In Praise of Netflix
I’ve had a Netflix account since January 2005 (so my accounts page tells me) and I continue to love it. I know people who have tried and dismissed the system, but I find that for my renting habits, it’s just about ideal. The fact is, Jeremy and I haven’t even visited a bricks-and-mortar video rental place since we’ve moved. He mostly obtains movies through Internet savvy (all methods are super legal…of course…) and I have my Netflix. (Turns out geeks aren’t file sharing Sullivan’s Travels…)
The main drawback to Netflix is that you can’t get big movies the day they’re released into video stores. If that’s a priority for you, Netflix is not ideal. DVDs are usually released on Tuesdays; you can ‘save’ the disc before it’s released and it appears in your queue even before that Tuesday comes. Still, you’ll have to wait for shipping, and possibly, if there’s great demand for the movie, for other people to cycle through it before you can get your hands on it. I tend not to care if I see movies the week they came out, the year they came out, the decade they came out (the two discs in my possession currently are films from 1961 and 1999). I can say, from anecdotal evidence (a former co-worker who had Blockbuster online) that the waits at Netflix were shorter and the selection much better.
Selection is one of the real benefits of Netflix. Every film is exhaustively categorized, so you can find it in a number of ways: searching on “comedies of the 1940s,” or “movies about movies,” or “Oscar winners” or “movies based on books” etc. The queue is the list of wanna-sees, and you can slide movies up and down the list at will. I am not great about keeping the discs moving through the queue—I tend to sit on the films that got mailed for a long time—but Netflix has also instituted a Watch Instantly feature, which is basically awesome. I can watch movies on my computer (which I do, while e-mailing, or doing schoolwork at the more brainless end of the spectrum) or I can hook the computer up to the TV and watch the movie there. (Regarding that: Netflix users take heed! Do not pay a hundred bucks for the Netflix instant viewing device. All you need to watch movies on your TV is a laptop computer and a $10 cable.)
The Watch Instantly catalog started out a bit weak, but then Netflix allied themselves with, like CBS.com, and Starz Online, and a bunch of other video-streaming services, so the choices improved immensely and immediately. They do sometimes rotate out of service, so you have to keep an eye on the end dates. Anyway, that means that entire seasons of popular TV shows are watchable (The Office, 30 Rock), as well as movies that just came out, older classics, foreign films (Jeremy must have watched this Russian action film about ten times) and just really great stuff. Plus, Netflix marks the films that are in your existing queue which are also available to watch instantly; plus, they let you maintain a Watch Instantly queue which can be separate.
Speaking of separate queues, that’s another feature we use. I established a queue on my account for Jeremy, which he can access and into which he can put anything he wants. So if I hold on to The Innocents for two months (I’m watching it this week, I swear!) that doesn’t hold up the movies Jeremy is watching.
Further, the recommendations are excellent; I just rate movies I’ve seen, and they offer “you might also enjoy” picks. They’re more accurate, in general, than, say, Amazon’s similar recommendations. I’ve found some good stuff I would not have heard of, as well as stuff I’d heard of but wouldn’t have thought of to rent. Like I said, I appreciate the organizational effects of the queue; you can also access a complete list of your rentals, so I don’t forget what I’ve watched. I’ve never had a problem with any of their mailers, and I think I’ve only had maybe two lost discs in the four years I’ve had the account.
There's a community feature which I admit, I don't use much. There are some people I don't want to know that I consider Bridget Jones's Diary a 5-star movie, or that I found Being There really boring. My sister and brother-in-law are on there, but my taste in movies is pretty different from theirs, so we don't do a lot of sharing and advising. But the feature is there for those who are interested.
No, Netflix paid me nothing for this free advertisement.
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