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I gamed the rating of a movie on Netflix, just for kicks. King Kung Fu had a pretty low rating, mostly contributions of 1 star from a number of reviewers. So, to get a feel for the size of the denominator, I had about 6 or 7 friends rate it five star. Sure enough, it was enough to boost it a five tenths of a point.

Is the film any good? I dunno. It's 71 in my queue though.

Do people fundamentally change when they have more than one option to choose? I would have guessed rarely. Just because people have more choices does not mean they make statistically random choices. People have far greater psychological issues about what they choose and why they choose them than just availability. People like to be on the bandwagon and choose what their friends do, they like to choose things they've heard of and feel safe about, what's been recently marketed to them, comfort foods vs. healthy foods, etc.

You are missing the point altogether; people buy blockbusters because they want something and that is what is usually made available to them. The people that are settling and buying media for lack of better choices will be served by a wider variety of products and more obscure/less popular ones will get purchased when otherwise they would not. Take a look at the netflix top 100 http://www.netflix.com/Top100? the only picture in the top 10 that was produced in the last year and a half is "No Country for Old Men" hardly your typical blockbuster.

Did I mention Netflix?

Sure, you mentioned Netflix... but if I want to watch "live" movies from Netflix, I'm screwed 'cause of my hearing... It's the biggest reason I don't use 'em.

Got a better suggestion for legal online movie viewing for a deaf guy?

"Although Netflix's instant watch service only officially supports Windows and Mac"
That's funny, because when I click on that link, I get a page that says

Our apologies - instant watching is currently not supported for Macintosh.

So if it is officially supported, but not currently supported, then, ... what am I missing?

Sure, you can play it in Parallels or BootCamp if you have XP or Vista installed on your Mac- doesn't count. If Netflix supports instant viewing on Mac, I shouldn't have to load Windows for it to work.

I've heard rumors of it working with Silverlight, but have yet to see it work. And why the hell didn't Netflix use a Flash player?

But they have Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter available for streaming, what else could you want?

Hard to get excited when I still can't watch it on my mac (PowerPC) just as it was with the Olympics.

Don't get exited, then. Instead, write to Netflix and let them know that you, and the millions of other Ubuntu, PowerPC, Fedora, and other non-Windows || Intel Mac _still_ cannot use their service. Let them know that they need a cross-platform solution, not a pick-and-choose platform solution. Here is their address:
http://www.netflix.com/ContactUs

System requirements clearly state IE6 or FF2+. There's no theory about it.

http://www.netflix.com/WiMessage?msg=51

It's opt-in. Go here: http://www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin

As if there were any competition to be unfair to...

Yeah, if only there were other VOD providers.

Or, get an unlimited borrowing plan and take out a bunch of movies at a time.

Netflix went dark. Maybe your spammers are all using their servers. They claim to be up now so maybe your spam will be back.

However, I'm not sure if you can use the same account with the 360 and with Roku.

From their help files: 1-disc plans may watch on one device at a time, 2-disc plans on up to two devices at the same time, 3-disc plans on up to three devices, and plans with four or more discs on up to four devices simultaneously.

Also, you can apparently deactivate a device at any time - so, if you're on the 1-disc plan and want to use your Xbox, you'd just deactivate the Roku box. Can't confirm as this little nugget of info came from a forum and I can't test it, but sounds logical.

Under your account there should be a profiles link, or here's the direct one: http://www.netflix.com/ViewProfiles?lnkctr=yas_profiles

I love the feature, and like others, wrote to say I'd be canceling without it. Letting my wife and I keep separate queues and not constantly re-shuffle our lists is great as we have wildly different tastes in movies.

The same day as the notice, an internet petition to save the profiles feature has 900+ signatures! If you're pissed, add your name to the list:

http://www.petitiononline.com/netflix0/petition.html

Also, don't forget to send Netflix a personal "suggestion" letting them know just how upset you are by this supposed "improved customer experience:"

http://www.netflix.com/Suggest?type=2&lnkctr=cu_suggest

I recommend that we all write and let them know that we're pissed off:

http://www.netflix.com/Suggest?type=2&lnkctr=cu_suggest

If it's a tiny percentage that use this feature, as they claim, this won't be a nuisance. If they are lying and simply want people who use seperate queues to fork over extra for new accounts, well, then they'll be getting a lot of e-mail.

Here's what I sent them:

To Whom it May Concern:

I've just recently read that you will soon be discontinuing your multiple profiles feature for Netflix.

I have to say, first of all, that many of my friends who use Netflix chose the service because they could easily share it with their families in a manageable way (multiple queues). This feature sets Netflix apart from other online rental services that don't do the same. In essence it differentiates your business and thusly attracts customers who otherwise might go elsewhere.

I think that removing this feature is a grave mistake and will significantly hinder the attractiveness of the service to myself and others. In fact, after September, I may consider moving to another service. I hate to say so, but I feel that removing this feature simply shows that Netflix isn't listening to its customers. Many already venting their frustration at popular websites: http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/06/19/0337233.shtml. To quote one commenter: "Did they research how much this would piss off the current customers? It is coming off like they don't care."

I understand that this feature requires additional maintenance on the part of programmers; but, any feature that attracts people to one site versus another would require this effort. I'm hoping that this isn't a business push to try and get families to break their queues into separate accounts as a way to squeeze extra money from the customers, but without any justification for this move (other than "to better serve our customers"), I can only speculate that the decision has been made to drive up the bottom line at the cost of current members.

Obviously, at some point a decision has been made, and there may be little that can be done to change it. Nevertheless, if come September my account will only support one queue, I will most likely take my business elsewhere.

Sincerely,
~[name hidden to protect the innocent]

The only way Netflix can get away with such a downgrade in service is that they've calculated the number of people that actually utilize that service and use that number to estimate the impact on general customer satisfaction and attrition - apparently it is a small percentage of users that employ multiple profiles. This is not surprising, most users probably have no idea how to set up multiple profiles and may be intimated by the added layer of complexity. The /. cohort represents a heavily biased but likely very small proportion of power-users that enjoy the profiles feature (I sure do!/did). There are a lot of insightful comments on this post, but I wonder if we're also taking the time to be as (if not more) outspoken where it matters. We're clearly a small cog in the Netflix machine, but perhaps if we squeak loudly enough we'll garner some attention.

Thursday, June 19, 2008 Profiles feature going away
As a Netflix product manager I'm tasked with the wonderful job of helping members find movies they'll love. But today my job is more challenging as we've decided to terminate the profiles feature on September 1. Please know that the motivation is solely driven by keeping our service as simple and as easy to use as possible. Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome, having to consistently log in and out of the website.

Continuing to maintain the profiles feature for the passionate few who use it (including myself) distracts us from the mission of presenting to all our members the easiest way to find the best titles for them from the 100k plus on DVD and the 10k plus available instantly.

We will do our best to find better ways for families to share accounts than the existing profiles feature and will continue to invest in improving the website experience in many different ways.

- Todd

Even though they've said the decision is final, I suggest commenting directly on the Netflix blog post as hundreds of others are doing...

I used this link: http://www.netflix.com/Suggest?type=2&lnkctr=cu_suggest

If you're pissed about this like I am, then give them a call. Explain to them that you find this feature extremely useful (or even necessary for your continued use of their service) and the removal of the feature will likely result in you leaving their service. I called last night, and the CSR I spoke to said that she was upset about the removal of the feature as well, it was something she used.
1-888-638-3549
The FAQ entry about this is at http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962
If you hit that link while logged into your Netflix account, it will show your customer ID, which you can enter while calling.

I agree. Unfortuantely, there doesn't seem to be a way to respond directly to their email, but they do have a suggestions page.

I have "suggested" that they keep this feature, and "suggested" that I will cancel my service or significantly reduce it if they do not.

I don't know if they will actually read and heed them or not, but it's worth a shot:

http://www.netflix.com/Suggest?type=2&lnkctr=cu_suggest

They have a blog post about the change with a string of angry comments. You could try leaving a comment there. It will probably do as much good as anything else.

The Netflix email:

Important News Regarding Netflix Profiles

Dear (my name),

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

- The Netflix Team

My reply that I sent them:

I am quite upset at your decision to remove Netflix Profiles. It is one of the features I use very often to queue movies for my daughter separately from ours. I fail to see how removing this valuable feature, which is most certainly NOT an improvement, will help you to "continue to improve the Netflix website" as your public relations doublespeak explains it. By removing it, you will cause me to have to manually shuffle my queue by hand every time she sends a disc back - what an inconvenience! That is NOT an improvement.

I have been a Netflix customer for many years now, however this decision taken by you is causing me to reconsider that, and perhaps search out a competitor that DOES offer this feature. If there aren't any competitors currently out there that do offer it, I'm sure that will change shortly once they get wind of your ill-advised decision.

That seems like a gross exaggeration.

Check out http://www.netflix.com/WatchNow

I see a whole bunch of mainstream movies & TV shows there.

(I have never used the streaming, since I'm on a Mac. I actually wish they'd give, or sell heavily discounted, one of these to those of us who have been unable to watch streamed stuff since we're on a Mac.. Or really, I wish the Tivo/Netflix deal had gone through and I could watch on my existing Tivos.)

Do these movies and TV episodes have subtitles or closed captions?

Foreign-language titles always display subtitles in English. English language titles do not have subtitle options. None of the movies and TV episodes that you can watch instantly offer closed captioning.

Which sucks for me and my wife - English is not our first language and CC for the hearing impaired helps us out a lot when one is starting to learn the language.

I would love to get on of these boxes but this is a deal breaker for me; I've been speaking English for 15 years, I don't need CC but my wife benefits greatly from it...

I suggest watching the documentary, "Future of Food"(requires NetFlix account). The documentary is fairly one-sided, but describes the tactics that have been used.

Alternate movie site: http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

yes this data is useful, but you can't use it in the contest:
http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse

see also:
http://www.netflixprize.com/community/viewtopic.php?id=98
http://www.netflixprize.com/community/viewtopic.php?id=20
http://www.netflixprize.com/community/viewtopic.php?id=14

note that this makes sense. more/better data would help ANY decent algorithm. they want a better one, and they're judging you on a baseline. so they'd naturally limit your input options.

We shouldn't hope to call the US a democracy--it's a democratic republic.

On the other hand, our founding fathers didn't trust the uneducated masses, either. We have a largely unelected judiciary...

Judges were considered Officers of the Union by the Constitutional Convention, and were thus appointed like "diplomats". However, our founding fathers wanted to guarantee these officers functioned independently of the other two branches, and thus wrote the station into the Constitution*. The power of judicial review doesn't explicitly exist in the Constitution; it was established several years afterwards in a political coup.**

...even the Senate was not originally elected. The popularly elected House then was only given a term of 2 years vs 6 in the Senate!

The Senate was an institution of state sovereignty, not popular sovereignty. Even so, Senators were indirectly elected by the state legislatures.

--
* In fact, the Judiciary Branch was seen as such an impotent institution that it had three Chief Justices in its first 12 years. (Compare with Marshall's stint of 34 years).

** PBS published a great documentary about the SCOTUS, which I highly recommend.

http://www.netflix.com/BrowseSelection?sgid=gev

The new releases list still works, they've only stopped linking to it from the new releases page.

http://www.netflix.com/AllNewReleases?lnkctr=NavAllNewReleases

Seriously, the "Watch Instantly" selection sucks. I have 24hr/mo and I think I've used maybe 24 hours since I signed up for the service 6 months ago.

I'm in a similar situation to you. I've watched a few streaming videos from Netflix (BBC's The Office, Super Size Me, Maxed Out, and a few others), but most of the items in my queue are not available for streaming. Even when they are, it's not a comfortable way for me to watch videos. I'm in the minority of folks with a Windows Media Center PC connected to my TV, and most of the time when I want to watch videos on a PC I either watch them through Media Center or stream them to my Xbox 360. In either case, I get a nice full-screen display on my TV with standard media functionality (FF/Rew/Pause/etc) via remote control. To stream a Netflix movie, I have to dig out my PC's keyboard and mouse and watch from a browser. While I can still play the movie full-screen, I can't fast forward, rewind, pause, stop, or start with a remote control, and that sucks. I realize LG is planning a set top box specifically for Netflix, but I really don't want yet another box in my media cabinet.

Seriously, the "Watch Instantly" selection sucks. I have 24hr/mo and I think I've used maybe 24 hours since I signed up for the service 6 months ago.

I'm in a similar situation to you. I've watched a few streaming videos from Netflix (BBC's The Office, Super Size Me, Maxed Out, and a few others), but most of the items in my queue are not available for streaming. Even when they are, it's not a comfortable way for me to watch videos. I'm in the minority of folks with a Windows Media Center PC connected to my TV, and most of the time when I want to watch videos on a PC I either watch them through Media Center or stream them to my Xbox 360. In either case, I get a nice full-screen display on my TV with standard media functionality (FF/Rew/Pause/etc) via remote control. To stream a Netflix movie, I have to dig out my PC's keyboard and mouse and watch from a browser. While I can still play the movie full-screen, I can't fast forward, rewind, pause, stop, or start with a remote control, and that sucks. I realize LG is planning a set top box specifically for Netflix, but I really don't want yet another box in my media cabinet.

Seriously, the "Watch Instantly" selection sucks. I have 24hr/mo and I think I've used maybe 24 hours since I signed up for the service 6 months ago.

I'm in a similar situation to you. I've watched a few streaming videos from Netflix (BBC's The Office, Super Size Me, Maxed Out, and a few others), but most of the items in my queue are not available for streaming. Even when they are, it's not a comfortable way for me to watch videos. I'm in the minority of folks with a Windows Media Center PC connected to my TV, and most of the time when I want to watch videos on a PC I either watch them through Media Center or stream them to my Xbox 360. In either case, I get a nice full-screen display on my TV with standard media functionality (FF/Rew/Pause/etc) via remote control. To stream a Netflix movie, I have to dig out my PC's keyboard and mouse and watch from a browser. While I can still play the movie full-screen, I can't fast forward, rewind, pause, stop, or start with a remote control, and that sucks. I realize LG is planning a set top box specifically for Netflix, but I really don't want yet another box in my media cabinet.

Bashing AC niggerhaters is the next step up from blatant karma-whoring in this climate. You're bound to be modded up for your abuse, whether or not it is more vile than the sentiments expressed in the post you've responded to. I'm sure you already knew that.

As for a Netflix selection, perhaps you could snap out of your social conditioning and actually learn something. Doubtful - horses, water, and all that.

Perhaps someone can find a movie about unlimited stupidity, available on Netflix, that reflects the parent poster's sense of juvenile humor coupled with his lack of intelligent thought. Hope it includes "unlimited streaming" of blood from his head. Anyone up for creating "March of the Trolls"?

I've seen some typos in story bodies recently, but not in a story title... who is Netfilx? Are they the new, hot, up-and-coming competitor to Netflix?

Ranked Pairs is far and away the best option. It satisfies the monotonocity criterion. It is very simple to understand, especially from the perspective of a voter. You simply rank who you want to vote for. (Any voter who doesn't like it can simply rank their candidate #1 and leave the rest blank, just as we do now.)

I was a huge fan of Schulze method (another Condorcet variant, and one used in the real world in Debian elections), until RangeVoting.org convinced me today that Favorite Betrayal is an actual problem in any Condorcet method. Not only does Range Voting not have this problem, it also bypasses a lot of the Arrow's Impossibility Theorem baggage (since Arrow only applies to ranked systems, not scored systems) and, even better, is nearly as simple as Plurality or Approval.

(As the RV.org site points out, when you sit down and write code to implement a Condorcet method, any of them, you end up with about twice as much code compared to implementing RV. I've implemented Schulze voting before, so I know that of which they speak. Meanwhile, with RV, you just sum the votes as you would with Plurality or Approval, then divide by the number of voters. The fact that each vote is a ranged score rather than a {0|1} doesn't really change how the code works. Maybe you add a simple quorum check on the final score sums, but that's 2 lines of Perl using sort and grep.)

Plus bee swarms use it to vote on new hive locations, so even though I was skeptical at first about the Bayesian regret metric, RV is a tried and tested voting method in the real world, and bees are considerably less intelligent than even the dumbest voter.

There are two main problems with range voting. One, it makes voting overly complicated (not to the Slashdot crowd, but for the average voter.) Two, it is subject to gaming. Voters will be likely to rate secondary candidates lower than how they really feel in order to increase their top candidate's odds.

Re #1: I'd argue that RV is actually simpler than any ranked ballot. Seven words: Hot or Not, Olympic scoring, IMDb, Netflix. Every Joe-on-the-Street already understands RV. It's one of the three simplest systems possible (after Approval and Plurality). Try out this Range Vote on the US Presidential race — unlike Condorcet, you don't have to stand around hemming and hawing about exactly which order you'd put them in, plus you can actually express "I have no opinion" by leaving a line blank. (And since they threw in all the kitchen sink candidates on that poll, you'll use that option a lot.)

(In Condorcet, your only option for unknown candidates is to lump them all together in one big tie in the middle... but you're still saying "These unknown candidates are definitely worse than any of the ones I like" and "These unknown candidates are definitely better than any of the ones I hate". One of them could be {your undiscovered favorite|the reincarnation of Hitler}, but you've just {hurt|helped} their campaign. RV lets you leave them blank, so that better informed voters can put their knowledge to work — but thanks to the quorum, unknown bad candidates can't win by voting once for themselves or anything silly like that.)

(Oh, and speaking of unknowns, RV works well with write-in candidates, thanks to the quorum. Condorcet does not, since write-ins are implicitly in last place on every ballot by default.)

Re #2: Yes, there's some ga

but everything to do with corrupted DRM storage

Neither Microsoft nor Netflix told him what the errors meant, they just told him to nuke the DRM storage as "step 1" for debugging, whether it was actually corrupt or not. After nuking it, it still wouldn't have worked, thanks to...

hardware that doesn't support HDCP

Yeah, top secret system requirements not shown on the netflix site must be all the users fault, amirite? Especially when HDCP should not be required for anything but HD videos.

You can whine about "hating" all you want, but quit trying to shovel the blame everywhere but where it actually rests: on Microsoft for the "nuke everything and reinstall" troubleshooting philosophy, and Netflix for incorrectly applying HDCP requirements to non-HD videos.

I'm 110% with you. I've been begging for this and have emailed both Netflix and TiVo to that effect, but apparently it ain't gonna happen.

I don't want another box, another input/output to hassle with, more cables behind my tv, another remote, another stupid UI to deal with, etc. I like my TiVo, and I like the UI. I like that Netflix has a huge selection - typical movies to now canceled shows. I had a Netflix subscription to catch up on episodes of Farscape when a friend introduced me to the show in the middle of season two and I had no idea wth was going on. So put the two things together -- this seems obvious to everyone but the idiots who handle so-called "content licensing". If they would get their heads out of their collective ass, they could make money from people like me, because I would pay to download content to my TiVo.

I don't like Amazon Unbox, honestly. Titles are hard to find, and most random things I look for seem to be not found or unavailable - or are only available to "purchase" or "rent to your PC". Dumb. I assume the TiVo deal with Amazon is some kind of exclusive contract that prevents TiVo from even talking to Netflix. TiVo, from my perspective as a customer/consumer, has done a lot of things right. This is not one of them.

I'm 110% with you. I've been begging for this and have emailed both Netflix and TiVo to that effect, but apparently it ain't gonna happen.

I don't want another box, another input/output to hassle with, more cables behind my tv, another remote, another stupid UI to deal with, etc. I like my TiVo, and I like the UI. I like that Netflix has a huge selection - typical movies to now canceled shows. I had a Netflix subscription to catch up on episodes of Farscape when a friend introduced me to the show in the middle of season two and I had no idea wth was going on. So put the two things together -- this seems obvious to everyone but the idiots who handle so-called "content licensing". If they would get their heads out of their collective ass, they could make money from people like me, because I would pay to download content to my TiVo.

I don't like Amazon Unbox, honestly. Titles are hard to find, and most random things I look for seem to be not found or unavailable - or are only available to "purchase" or "rent to your PC". Dumb. I assume the TiVo deal with Amazon is some kind of exclusive contract that prevents TiVo from even talking to Netflix. TiVo, from my perspective as a customer/consumer, has done a lot of things right. This is not one of them.

Believe it or not, Netflix digital distribution might be coming to Mac (and maybe Linux) by using Microsoft technology: Silverlight. Silverlight, a Flash competitor, will supposedly bring cross-platform video support to multiple browsers (including Safari and Firefox) and its optional DRM component will supposedly be studio-sanctioned. I say "supposedly" because Windows Media has been available for the Mac for a long time, but I don't remember the DRM component ever being ported. But was it ever promised?

Netflix, Mac, and Silverlight were brought up by "Steve" (who's "responsible for the instant watching feature" on Netflix's site) on Netflix's community blog:

• Instant watching on Mac, Firefox, and more

According to http://www.netflix.com/HowItWorks it is unlimited instant watching time at least for the promotional period

When I go to Netflix I see "Watch movies instantly on your PC". Did I miss something?

Currently, there are approximately 25 universities across the United States with active nuclear reactors on campus

You know, when you've read as many science fiction books as I have, this shit is a liiiitle creepy.

This isn't a little creepy. Idiocracy is a bit creepy. Manna is a bit creepy. And this Wired story is down right scary and creepy. If we continue down this path, then we are well on our way to being a nation of idiots.

These people have been supplying me with copyrighted VHS and DVD movies for years.

These bastards have been doing it with online ordering!

There's another nest of pirates, they call themselves, "a library". Nothing but copyrighted works, from books, to magazines, to DVDs, and more besides!

They just turn a blind eye to the possibilities of copying these works. This "library" even lets you photocopy books, right in front of building!

One important point which is ignored in TFA is that the use of simple to-the-point web forms for common issues (such as lost/damaged discs, excessive delays, or incorrect mailings) means that the typical user never has to call or email in the first place. Unlike a lot of other websites, these forms actually don't suck, either. In case you're a user and haven't found them yet, they're all accessible off of your account page.

Also, Netflix users frequently receive emails which are "checking up" on movie arrival times in order to provide an accurate estimate of when shipped discs will arrive. Having changed addresses twice with our family account, my wife and I have been very grateful for this "getting things right" mentality.

LOS GATOS, Calif., January 16, 2007 -- Netflix, Inc., the world's largest online movie rental service, today introduced a new feature that allows people to immediately watch movies and television series on their personal computers...
Subscribers will continue to receive DVDs by mail from the company's catalog of over 70,000 titles and will have the additional option of instantly watching about 1,000 movies and TV series on their PCs. The new feature will be included in subscribers' monthly membership plans at no additional cost...
Netflix said the introduction of immediate viewing is part of its plan to lead movie rental by adding electronic delivery to its existing DVD delivery platform. Netflix is specifically focusing on the rental segment of electronic delivery, distinct from the download-to-own market and advertising-supported electronic delivery.
The hours available for instant watching will vary based on subscribers' monthly plans. For example, subscribers on the entry-level $5.99 plan will have six hours of online movie watching per month and subscribers on Netflix's most popular plan, $17.99 for unlimited DVD rental and three discs out at a time, will have 18 hours of online movie watching per month. Netflix Offers Subscribers the Option Of Instantly Watching Movies on Their PCs