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Netflix Users Experience Paradox of Abundance
prostoalex writes "The deal seems to be rather simple — you pay a monthly fee, receive a certain number of DVDs, and as soon as you watch them, and send them back, there's more coming. This simple model made Netflix into a $1.4 bln company, but now, Wall Street Journal reports, some Netflix users are experiencing the abundance paradox — the movies arrive, collect dust on the customer's desks, and then are sent back for the new set of movies to face the same fortune. From the article: "'It's a paradox of abundance,' said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. 'When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice.'"
I know, I'm showing my age, but back when I was in my first year of college I fell for the 10 albums for 1 cent ploy of Columbia Record Club. I paid my couple of $ for the 14 records (you get 10 for one cent, another for putting in some code and for a dollar a piece two more, at the time) and found how they worked. By purchasing you agreed to buy so many records over a two or three year period at "regular prices" which tended to be a bit more than at the local record store. They also sent out, based upon your choice (something Amazon and everyone else tries to do in the decades since) what their computer recommended, which was invariable exactly the music you didn't want, like some universal law, so you had to send back or pay for.
Now Netflix doesn't work exactly that way, as far as I know, but stuff coming in like clockwork isn't the way my tastes for music or film are sated. On impulse I'll suddenly whip out and buy an Etta James collection, because I like some tune she sang back in the days of yor or I'll buzz down to the Bijou and check out Superman Returns From Wherever He Buggered Off To, but I don't do these with any chartable frequency. I tend to buy music, DVDs or old radio plays to listen to on trips or when I feel like it. Having stuff come in on a robotic schedule just isn't going to work, no matter how good the deal.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I am grateful to Netflix for finally letting me turn my .txt file of "maybe checkout this movie someday" into an actual list that I'm actually plowing through. Unfortunately, the queue tends to grow over time... I try to counteract this by setting aside time on a semiregular schedule, but still...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Don't they mention in their campaign that you can keep a movie as long as you want?
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Several friends of mine, as well as myself, have noticed that you can get movies rather quickly for the first two months or so, but after that the pace slows down. When the time between you shipping a movie out and getting more back starts at 2-3 days, but then gets extended to a full week, the difference is noteable.
The point is, this "paradox of abundance" only exists for the few people who don't use what they pay for, people who honestly want abundance get screwed over by design.
So some people are lame and let their Netflix movies sit on the desk without being watched? Maybe they should cancel their subscription and donate the money to charity instead? I don't know about you but this news item seems kinda lame. I watch all my Netflix movies and I have the 6-at-a-time program. I'm often anxiously awaiting the next arrival.
-dougl
Fun, affordable games
Happy Kitchen Games
Sounds like a win for everyone.
People have the movie to watch at their leisure.
Netflix gets the same monthly fee to have the DVD sit on your shelf.
I prefer to buy used books rather then borrow them from the library just to be able to read at my leisure and not have to worry about returning them.
I used to be a NetFlix customer in the VERY beginning when they didn't charge a monthly fee. Even their Send Back envelopes were the strong cardboard CD mailers. Alas, they got rid of those to use the flimsy paper ones, I assume to save on $$$.
While I liked the service, and it was convenient, I hated waiting for movies in the mail. Remember going to your local video rental store and going up and down the aisles to peruse the movies. I enjoyed that. There's something impersonal about renting movies online from Netflix or whomever.
If there's a DVD I really want I just go out and buy it. For a small price, I get to own the DVD, make copies(for now), and watch it whenever I want, with whomever I want.
If Netflix dropped the monthly fee, and went back to the way they used to do business, I may sign up and rent those movies that my local rental store doesn't have. But I doubt they will do that, because it may mean less of a profit for them.
Plus, there are some weeks where I just don't rent movies. Netflix for me is not cost effective. Now we have onDemand which is changing the rental market.
I've had that happen pretty often, but I like that there's a fixed cost to the service. Sometimes I feel like watching a lot of movies and I tear through my queue and other times the do sit on the shelf collecting dust.. but the cost is the same to me and it's way less than cable. Cable movies play all the time and I never seem to find one I'm excited about watching.
Sorry but if you think something is a negative effect, you should come right out and explain why instead of implying it.
In this case I think that it's a good thing(TM). Now that there's no percieved scarcity, people are free to watch what they want only when they actually want to. I've experienced this with music and movie downloading as well as netflix. Sometimes I go through periods of watching/listening to these and sometimes i go through periods of doing other things with my life.
Newsflash people are free to set their own priorities. Since when is making this easier a bad thing?
Liberty.
I don't really see what's so bad about this. It's there, and maybe you get around to watching it and maybe you don't.
One positive thing that I have noticed since I started Netflix is that I watch a lot less movies that I *don't* care about much. Back when I used to go to the video store, I might have a few movies in mind, and maybe these movies would be in, or not, or maybe I remember my mental list, or maybe not. But at that point, I've driven to the video store, so I'm leaving with at least one movie. So, I spend 45 minutes to finally decide on something that I don't even care about, just so my trip wasn't a total loss.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
I've had the exact problem mentioned in the summary. I am on the three movie a month plan, and my three movies have been sitting on the shelf gathering dust for over a month now. Basically, I am wasting my money on this service as we speak. My problem is that I also have high definition digital cable, and spend more time watching that than I do my movies. For me it seems to be either one or the other - cable or movies. For awhile I cancelled my cable and just did Netflix. When I moved I got cable back with a promotional plan, and it looks like I should probably just cancel that and start doing only netflix again. Plus netflix costs less than half as much, so there is also that benefit.
Yes, and they still make their money. I am a netflix subscriber, and I love their service! A while ago, I had selected all sorts of movies I hadn't seen and was interested in. I rated over 1000 movies that I had seen, and chose about 300 that I hadn't (and should, like those featuring Elvis, John Wayne, Marx bros, etc.). Like the teaser says, these DVDs come in the mail every so often. If I still want to watch the movie, I do. Otherwise, it sits on the mail table until I just send it back, and wait for the next movie.
So, an interesting observation -- quite right in my case. Of course, my SO and I split the 3-movies-at-a-time thing, where I get to choose one, and my SO gets to choose two. I'm mostly not interested in the ones she chooses, and vice-versa. So, if she doesn't watch her movies, I just send 'em back too, and hope something more interesting arives.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
What a horrible state of affairs! Too much choice. Do netflix subscribers also have diamond shoes that are too tight?
We hav Zip.ca up here in Canada. It's kind of interesting to hear about this because I have a different approach to how I do things, and Zip's somewhat *ahem* silly queing system does have an option to make it useful: Park.
What I do is arrange on my active "Can send" list (Normal priority in Zip speak) the stuff I know I would watch, and then use ASAP priority to move up things I definitely will watch if I receive it. Anything else I feel I wouldn't watch, I send to the Parking lot (Park priotiy).
Arbitrarily ranking the queue (which I understand Netflix allows) is handy if you know you're going to watch things, but maybe they need to ask the user: I REALLY want to watch this, I wouldn't mind watching this, and "Eh, a friend told me i should watch it".
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
OT but does anybody think this abundance is part of the stagnation in the movie world right now? Movies that seemed so important are just gone in days and weeks, lost in the sands of time and replaced by the next coming thing.
I have NetFlix, I love it. One thing the video store has going for it is when you get there you can choose a movie that reflect your current mood. Do you want something funny, deep or otherwise. With NetFlix you get movies "whenever" they appear on the top of your list plus a few days. While Hotel Rawanda sounded great on Thursday, but Monday really sucked and your not in for an expected downer. And thus the sitting on the coffee table begins.
The longer you hold on to movies on average, the less they have to spend on round trip postage. You're paying them a monthly fee whether you go through 15 movies or just 1.
This is just like those p2p (old Napster/etc) who download large numbers of music files but only get around to listening to a few of them.
Where were you when the voynix came?
If someone rents/buys ANYTHING and does not use it there is no connection to the supply method. It's a user issue.
I've been using Netflix for almost six years now and do not have this problem. I rent things I want to watch and when they arrive... I watch them.
It's that simple.
I used to have the "three at a time" plan but wound up switching to "two at a time" and have found a balance between having movies to watch on the weekend and the ability to keep the queue stocked with things I'm interested in.
If you're renting movies you don't want to watch, or renting more movies at one time than you can watch then you need to alter your approach.
This reminds me of my experience with video game emulators. I downloaded a torrent that contained about one hundred N64 games, many of them classics. But since there were so many, none of them were really that amusing and I ended up spending about five minutes on a few games before deleting everything.
and why is *this* news?
This is like how badly you searched for music you liked before the internet and now you have more music than you can ever listen to yet you are surrounded with your favorites.
:]
I am on the 5 DVD at a time plan from Netflix and have 122 movies in my queue.
Now if there were only enough time to watch them all.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
It's called "Summer." Lately, I've been too busy travelling or doing other things outdoors to watch my Netflix rentals in a timely manner. I'm sure that my viewing habits will pick back up in a few months though.
I am a Usenet junkie, I get everything I can with my unlimited downloads (probably about 60-70 gigs per month). .NZB files and get everything I have any interest in. I have probably 60 gigs** on my hard drive of rar files that I have not touched.
But I sit at a forum* that posts new
New Movies, Old Movies, Seasons of TV shows that I will never watch, I get it all. Why? Probably because I can, but mostly because it's there.
I can't recall all the movies I currently have but I know Tsotsi is there as well as Aeon Capote, two movies I got because of thier reviews, two movies I would never watch if I had to go out of my way to get them, to movies I will probably end up deleting or burning to disk for no real reason.
*Will remain nameless because I want it to be there the next time I go.
**Most of the movies are 700MBs, sometimes double that. Few are DVD-Rs at 4gigs.
But I'm not a Netflix subscriber. Just not big into movies.
But the bigger and more complicated a decision, the easier it is for me to decide. Choosing a college: Simple. I went, I looked, and by the time I needed to apply, I'd already decided. Only applied to 1 school. (Graduated 3 + years ago, picked up a dual Engr. degree, and had a blast). Buying a car? Simple. I knew what I wanted. Buying a house? Simple. (Going on 2 years now, still satisfied).
But man... you put me in front of a vending machine and I cannot make up my friggin mind. I'm not kidding. I can't decide. I'll stand there staring at it. Speaking of which.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
There's also an issue where long time members have pretty much seen all there is to see. Now we end up renting stuff we dont really want to watch just so we don't waste of months rental fee.
Hey- if people want to waste their money by not actually watching the movies that they request, that doesn't seem to indicate a problem for Netflix. What might really end up slowing the company's growth is the poor physical condition of the DVD's that people receive. Over half- maybe three-fourths of the discs that I've seen are unable to play without some interruption, and a fair number of these flaws are from physical damage, not just the discs being smudged. That's why I dumped my own subscription after the trial.
Quality control is probably a matter for Netflix to handle. I don't think they want their subscibers to take on the responsibility of cleaning the discs themselves- that would probably just aggravate the situation. DVD's should be checked for playability before they get turned around and sent to the next user.
I came, I saw, I left. It looked better in the brochure.
This shows just how ineffiecient the NetFlix model is. They buy several copy of film X. Then, send them out to Y people who don't even plan to view them. It costs money to pick, package and ship these titles for no reason. This is a service, and customers should not have to return things they don't want all the time.
I would much rather be able to just list all the films I *might* want to see. Then, get an offer to order one when it is in stock. Why should I pay someone to make me play "mail the DVD" with them!
I tried the service. First, the movie took forever to arrive, and then it was the wrong movie (wrong DVD in the correct sleeve). So, I just canceled the account and gave up.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I've had 16 gigs of ripped dvds collecting dust for the last two months!
I'm a new netflix user, and I find we do watch within a few days of coming in. So far, I like it a lot. There is one disk which we've had since we subscribed though, and not from lack of viewing - my kid watches it over and over again. At what point do I buy her a copy?
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Putting on this perspective of abundance, could we say that entertainment, present here as movie DVDs, be a practical example of Giffen goods ??
I mean, if netflix decides, hypothetically, to lower their monthly fee, would consumers get more or less interested on movies they are not watching anyway.
Any comments from economy geeks ?
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Remember going to your local video rental store and going up and down the aisles to peruse the movies. I enjoyed that.
So did I, but rental places now have about a total of thirty movies - or at least thirty really, really new movies and then shelves of drek.
I like Netflix because of all the access to things that would never, ever be at a video store. You just can't beat a selection of hundreds of thousands of titles.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and it's really a concern!
\u262D = \u5350
Finally, I realized that with the amount of money I was spending on the netflix subscription, I could just buy movies on the cheap and watch them whenever with no feeling that I was blowing the subscription (http://www.dvdpricesearch.com, AFAIK, is the best way to look for movies). Works for me, but I watch only one or two a month.
I do have friends, though, who can easily handle the max movies allowed by netflix, and still seem to have time to go to the 20-plex and sit through 5 movies in a single day.
On impulse I'll suddenly whip out and buy an Etta James collection, because I like some tune she sang back in the days of yor or I'll buzz down to the Bijou and check out Superman Returns From Wherever He Buggered Off To
Ah, so you are the one funding the MPAA's and RIAA's lawyers?! And a Slashdot user too?! I'm a bit shocked and ashamed.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
My job has been very busy lately, and Elder Scrolls IV wandered into my life, so I simply cut back my Netflix account to two out at a time down from four. I can just about slip in two movies a week. If I can't do that, I'll cut back to one. There's also the "rip to hard drive" option to backlog films.
Feeling "pressure" to watch a movie? What would these "paradox of abundance" sufferers do if they had to go out and hunt a wooly mammoth for dinner? Cripes, take a Paxil or something.
I had a further point to make, but I think I'll just say wooly some more. Wooly. Wooly. Wooly wooly wooly.
For some users, the delay in watching movies comes about because multiple people in the house have to feel like watching the same thing to get a movie watched.
That's why I really like the multiple queue option - you can have another household member have thier own queue, with a balance of titles between the two of you that you agree on. So you can have some titles that only one person wants to watch and some that both of you will want to watch, and not have the latter hold up the former. That can help get a better throughput of movies going.
That said, I still sometimes take as long as a month before I get around to watching a movie meant specifically for myself - so the article has a lot of truth to it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like many of you when I joined Nexflix I thought I had discovered the answer to all my movie watching dilemas. For the first few weeks I was watching and returning movies like a mad woman and spending hours creating a queue that 3 months later is still unmanageable. While I still enjoy my subscription, my zeal for it has subsided somewhat.
I will say that Netflix has 2 great features that will keep me as a customer. First, it gives me access to movies not often found in my local video store. Secondly, it gives me a place to maintain a list of movies that I think I might someday want to see. (Due to a quite enjoyable college experience my memory is not what it used to be and there is no way I could remember all these movie titles!)
On the down side, I have noticed that somehow the Netflix "powers that be" know when I desperately need a quick turn around on my video exchange and somehow make sure that I get my DVD 3 days after I need it.
Complaining about having an abundance of DVDs to watch and an unlimited time frame to watch them in seems a little whiny and spoiled to me. I'll gladly trade my life with anyone who considers this their greatest problem.
Most people watch movies to talk about them with friends or at work. Mostly just to chime in "I saw that", so they'll fit in. They stopped reading books to "wait for the movie" instead. Now NetFlix means they can still claim "oh, I rented that", without wasting time watching.
Most movies are so bad, that everyone's better off.
--
make install -not war
How about ripping the DVDs to a DVR and watching it later? :) Then you have the movie you borrowed and can watch it any time you're ready... maybe that goes a little beyond fair use doesn't it...
It's called the Gold's Gym model.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
That guy who cancelled his membership because his movies were gathering dust probably should have just gone to a cheaper membership. His main "problem" is that he has a life, that consists of more than watching movies. Good for him. But it's nice to have some low entertainment around when you need it.
Funny story, not quite related: I know a couple who used to have the two-at-a-time membership. They kept fighting over which one to watch first, then they wouldn't watch either. Now they have the one-at-a-time membership, and everybody's happy.
online, so much I can't even imagine being without, however that has never stopped me from spanking a load out 2 times a day to the available stuff that I so enjoy. I think the logic of this argument is flawed, proven by my huge consumption of handy wipes.
I don't know what the problem is. I'm on the single DVD plan and each week I get to watch a new DVD. This is great for catching up on all the old TV shows (i.e., X-Files, Enterprise, Buffy The Vampire Slayer) that I never got to watch when I was working 60 to 80 hours a week.
The amount of time Netflix saves my wife and I at the video store. That's got to be worth a lot more than the cost of a DVD lying around collecting dust.
One of the fundamental reasons why we chose Netflix was because we didn't have to rush to get to the video store on Friday nights. Or spend an hour deciding what we were going to rent because the best movies had already been rented. Or have to fight traffic on weekend nights with a crying baby.
Sure, I guess that if we get a movie or two we decide not to watch, we haven't achieved full efficiency. But so what?! We are able to spend more time watching movies and less time in traffic. How could that be a bad thing?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
At first I read that as This simple model made Netflix into a $1.4 bin company.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I cancelled my subscription to Netflix back in 2002, simply because I had seen everything I wanted to see. I had the 3 movie subscription and would watch them the sameday they arrived and ship them out the following day. Before long I couldn't find anything worthwhile to add to my queue.
I'm currently running into that abundancy issue with my GamezNFlix.com subscription. I've got 2 Xbox 360 games out, and haven't touched them in over 3 weeks.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Happens all the time, we all buy and pay for things that we frequently don't get our money's worth for due to lack of usage, busier than anticipated, competing interests. Where is the story here?
That's the point of the article. It's not about whether you're lazy or stupid or just not disciplined enough to watch rented movies. However, when you're given an abundant amount of choices, it's often harder to make a good decision. Add netflix's delay into the mix (what do I think I'd like to watch at some point in the future?) and it gets even harder.
Of course we want to see Hotel Rwanda, or the new almodovar film, because we are advanced, modern intellectuals. In reality, after a 12 hour day of re-factoring someone else's messy code, would you rather open a beer and collapse in front of Hotel Rwanda or Super Troopers?
The problem is netflix (and tivo) makes you confront this issue - You have to send it back and quit on it. You have to admit that you don't want to watch Hotel Rwanda. You'd rather fast forward to the "good parts" of The Girl Next Door rather than think about genocide. You are not the advanced, modern intellectual you thought you were. Who wants an existential crisis when they thought they were just renting movies? Is this horrible? probably. So is alcoholism, but i bet you didn't cringe when I opened a beer in the above paragraph.
This topic has brought out a lot of elitist viewpoints... I'm surprised. You may use Netflix perfectly. Congratulations. That's not what we were talking about. The intersting thing about this is how a fairly subtle shift in delivery method created a whole mess of problems (as well as solutions) for the end user, and ended up changing the experience for the user substantially.
Now, to really make it interesting, lets talk about the Netflix friends feature, where your friends can see what you rent and what's in your queue, as well as what you thought of it. Are you really willing to give Ultimate Fighting Championship 5 stars if that girl you've got your eye on is going to find out?
Maybe I'm the only one, but I used to like the record clubs.
... but that's A Bad Thing to do, right kids?), you can really save a lot of money and get a lot of cool entertainment for cheap. But if you either don't use it much and/or then don't cancel, then you're just making some executive's boat payments for him.
I feel a little dirty for saying that now; but this was before I realized that Sony/BMG/Columbia Universal are just various arms of the Great Satan and all that.
I'd do one record club stint every year or so. Basically I'd start making a list of all the albums I wanted, mostly by listening to the radio, or based on friends who had more money than I did and could afford to buy the new releases. Then I'd wait for one of the music clubs to send one of their deals (in later years, one of them had a sweet one, something like '15 CDs for $10 with nothing more to buy ever!') and then go down my list and get all the CDs they had that I wanted. Then I'd cancel it, and spend the next few months / year listening to my new CDs and adding stuff to my list.
Obviously, I wasn't a huge consumer of music. I'm still not, but it let me build a pretty decent CD collection off of my lawn-mowing/summer-job/beer-bottle-return money, which I couldn't have done otherwise at the time. (Well, maybe I could have done almost as well at used-CD/record stores.)
I bring this all up because it's about the same way that I use Netflix today. I go on again and off again with Netflix. I'll basically make up a list, usually starting as a mental one and then progressing to a written one when it gets too long, of all the movies I want to see. Eventually I'll subscribe to Netflix, and over the course of a few months work down the list. When I either exhaust the movies I want to see, or just get bored with watching a movie or recorded TV show every night / every few nights, I'll cancel it.
Right now I'm on my third Netflix iteration (I gave up on the music clubs a while back; I wonder if they're still around?) and about to cancel it, since my interest is starting to peter out.
Whether you can make these systems work for you, or whether you end up being the proverbial sucker that keeps the house in business, depends on your level of patience. If you can bear to not buy anthing for a few months and keep a list of stuff you want to see/hear, and then watch it all at once (or, I suppose, rip it
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
...that all Netflix users had burners, or at the very least, knew out to rip to divx!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
... the companies creedo should read: pay a monthly fee, receive a certain number of DVDs, watch them copy them THEM send them back.
I've been using NetFlix for about 6 months, and have only rented about 5 movies. For the money I've spent, I could have owned all of those movies.
I keep telling myself it's worth it because next month I'll just rent 10 ($1.50/each).
But as I type, I have 2 movies I've already watched that I've been meaning to drop in the mailbox since Friday.
DVDShrink
Just copy them one after the other after the other and slide 'em into a disk wallet and when you get the urge just watch one.
I of course would never violate copyright law in such a flagrant fashion. Just saying...
I found myself watching movies just to get rid of them, much like how you have to eat all the food at a restaurant, even if you are full. I felt like I was obligated to watch what I'd queued, so I'd better spend two hours before sending it back. It's no surprise that watching a movie because you feel you have to is not very satisfying.
The converse of this paradox is also one. Accumulating as much of a product as possible to maximize the value of the monetary expense, even if doing so adversely affects your enjoyment of that product, illustrates a strange consequence of consumerism.
The obvious example is that of the person who consumes far beyond a comfortable and enjoyable amount of food at an all-you-can-eat buffet. The value for the price is determined to be "volume of food" rather than enjoyment of the meal. Would someone consciously pay for a sick stomach?
For some, Netflix is approaching this valuation on "volume of movies" rather than convenience or even personal enjoyment/satisfaction of the service.
Background: When Blockbuster (the only rental place within reasonable distance of our home) started charging more than $6 for a DVD rental, then moved their rental store across town, we became Netflix users. We signed up for the "one-at-a-time" service. We used to watch about two movies a month - and wanted to watch more, typically one per weekend. It made financial sense (and saves gas) for us to switch over to Netflix. On any given month, we actually spend less money (on Netflix fees than we used to on Blockbuster rentals). In addition, we almost never have to wait before a given title is available for us to rent via Netflix - with Blockbuster, we'd have to go back more than once to get a given film.
With the background out of the way... when we were renting on time-based rentals, we felt pressure to watch the film right away. The availability of a film in combination with what day of the week it became available always caused us to "rush to watch."
We do not have the dust-collecting issue mentioned in TFA - rather, we just put it on the table and watch it when we're ready. I enjoy films much more when we view them when we want to (as opposed to rushing to watch before the due date/time.). As such, our enjoyment of the films we watch has gone up, the availability is better, and we don't spend gas money to get the films.
I do, however, hear of people (mainly via work) who have the three-at-a-time plan who are now saying, "I don't have the time to watch the films, so they just sit there forever." In this way, it does seem that video rental has shifted in paradigm. I can see the comparison of TFA's mention of abundance and its relationship to the general value of a thing...
On an interesting note (note that the following is opinion and personal observation): of the folks to whom I have spoken about this article- there seems to be a greater demarcation than just availability... folks with children tend to feel that they don't have the time to watch, and folks without children tend to avidly consume their films.
A Passionate Independent Musician
This reminds me of when I was a kid and had my first 8 bit computer - for the first few months I bought all of my software one tape at a time. I would play the games, good or bad all the way through - picking through every nugget I could find, playing some games for weeks on end.
Some time later - I met a friend at school who had the same computer and offered to bring his disks over. Holy cow - he must have had two hundred disks of software that I spent a weekend or two copying. That pretty much killed it for me since I didn't really have any pressure to play anything and since I didn't invest anything into the software - I would just load a game, decide it didn't look all that great and move on to the next.
www.wildpad.com
It's not limited to any particular gym. An ex-coworker told me of their experiences in a gym's IT department. The majority of the people who buy a membership drop out of using it inside the first month, or never even come at all.
I'm quite happy to say that my gym is not making it's profit margin on me.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Isn't the solution to this ripping the movies to hard drive? You can get 750GB drives these days, so you could store quite a few movies to watch "someday". It could even provide motivation if you dropped off the oldest when the disk got full. I notice that I finally get around to watching certain shows on my Tivo when their recordings become in danger of dropping off the end.
You know...about the only thing that does bug me about Netflix, is that they don't rent Adult dvd's. Seems like they could make a killing off of that....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I stopped renting movies from Blockbuster before Netflix was around. I could never return a rental ontime. It was more like a week or 2 after it was do. With the extra late fees added to the rental, it was cheaper to buy the movie. I just bought the movies instead. Of course, this was when I was single and had money to burn.
Now with a wife and kids, there is no time to goto the movies. Netflix is great to catch up on the movies I missed. Plus, I can easily rent questionable movies like King Kong and Napoleon Dynamite without having to pay $50 to see it in the theater ($10 for 2 people, $20 for food, $20 for a babysitter).
Netfilx recently settled a class action lawsuit out in California regarding the throttling issue. The settlement called for Netflix to give one-free month to anyone who was harmed by the illegal practice and for Netflix to pay tens of millions of dollars in attorneys fees. AFAIK, the fact that netflix throttles is now expressly listed in the terms of service, where in the past Netflix's activities were illegal because they denied that they were throttling customers.
I see which dvds are resting on my friends desk and then borrow from them. Free for me; less dust for them. We're all winners.
...they've discovered Netflix's well-advertised business model. That's some investigative, in-depth reporting for you. Maybe one day soon they'll discover that Burger King differentiates itself by emphasizing their willingness to take custom orders.
Busy people hate traditional rental stores because you rent some movies, pay for them, get busy and can't watch them, and then return them 3 days later unwatched. Or, equally likely, you return them 6 days later and pay late fees for the movie you didn't watch.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
OK, so a tough movie has sometimes sat in my house for a month while light movies have come in, been watched, and been returned because I wasn't "in the mood for something heavy". That's not a problem until so many tough movies accumulate that they occupy all of the Netflix "bandwidth" I'm paying for.
There are two lessons from this, and no need to get traumatized about either of them. First, the one-at-a-time netflix plan is no good; you need three-at-a-time, at least, to ameliorate bottlenecks.
Second, you need to come to terms with your own taste. Learn to live with the fact that you mostly want movies for light entertainment, not life-altering enlightenment. Feeling guilty over this makes about as much sense as the people who falsely claim to watch lots of PBS in their Nielson diaries because their ashamed of the TV they actually watch.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
When I feel like watching a movie, I look through the hard drive, find one I'm interested in, burn, and watch it. When the hard drive gets full, I look through it for movies I've already burned, or ones that have sat there the longest and no longer seem so interesting, and delete them.
I've been hit by the "Netflix slowdown" that has also been observed (return too many movies quickly, and your service mysteriously slows down), but it's not that bad - and if you wait a week or so, then things return to normal.
But I actually buy the DVDs and fail to watch them. Sounds like I need a Netflix account.
It's called the Law of Diminishing Returns.. eventually you are going to watch all the movies you are interested in seeing.
And your point is what?
I watch every movie that comes thru my mailbox. netflix is great
Because this is not my experience.I live five miles from the west coast facility and often get one day turnaround, so I have a pretty sensitive measure of warehouse delay. I was told about this, but it hasn't happened to us. Now, it's rare that we watch more than 3 movies in a week, so maybe we aren't heavy enough users to trigger the effect.
Besides, if you're watching that many movies, you really need to get a life 8).
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
So, in a nutshell... people tend to procrastinate when there's nothing pressuring them. No kidding! Why was this article Slashdot worthy exactly?
This is exactly how I feel! Bittorrent is swamping my life with too much movies and TV shows.
Of course, I also don't understand people who don't read, who stand on escalators, and think that more violence solves the problem of too much violence. OK, I guess that's more than two things.
I guess I'm just not very understanding.
FWIW, I subscribe to Netflix on the cheapest plan, one-at-a-time and watch only movies I want to see within a few days of getting them. What's so bad about that? I still see one or two movies a week for about $10 a month.
On a side note, does anyone remember the "Firefly" site that, years ago, recommended movies based on your affinities with other people who liked the same movies you liked? They did a better job than Netflix does at this but disappeared because they were going to go private during the dot-com years about the time that all ended. I had the impression they thought they had really hot-shite algorithms for figuring this stuff out. Doesn't seem like a very difficult problem, though.
I share your pain.
At one of the larger grocery stores where I live you can get non-new release movies for seven days for 87 cents. I rent six about every other week with the best intentions, and rarely watch even one. I'm always either just too damn tired or busy. And if I do end up watching one of them, it's only half-assed, as I can't seem to watch a movie without doing 'something constructive' during it.
No one's fault but my own, of course.
Sweet informative mod.
before I canceled my netflixx subscription I was running into the same thing, I would have discs, sit around for ever and not have time to watch them, as my schedule got bussier by an order of magnitude. So I felt I was not getting the worth out of the subscription. I spent the next 2 months using DVD shrink to rip the movies the same day they arrived and sending them out the same day. I accumulated enough viewing material for months.
...that this would cancel out the prolific viewer "paradox". Those who watch movies as they arrive and quickly return them, hoping for more, eventually get "throttled"...the turn around time decreases. You would think that those lazy viewers would cancel out those active viewers and the business model would remain valid. At least I think so. Apparently Netflix doesn't think so... seems like they're relying on those lazy viewers to keep their business model afloat -- why else would they punish their active viewers (effectively forcing them to mimic the lazy viewers).
Greencine does....
Doesn't DVDShrink solve that problem? ;)
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Now sure how it's a paradox, but it's certainly true. I had 'obtained' hundreds of DreamCast games during the console's peak.. and never really had any interest to play the games--because I just had so many to choose from, I didn't feel pressured to select a specific title. Weird.
It's people!!!
I found a way to counter act this, just have enough movies in your queue that you want to watach, I keep a written note (.txt file) of movies I want to see and then only put 3 in my queue, when i have those 3 movies I put 3 more, and so on.
So they never have a chance to send me the "kinda want to see" movies because they aren't listed in my queue.
I found this is also a great way to get the new releases the week of their release, typically they will say "long wait" but if it is the ONLY movie in your queue then i find I usually get it within a day or 2 of release...
It's not a violation of copyright if you watch it once and then delete it. You've paid the rental fee so you have a right to watch it once...
Rishi Chopra
www.rishichopra.org
Our desire to watch movies is based on our species' longstanding use of stories to relay and maintain knowledge. Like when you run into a friend you rarely see, you have an impulse to tell stories to each other. When someone is old and likely to die and take important history and wisdom to their grave, you want them to tell you stories. If you know it's written down somewhere, there's less of an urge.
When my rental arrives, I immediately rip it to the hard drive on my living room PC (attached to my LCD TV). Then I return the movie ASAP, and watch the image on the PC at my leasure (often after subsequent movie(s) have arrived). Yeah, so it's not legal... I call it "Time-shifted DVD rentals" :)
And for the record, I *do* delete the images after I watch them! Honest!
I had Blockbuster Online rental which is pretty much the same as Netflix. I liked it for about a year and then all the movies I wanted to see were gone. I watched them all. After that, I started to rent the season collections of TV shows and that got boring. I just quit my membership and that was that. Haven't missed it at all.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
I also do library DVD rentals, and I'll admit the selection there is diverse - probably too diverse. Add in waiting for inter-library loan and having to make multiple trips to the library, and I still would rather use Netflix for most titles.
It can be fun as an alternate source of DVD's that even Netflix does not carry though...
I don't know if your library works this way, but our local library also has an online renewal system that lets you renew a checkout online, as long as no-one else is waiting on it. New releases are not going to work well with that of course but for the more obscure titles, you can keep a DVD a month or two until you get around to watching. So that is another point for using libraries if you don't mind a little more inconvienince and a more limited seelction than Netflix (but much better than Blockbuster).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This isn't just exclusive to Netflix. Back when I was a member, I liked it precisely because I could let the movies languish on the coffe table -
See, I did that with Blockbuster movies too, renting one and not finding the time to watch it in the allotted 5 days. It was *much* cheaper to put off viewing my Netflix movie for a week than it was to rack up $14 at Blockbuster all the time.
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
Their only hope for profitability is that people sit on their disks and not demand too many new. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they reduced customer service to fast switchers. Dissuasion of unprofitable customers is an art form. Not illegal, but the dissuaded customer get resentful. As desired.
It might not be against the intent of the law, but yes, it is against the specific wording of the law.
Comment of the year
When it was published by a different writer on Newsweek:
Newsweek: Netflix Guilt
I have the exact same problem with TiVo. Oh sure there are plenty of shows that I watch as soon as they show up on the list. And there are those other shows (like Futurama for example) that come on just about every night and I watch regularly, but I've seen them all and if I miss an episode it's no big deal. There are the shows that I enjoy, but that take time to watch. Either it's because my girlfriend and I wait to watch them together or they just rank in the middle as far as priority goes. Then there are the things that just sit around forever. I've got movies that have sat on "Save Until I Delete" for years (right now the oldest will turn 2 in August) because I know that I have them around to watch whenever I feel like it. Or shows that I'm into, but I fail to watch and eventually they just build up and build up and build (thus explaining why I have 14 episodes of Alias on my machine). It's not that I don't want to watch them or that I never intend to it's just that I'm very picky about exactly what I'm in the mood for and that coupled with the perceived time investment in watching something that's an hour or two long lets me shift the priority down a bit and keep it there.
If I'd rent any of these movies from the shop instead of just recording it for future viewing I'd have seen them because they were due five days later. Instead my TiVo is massively crowded with tons of things that I eventually intend to watch.
Likewise the problem exists compared to recorded shows (either on TiVO or DVD) and live shows. If, for whatever reason, I have to watch something live and don't have the choice to record it I'm much more likely to watch it since, well, I don't have any choice it's either watch it now or miss it. When I get the option of whether or not to watch it though I'm more likely not to watch it, knowing that it'll be around and I'll watch it when I'm good and ready.
The truth? I got "Hotel Rwanda" and I watched it right away. On the other hand, I exhibit the properties the article talks about also -- "House of Wax" (the Paris Hilton one) is still sitting on my coffee table, and has been for weeks. The difference? I'm reasonably certain that "Hotel Rwanda" is going to be a good movie, one that I'll enjoy watching. "House of Wax" is probably going to be a steaming pile of shit -- which means I'm going to get bored and start fiddling around with something else while I tune out the movie. If the goal is grabbing a beer and collapsing in front of the TV, then "House of Wax" isn't going to cut it. I need a movie that's actually worth seeing.
Breakfast served all day!
we signed up for the 3-at-a-time deal, which seems like a lot movies to watch, not so. since we live so far away from the "distribution center", we average about 2 movies a week, even if we send them back the very next day. i guess if you live closer to a center you get your movies faster, meaning you get watch more movies; then you might have the abundance problem. we all pay the same though. how fair is that?
I had exactly the same issue with p2p. I stopped watching movies, keeping up with music, or reading ebooks. Too much stuff on there, too much downloaded, so little motivation to do anything but just do something else altogether.
This is just beaking my heart.
It would seem to me that the problem isn't that people no longer want to make time to watch their movies but that they've already seen all the good movies they wanted to and are now stuck with movies that they are only slightly interested in and thus it gets lower priority in their life. And chances are all the new good movies out they have already seen in theaters.
I use Blockbuster online. They don't come fast enough to ever collect dust.
If that's your assertion you should provide the supporting text as well. It might be illegal to have an ice cream cone in your pocket but that doesn't mean you'll be arrested for it.
Rishi Chopra
www.rishichopra.org
I use peerflix in combination with my local video store. Like netflix, with peerflix You can keep the movies you have as long as you want to. Peerflix is like netflix except you pay per trade not a fixed monthly fee. So hanging on to movies incurs no penalty of cost. (it's about $1.50 per trade ).
I use peerflix for three purposes
1) for movies my local store does not have on hand.
2) for movies I want on hand but am not sure when I will watch: e.g. classic movies for a rainy day with my wife or a Jackie chan flick for me late at night
3) for new releases, which are more expensive to rent (say all of 24).
4) to dispose of movies I own already. (e.g. DVDs my kids have outgrown)
I still go to the local video store for the same reasons you do, but I also have on hand a nice cache of movies at all times without payint the netflix monthly rental fee while they gather dust.
The downside of peerflix is the following:
1) you can't get new movies without trading back the ones you have. But it's not as simple as just sending them in. You have to wait for someone to ask for them. For some movies, like say 3 stooges, or a too popular but now forgotten film, that might be a long long time.
2) You can't just get a movie you want. Someone has to list it to send, and you might be way down on the waiting list.
3) If you accumulate too many movies no one wants. Then you will have to buy more movies just to have something you can trade to get the ones you want.
4) there's a weird dynamic that happens that forces you to get more old releases than new releases. old releases cost 1 point, and new releases cost 3 points. If you have 3 points in your account and you are sent three old releases, then when you go to trade chances are not all three movies will get requested at the same time. This means when you trade the first one, you get one point, and then peerflix arranges a trade for you and since you only have one point to trade, you get sent an old release. Thus you never accumulate enough points to get a new release sent to you...
the last thing is the most annoying to me.
5) their website is badly organized and browsing is painful. their customer service is non responsive.
6) you have to print out and tape up the envelopes to send your dvds. there's no "red envelope"
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'd wager that most Slashdot/Netflix users' discs are out of the envelope for oh, say, 10 to 15 minutes and then back on their way to Netflix.
I stopped watching TV and started watching only stuff I *WANT* to watch on DVD. It didn't take me long to figure out that TV sucks ass in comparison to even average films, or say several South Park episodes (no ads!). And so I stopped watching TV almost completely. It depends on how much TV you tend to watch in a day, but for me a couple of hours (or so) of DVDs was enough couch time for me. And for the $8/mo I was paying to split my roommates discounted membership it was a fantastic deal.
(Of course when he started getting anything that Alyssa Milano was in just because he thought she was hot, my value and content quality plunged *below* what is on network TV.)
Actually, I've heard (overly-anal) time management techniques of taping TV and then fast forwarding through commercials. It seems that if you can wait for your TV on DVD that Netflix (blockbuster, walmart, whatever) could be a good value. And not collect dust.
This falls firmly into the categories of:
WAY too much information
Things I did NOT need to know
and EWwwwwww.
As if this is something new!!!
There is something called Law of diminishing marginal utility.
I subscribe to Netflix $11.99 plan - 4 a month, 2 at a time. It pressures me to watch movies and return them as I am only alloted 4 a month.
What planet are you on? You need to wake up and get out of whatever cave you've been hiding in...
Netflix has been sued because of this, and this story is at least 2 years old now.
The "cornucopia complex" strikes again. BTW, I believe that I coined the phrase "cornucopia complex": the fear of too much good stuff :-)
NetFlix provides great service and a wide selection. Also, I feel envy at the quality of their web app - really well done.
On my web blog, I frequently whine about products that I don't like and praise stuff that I think is great - NetFlix gets the latter treatment.
Works wonders.
FC Closer
Netflix "Currency-of-value" is *USER-defined* timeshift viewing content, viewing time and returning time ALL under control of the renter. Time is currency in Netflix BusinessCase.
Netflix "store of value" is the *abundance-promise*. Abundance drives price/subscription in the BusinessModel.
This is making Money in a capitalist system by definition. Netflix is your banker for video transactions brokering fee-interest on time the money(er. movie) is on loan.
BlockBuster et.al. employ the communist system by definition. BlockBuster retail the coop, sharing scarcity and paying dearly for the sin of using more than your alotted time with goods (ie. buying a late movie).
Netflix is cheaper.
Scary this is new research. It's their BUSINESS PLAN: DVDs ship out, don't get watched or returned, subscriptions aren't cancelled, Netflix benefits.
Feeling so good natured I could drool
If anyone wonders why it takes so long to get their Netflix movies, its becuase the envelopes they use are utter crap. They send them as 'letters', but a CD in some flimsy paper wrapping ISNT a letter, and can't be processed on the letter automation machines the Post Office uses, so they have to get pulled out and sorted by hand (much slower than if they were sent as a parcel in the first place, since there is a different machine that *can* sort parcels)
Also, the 'return' address part of the envelope has an error in its barcode that cause them to be routed randomly instead of to the correct Netflix address (assuming they dont get cracked in half and jam the machine first)
Just a note writing 'Do not bend' on any sort of letter or envelope is useless - Letters *WILL* be flexed on their way through the automation machines. If you dont want it flexed, don't send it as a letter - send it as a 'parcel' instead, and be sure you package it appropriately - for a CD/DVD, something similar to the hard plastic cases AOL sends CD's out in is about right.
I mean the greater number of new releases you have noticed has displaced a lot of fringe movies that not that many people watch, like foreign films. Or they only have single copies of a lot of things they might have had a few of before.
Yes it's nice you can be more sure of getting a new release (that was a problem before) but new releases, while fun, satisfies only a small percetnage of my movie viewing wishes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I "suffer" from a slightly different problem, wherein I immediately watch the movies I get from Netflix.... but then I don't return them for weeks. I find myself to be far too lazy to mail the movies back, even as my movie queue grows ever larger (60 and counting)
There has to be some grad level psych courses that I've taken that touched on this. if only I paid attention Picking and renting a movie is a complex process that involves more than the enjoyment from being entertained. People also like to feel that they've made a good decision and that they are in control. Experiements show that just letting people pick an object out of others would make them feel better about it (the choice makes you feel better about the object, not the other way round). The truth is that there just isn't THAT many movies that you feel that you just have to watch, most titles are just about average to you. Now factor in that most people feel that the subscription fee is a sunk cost, and would rather get a bad movie with negative utility than just leave their queue empty. So the result is you lose the sense that you're making a good decision, since out of the multitude of titles, you don't have enough information to decide. You feel that you've paid so you get bad movie that you would rather not watch. AND at the end of the day, whatever is on tv is just so much more convenience and less of a commitment than watching the mediocre movie from netflix.
I have already mentioned before, but here's the recipy to my videoclub: 300 people together (easily gathered if you work in a 3000+ employee firm) / 10,000 DVDs. To get a subscription, one pays upfront R$ 100 (less than US$ 50) -- actually, you can divide that in five installments of R$ 20 and we have an arrangement with Payroll so it's just taken off your paycheck. Monthly, we pay R$ 28 (US$ 12) -- again, you can let it just be taken from your paycheck. Movies are divided in three categories: blockbusters, novelties and catalog. At any time, you can have five DVDs with you: at most one blockbuster and one novelty (or two novelties and no blockbuster). You must return your blockbuster in one workday (so, if you get it on Friday you can return it on Monday) [*], your novelties in two workdays [*], and your catalog movies in SIX workdays [*]. It works pretty well, and we end up with the same non-paradox: I constantly return movies I hadn't had the time to watch.
[*] the fines for being late are R$ 5/day for blockbusters, R$ 2.5/day for novelties and R$ 1/day for catalog: for comparison in the Blockbuster(TM) down here, we pay R$ 7 per movie per 48 hours -- for any title.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I had purchased a new house in January and was very busy with the move and painting, so I had three netflix DVDs that sat in my entertainment center for months and months. I'm still busy, but I don't have time for one movie a night anymore, so I finally switched down to the unlimited two-at-a-time
i think this study is not takign in to account that its now taking longer for the movies to hit your home.netflix used to spit them out. now they gage you and start sending them slower and slower the faster you send em back.
In most sane countries you do violate copyright when you distribute a copy.
You payed for watching the movie, you made a copy, you may watch it later. Nobody hurt.
Laws that go against the most basic common sense of what is fair or not and are unenforceable should not be take seriously.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Brick DVD stores may only carry 5-10% the inventory of Netflix
because the less popular items may only rent a few times a year.
But when you connect millions of customers to these,
you can make a profit, according the authors of the "Long Tail",
first a Wired article, now a pop-economics hardback book.
Unless you are a film buff, actually like to know about films and their productions, and have possibly worked in the industry. There is not enough time for me to see all of what I want to see. There are literally tens of thousands of films to see not to mention the CARTOONS! I can't get them fast enough!
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
The only people I've known who really take advantage of Netflix are DVDShrink professionals who rip three discs and put them back in the mail the same day. Of course, most of the content will never be watched, they just get a kick out of hoarding.
You may have missed the point: Just dump it in the rotating magnetic media bin, and you will probably never watch it. Save the environment by not flashing to removable media, but also save your time by not processing or watching the product of the Evil Empires.
You are not *obliged* to consume all this stuff, you know... Self-'denial', ie just a more discerning taste could be the better way to fight the World Domination. Are you really making use of all those GB, anyway?
Long train rides? Meh, read a library book.
*Still* negative function...
So what's the big deal if Netflix isn't everybody's cup of tea? Quite frankly as a consumer I like the idea of having a series of choices about how I acquire a product or service. Granted, I've never used Netflix, but I use both the traditional bricks'n'mortar video store as well my cable company's video-on-demand service. It really all depends on the situation ... if I'm out and about say at the liquor store I might just drop by the video store next door and pick something up. On the other hand, if I'm at home languishing on the couch and too lazy to make a trip out I'll see what's on VOD. And if Netflix does offer a whole set of films that will never make it to the store or VOD then that's another option I have. Same holds true for books ... sometimes I order online and sometimes I like to go to a store and just browse around -- the point is that it's my choice.
People say things like this a lot, but I doubt anyone saying it has thought it through. How is building a huge pile of DVD-Rs you don't watch, better than having 3 DVDs you don't watch?
I can see many disadvantages to that scheme. The cost of blank media (DVD-Rs or hard drive space) will outpace your monthly
Netflix fee. Better to just think of Netflix as your $18/mo multi-terabyte off-site hard drive.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I know that I'm not! I mail it back- from the post office in the morning, and I don't see anything for a WEEK. People aren't holding onto their movies, NETFLIX is!
Woolly
my password really is 'stinkypants'
I just get a batch, rip them to the disk immediately, then send them back immediately. Scripts find the rips and make them into HQ Xvid files. They then get FTP'd up to the Xbox for watching whenever I finally get around to it. I sit down some weekends to around 20 movies ready to go.
Think of it as timeshifting your rentals.
I know of a couple of people who don't have time to watch the movies during the week but will end up watching several movies (7+ movies, some for the kids on different tv's) during the weekend. What they do is burn the dvd's to a dvd/rw and return the originals right away. By the end of the week they have several movies they can watch. After watching the dvd's they re write those dvd/rw's with the new dvd's that have arrived during the next week. It's a good way for them to watch the movies at their time schedule.
I rush them back fast as I can so I can get more man.. This article apparently not written by a true Netflixer. The goal of a netflix movie watcher is to watch the movies fast as you can and send them back for more. It's all about getting as many mowies on a good turn around and thus getting your moneys worth.
we live in ames, IA - about 40 minutes from Des Moines, where a netflix center is. If we put ours in the mail by 6p, its checked in at netflix by 10a the next day.
sometimes movies come from elsewhere and take longer.
One solution to this problem is to rip the movie to your 4.5TB
(Running Solaris and ZFS no less) file server and watch the movie
when you have time, from any other PC in your house.
Just a thought.
What's worse, Blockbuster seems to have the new movies and two genres for old releases: Action and comedy. And half of their floor space is now devoted to selling movies, rather than to movies available for rental.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
that's the best benefit of Netflix.
Most people always have this urge to get the best deal on NetFlix. True, it is best to subscribe based on the price per disc rented per delivery, but that is assuming that the subscriber would always watch the movies whenever the discs are delivered. If the turnaround goes down, the subscriber is just wasting money. Better to either cancel the subscription or downgrade to a cheaper package, down to probably one disk per delivery. That's the way to save money on NetFlix.