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Comment by akerro | Hacker News Reader

>I have subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Criterion, Apple TV+ and PBS

WOW. I had netflix once for a few days, I paid for netflix just to watch House MD, a week into netflix, they removed House MD from my region, I cancelled subscription and moved to PT. Never came back to netflix, I just no longer trust them, too much effort and too much legal complications. I can imagine paying for one portal, but more than two? That's more expensive and less user friendly then cable TV.

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I used netflix, I liked their content (99% of what I watch are series, so I don’t care about movies). What made me finally cancel was their UX that they seem hellbent on making worse and worse.

1. No, I don’t want to get rewatch suggestions.

2. Yes, I’d like to have always the same thumbnail for the same show.

3. Yes, I’d like to tell you "Never show me this show again".

4. No, I don’t want any automatic screen movement.

A cherry on top would be having a toggle to only show me shows with English subs.

Looks like you were more looking for a reason not to have to pay anymore. Point of netflix is to watch content, not the UX of the home page.

Looks like you prefer to incite people over contributing to any kind of intelligent discussion. But FWIW, I kinda need to use the netflix site to look for stuff to watch.

I have a Jellyfin server and access to most content I want, but I'm still paying for Netflix because:

1. The content is nicely organised;

2. There's a button for it on my TV remotes; and

3. The UX is way more accessible for the elderly members of my family.

I have a running list of shows that I watch / watched that have been added and removed from Netflix and Prime over the years I have been a subscriber.

I run a local media server for things I have on BluRay or DVD, I used to archive shows I could also get on one of those 2 platforms but it became major hassle because they would remove and add the shows my family wants access to all the time... When I started tracking it, it was amazing how much churn there was on popular titles

If you stick around long enough you’ll see it pop back up. Shows that are sufficiently in demand get renegotiated every few years and move platforms.

My current frustration is stargate. It is not available digitally in my region in any legal way because mgm is trying to negotiate a buyout by apple and doesn’t want any streaming rights to get in the way. I wanted to show it to my son and my options are limited to ordering a physical disk for a one-off viewing, or piracy.

If you're in the United States, Stargate is available free on broadcast in many cities. I run across it frequently when flipping between the various western channels.

Yeah. The Disney+ and Apple TV+ subs are via free first-year promos at the moment and I have Amazon Prime for its other benefits. PBS is included with supporting my local station. Criterion has a long tail of old movies they own both streaming and physical rights distributions to. But yeah...

If your library has it, Kanopy is free and includes a fairly large rotating set of Criterion films. Also some popular movies (Ex Machina was on there last time I checked) and a lot of documentaries. Some mostly-terrible single-camera TV learning type programs. But overall it's a damn good selection. Limited number of views per month but you can watch at least one movie a week on it—may vary library to library, not sure how the payment structure works. You won't find Marvel movies on there but if you're into cinema it's worth the time to sign up, especially if you don't pay for Criterion or any of the other, specialized streaming services along those lines.

ok not trusting them seems a little much on that example, surely they didn't promise you that House MD would be on in your region in perpetuity? Although there are probably lots other reasons not to trust them.

Why wouldn't it be there?

Netflix have the data, he has the money, what's the problem?

The problem is "too much legal complications" and that problem does not exist on Popcorn Time.

Well, it does if you reside anywhere such agencies as the MPAA, GEMMA, or BREIN can send jackbooted S.W.A.T. through your front door.

Yeah, this really looks to me like someone still clinking to the long obsolete broadcast model, where you had no back channel to your customers from them to request what they want & to pay for it. And also broadcasts were regionally bound.

So you sold a license to a local broadcasting company to for a time window and number of runs for a show. Not more you can do with no back channel for customers to request individual shows and pay for them. By only granting one license per are you can enforce some scarcity and get your money & hopefully users liked it. Channels could the compete who gets the best time based licenses, who gets the new hot stuff first, etc.

Now here we are with a global network with basically any user being able to request any show and pay for it (or get a subscription for a channel carrying it) and yet the media companies still carry one like one had to win an auction to get one of the broadcast masters, drag in on top of a hill to broadcast it and then return it back to someone else to do the same thing.

If all you can trust is direct promises then you can't trust them to do anything but take money.

It does seem perfectly enough to me. I gave them my address, details, credit card details, started watching a show from episode 1, they did not warn me "hey looks like you're watching a tv show that will be removed from netflix in a week, don't waste your time here" and it didn't expiration date on it, it just disappeared.

How would you feel to rent a car, go halfway to destination, take a nap in a hotel, then you wake up , car has no wheels, because wheels you had couldn't be used on that specific road, and you weren't warned about it. Breach of trust? Waste of time? Disappointment?

I see your point, although they would have to implement that functionality of notifying people, it's probably not that high priority unfortunately. I think a reasonable thing would be to show "leaving soon" notices on shows that have less than a month to go.

They used to have that feature, they used to publicly list content expiration They stopped doing that because people would unsub, and there were groups and communities around tracking the status of shows

They [netflix] ended that about the same time they ended their Public API and starting becoming a "Media Company" instead of a tech company, this is also the point in time they became less consumer centrist.

It's all due to investor pressure. Netflix was bleeding itself dry until they started making these changes.

I agree it was investor pressure, I 100% disagree they were "bleeding themselves dry"

The short term thinking of modern business to chancing as much quarterly growth has humanly possible long term health be damned was the investor pressure they were / are under.

This will short term thinking will be (and has been) the cause of major problems not just in netflix but many companies

I don't know, I had Netflix notify me a few months ago when we were watching Spongebob, that it was going to be removed in a couple of weeks time. It's still there though.

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