I'm not particularly ashamed to say I turn to unlicensed torrents for this purpose, but I would prefer if it weren't necessary.
Netflix's DVD service still exists.[1] They have a fantastic selection, compared to their streaming service.
[1] - https://dvd.netflix.com/
How is Netflix able to get rights to send physical media, but not stream? It seems to me that literally the only real difference is physical media means there is a limit on number of concurrent viewers.
From a copyright perspective, that's a fundamental difference from streaming.
That being said, physical media has far superior audio and video quality. A Bluray disc vs streaming 1080p (especially a Netflix stream) is a world of difference. Streaming media is usually bit-starved to near death. If you care about quality (and you very well may not), it's the only way to fly.
If you don't mind the subpar video and audio quality, then I can understand why people use the streaming service. It's just not for me, though. I have a 49" 4k TV and a Bluray player that upscales for a reason. I don't want that swill they serve up over ethernet, lol.
An unfortunate situation.
The value Netflix provides is primarily convenience. There are other ways to watch movies and TV shows, the reason to use Netflix is that it's more convenient than the alternatives.
Having to deal with physical media (and wait for them to be delivered) is less convenient than other alternatives to Netflix. Therefore, it's a flaw of Netflix.
I'd much rather put up with the minimal hassle and a bit of a wait to get a great selection of DVDs.
The "hassle" amounts to me opening up an envelope, putting the DVD in to my DVD player, putting it back in to the envelope when I'm done and throwing it in to a mailbox on my way to work.
Sure, it's not as easy as hitting play in a streaming app, but not really a big deal, either.
Which was exactly my point. It's a flaw of Netflix that it's streaming collection isn't as good as it's DVD collection.
I don't plan for movie night days in advance. I'm not going to rent that shit in the mail. So after a few years of not touching my DVD player, I threw it out.
The content owners are the real ones losing out here. I'd pay $4 to stream any movie, there's just no service I'm aware of that offers them all digitally at that price.
I just recently started using VidAngel though, and I'm happy with it so far. They advertise being able to filter movies, but you can always just filter a single word if you don't want anything filtered. It's $1 for SD and $2 for HD. They have an interesting licensing model though so you sort of have to have a constant $18-$19 deposit with them.
Whenever I wanted some mega-obscure Japanese or Thai movie, Netflix never had it and Blockbuster always did.
Oh well.
I meant to give it a try once I ran out of interesting movies to watch on Netflix. But I guess I waited too long, because now they're out of business.
Despite Netflix not having absolutely everything, I think Netflix still has a really good DVD selection, with plenty of relatively obscure films (along with tons of mainstream ones).
It could definitely be better (on selection, and also wish they offered more letterboxed and full-length films instead of shortened ones), and I wish there was more competition in this field. But overall I'm pretty satisfied and would recommend their DVD service to others.
It might take some custom hardware, but just a few larger central stores vs something like redbox for example.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/is-zedivas-new-re...
It turned out that the courts were not impressed by this workaround.
https://www.wired.com/2011/10/streaming-movie-service-zediva...
No studios will collectively give a tech company the majority of the licenses to make this possible - so torrents it is.
For a real film buff being able to go rent F. W. Murnau's "Noseferatu", Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup" or Polanski's "Knife in the Water" was really important to me and something I took for granted. Almost every large city had a least one such film nerd rental place. And now that video stores are gone there's just a void for so much of this content.
One beacon of hope though which is supposed to launch soon is a streaming venture by TCM and The Criterion Collection:
I am really forward to this that and I hope its huge success.
Noseferatu: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Nosferatu_The_V...
Blowup: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Blowup?id=5esCY...
Knife in the water: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Knife_in_the_Wa...
I prefer Google to the Amazon option. Much better device support (it works on pretty much every device out there) and the overall UI is just fantastic.
https://www.amazon.com/Nosferatu-Silent-Max-Schreck/dp/B001O...
https://www.amazon.com/Blowup-Vanessa-Redgrave/dp/B000I157KO
https://www.amazon.com/Knife-Water-Leon-Niemczyk/dp/B004D22R...
Amazon + Netflix + Blueray player has become my perfect combination. The few titles that I can't get streaming I just buy the discs.
Make sure you try it first with a free or test movie before buying.
In the economic sense consumption means a resource is used and cannot readily be re-used at its original quality. Copying a file does not deprive anybody of anything, I cannot even see a reasonable argument when the case involves a market where the good is not even offered for sale.
Though obviously they'd much rather have you pay for it and watch it.
When they made the transition to streaming, they had to acknowledge that they could no longer provide the one-stop shop with everything to watch. Instead, they had to pivot to a model largely based on "something for everyone to watch." My personal opinion is that they missed a good opportunity to socialize that pivot.
But where are all the Woody Allen movies?!!
It's not necessary if you accept the cost that the makers of these films want to charge you.
Not every country has a licence to sell certain movies. Literally can't pay the money the makers of the films what they want to charge me because they don't want to charge me. This also applies to music and other products (though other products can't necessarily be pirated).
My options are:
a) Pirate the movie at no cost to the creator
b) Do not watch the movie at no cost to the creator
That a small percentage of people can't... OK that's true. but bringing that up as a reason why piracy can be justified doesn't really seem conductive to a cross-discussion.
Good luck finding anything but the most popular animes legally in the US. I don't think I've ever even seen a Japanese drama through a legal means.
If a title is not available in a region, the copyright holder implicitly doesn't care at all. They care about piracy of their goods in regions where it's legally available for purchase. So sticking to arguments that revolve around that seem to make more sense, otherwise you are "preaching to the choir" as it were.
c) Watch another movie, paying its creator
(possibly the same as in option a)
You can't just replace "Vocaloid Music" (Miku, Rin, Luka) with "other synthetic vocals". It's "similar" but it is not "the same".
The cultures around Gumi and other Megpoids differs from that around Miku and other Vocaloids.
When a billionaire buys a Van Gogh or it is sold to some museum far, far away, we look at other van Goghs. If all van Goghs were to get out of reach, some other painter would be brought to the spotlight and become _the_ painter.
(And edit on my grandfather post: s/minority/majority)
That isn't how that works. Cultures get built around things - those things don't "choose" their culture. Even creators do not get to "choose" the culture their work belongs to. For example, Pepe the frog. Contrast the popular 4chan/pol/ usage of Pepe the frog with the viewpoints of the creator of Pepe the frog. Even the artist recently drawing Pepe taking a piss on Donald Trump won't stop or change the culture that has built up around the meme. Sometimes trying to not be part of a culture backfires. Ben Garrison learned that the hard way. The more he asked 4chan to stop - the harder 4chan pushed. Eventually it seems like he has given up fighting against it.
>When a billionaire buys a Van Gogh or it is sold to some museum far, far away, we look at other van Goghs. If all van Goghs were to get out of reach, some other painter would be brought to the spotlight and become _the_ painter.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Not too big into art culture and don't really care if I have a cheap $30 copy or the $30mm original of the painting. If I wanted a van Gogh I'd get a van Gogh. Even if it weren't an original.
My girlfriend already jokes that if you search for a film on Netflix they realise and immediately remove it. Then you get the dreaded "Films related to X" search result.
It's really really bad if Netflix gets a reputation for having a small catalogue, even if most of it is rarely watched.
It's kind of like Linux vs Windows. Linux has 90% of the apps you need. But when you need Solidworks or Altium or GTA 5 or whatever you think "pff screw this I will use windows". With Netflix it has lots of stuff but when you search for Die Hard or 12 Angry Men or whatever... well let's just say I treat Netflix as a moral way of paying for Bittorrent.
I assure you; they are.
Despite the very vocal people around the HN community to talk a lot about hating the selection, the data says that most people are pretty happy with it--and only getting happier.
I tried to watch a film last night and searched for all of these very popular films.
* Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
* 28 Days Later
* Go
* Gladiator
* American Beauty
* Speed
Then I gave up. When you try 6 very well known films and none of them are on there it changes how you think of the service from "most stuff is on there" (like Spotify for example) to "I have to search Netflix to find something I like" (like a normal TV channel). It's very different.
You don't like the selection. You're looking for films. Films make up a very small percentage of Netflix streaming content and Netflix streaming usage.
If you are still thinking of Netflix (the streaming service) as "most stuff is on there" then I'm happy to see you reframe your thinking--it's not now, nor has it ever been, that.
I'd be hard pressed to find the link to support this, but my understanding is that DVD/BluRay sales are the mechanism by which the "last mile" of movie finance is accomplished.
My wife and I recently made the decision to stop Netflix. We'd kept a tally and Amazon Video was used more than 10:1 than Netflix. We do have Amazon Prime ( which I suspect Amazon cannot keep up forever ). But for movie movies, we still DVR them from cable.
The Netflix experience is like giving up on the new releases portion of Blockbuster and trolling through the back of the store for older titles, leaving disappointed. From here, it smells like artificial scarcity. But I'm not buying too many more titles on physical media - I don't want to store them and if I ever get a buyer figured out, I'll sell a lot of what we already have.
Most of what we'd buy are the TCM offerings of classic movies.
They're not catering to the folks like yourself.
It's not peanuts if you don't think you're getting much value (e.g. it doesn't have the stuff you wanna watch).
Obviously :) We didn't miss the $10/M for a couple of years before we summoned the energy to unsubscribe.
I love the Marco Polo series, but I've only once watched more than two episodes back to back. Likewise for Jennifer Jones. Guess I'm just not a binge watcher.
OTOH, I have no problem watching a 2:20 long movie or even two of them back to back. Movies simply draw me in more than episodic TV does.
But i hardly watch movies at all anymore.
I don't think of watching several movies in a row as binging them, I'd call that a "movie marathon" especially if they were a series (e.g. watching a trilogy like Lord of the Rings one after another).
What is useful to Netflix is watching a whole show over the course of several weeks, a few episodes at a time.
The primary way my wife and I consume shows is to watch a few episodes a day, every day, until we've watched from the first to the last available episode. We are currently watching through The Good Wife on Netflix which, at 134 episodes, will take us about 2 months.
For me that's a good deal, because it would cost about £35 for a DVD boxset (yes, I could shop around, but only if my time is worthless), while Netflix only costs me £18 for 2 months. For Netflix that's a good deal, because they've got 2 months of subscription from me for 1 show.
Once we've finished with The Good Wife, we'll find another show to watch.
We watch about the equivalent of a movie each night, but we aren't going to watch enough movies in a month to make it feel worth keeping the subscription. Movies require a larger investment, because the characters and world are new and different with each one. With a TV show the characters are recurring, so you don't have to invest as much, which makes them easier to watch a lot of in a row.
I suspect it's as much the latter as the former.
1) We live in a multitasking world where people are half watching netflix and half on their phone. TV plots typically develop in smaller chunks, requiring less attention.
2) Most people do not set out to binge watch multiple hours of netflix, but instead get caught up in the shows. Movies feel like a larger commitment, even though many times people watch for the same total length of time.
3) Binge watching often happens because the TV show model is to often end on a cliff hanger.
All the Star Trek series and films are on Netflix. Wouldn't it be great to have a playlist of every episode by original air date? (So you don't get confused when Deep Space 9 refers to an event in First Contact?) Wouldn't it be awesome to have a playlist of only the top 20 Voyager episodes, so you don't have to suffer through the awful ones?
It surprises me they haven't implemented this. If they did, any user could solve your problem of putting a movie series in order.
Of course I also wish they had a "back 30 seconds" button for when you miss a line of dialog, and that's never been done either. Sigh. It seems like all their revenue is going into making Marvel shows and zero into software development.
It has far less to do with "not noticing" and much more to do with the algorithms knowing what you might want to watch that you didn't already know you wanted to watch.
Customers would still have to sign up for multiple services but at least all the content would be available.
Only true for shows that are not in the top 250 shows.
Netflix: Offering cheap & unlimited access for everytone to shows that noone wants to watch.
They have all of: Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The West Wing, Cosmos, Planet Earth, Sherlock, House, Friends, The Office, Parks and Recreation, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and more.
Plus tons of their in-house and supposedly top-quality shows: House of Cards, Daredevil, Narcos, Orange is the New Black, Making a Murderer, and more.
Netflix is a steal for $10 a month.
Former Netflix employee here--though I left in late 2013. I remember sitting at a company meeting and Reed Hastings explaining that AAA film content was never going to be the bread-and-butter for Netflix for several reasons. Most importantly: Between traditional, "linear" television and Netflix, the experience that Netflix brings with a combination of a low subscription cost, no commercials, and the ability to watch as many episodes of a show as you want to watch whenever you want to watch them is VASTLY superior.
Netflix survives and thrives on binge-watching--and people just don't do that with movies (they have a LOT of data to back up that statement). Combined with the realities of the costs associated with feature film licensing and there's very little incentive for Netflix to put any emphasis on films.
The only way they could do it is to tack on a pay-per-view service for films (because their subscription fee alone will absolutely NOT cover the cost of licensing more feature film content) and they are highly averse to such a service. The general feeling is that it's better for the average user if they can open up Netflix and watch whatever is there without ever thinking about whether it's an "included" title or a "PPV" title. When I was there, we regularly revisited this assumption and research always found that it continued to be the prudent move.