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Comment by trumped | Hacker News Reader

I pay for Netflix but I "record" whatever content that I really like because I know that there is a good chance that it will become unavailable in the future: https://reelgood.com/blog/netflixs-us-catalog-has-shrunk-by-...

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Interesting. I don't think many have the expectation that they have the right to watch a Netflix movie they streamed in perpetuity, as they do with Kindle books or iTunes purchases.

It would have been crazy 20 years ago to subscribe to HBO and record a movie to your VCR, that you could watch later, or at a friend's house.

But it would not have been crazy, 25 years ago, to record a song playing on the radio to a tape recorder, so you can replay it back later.

People don't have this expectation because Netflix is already pulling out content all the time.

A few years ago you could get pretty much any DVD from Netflix mail service, you could also walk in a video rental store and find all the classic, as well as all the blockbusters from the past 10 years.

It's really sad that a technological advance lead to such a regression.

I don't know if it's the exception, but in Santa Clara County, the public libraries have a somewhat better selection of DVD's than Netflix. I just cross referenced my list recently (about 20) and the local library had five older that were not available (as out of print most likely) on Netflix and Netflix had two (older foreign releases) that were not in the library. I'm probably cancelling my Netflix DVD subscription soon.

Why not just pirate them and get them in better quality? You know, I know, the copyright holders know and Netflix knows that is not the intention of a $10-a-month streaming service. So why not get the BD rips with less compression instead?

To tell you the thruth, I pay for Netflix but download them from alternate sources...

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