Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

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What is maddening is that Netflix when it was just DVDs it was IMO it was pretty amazing discovery wise. I felt like the users folks posting reviews were amazing at suggesting movies / giving you a good feel for the film. But maybe it was because those folks didn't have a background motivation to push, like advertising dollars or etc.

Or maybe it was an eternal September problem or just the fact that DVDs meant there was more content that could be found, but I've not found anything as good as the old school Netflix community reviews.

Meanwhile amazon is convinced I'm a woman and won't leave me alone about that ... Google is convinced I love a college football team that is in fact a rival because I google something about them once in a blue moon .... Trump was really interested in me filling out a happy birthday card for his wife (nope, that's creepy)... and they stand to make money on that, a still get it wrong.

The library was far better when it was DVDs. They didn't have the licensing problems they do now.

Yeah the volume of good quality but not well known films available was huge.

Now those seem lost... they're often in a limbo where they only exist in DVD form now, but not streaming.

Agreed.

I used to watch quite a few older and newer movies when it was a DVD service. Now, I just get all of their branded content shoved down my throat with little if any options beyond that. Search is inconsistent at best.

I've been thinking about canceling my subscription for a while now as I feel the value of Netflix just isn't there any more.

To me, the value of these streaming services are probably 1/3 their actual price, so like many I split the account with a half dozen people. It's gotten to the point where the scale is shifting further and further, and I'm streaming content gratis using bittorrent rather than the actual platform that I have an account with because sometimes it's easier and faster to get straight to the content without being bombarded. Not to mention the latest Hulu dark pattern, where something will be labelled as "available on Hulu," then you go and look and it's only available on the Hulu plan that costs as much as your old cable bill.

Have they removed films from the DVD side of the business?

I used it until a few years ago, it seemed the same as ever back then. Now we just have more options through various services for streaming, vs waiting on DVD.

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