canistream.it/

But still, there are some shows that are just not available anywhere (e.g. Rawhide tv western with Clint Eastwood).

tldr: Netflix would compete with cable television if it could.