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[two years ago] Netflix had 49 of the Top 250 movies on the IMDB list. That's just under 20 percent, which isn't terrible.
But we wondered how that number has held up over the last two years in the face of a quickly shrinking library. So we reran the analysis. How many of the top 250 movies does Netflix now have?
As of September 2016, that number has dropped to 31, or about 12 percent.
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Earlier this year, David Wells, the streaming company's chief financial officer, said Netflix wants half of its content to be original productions over the next few years."We've been on a multiyear transition and evolution toward more of our own content," Wells said in a conference call in September, as reported by Variety.
Does carrying old movies and TV series really matter in a world that has already seen all of them dozens of times?
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:00AM
I don't think its any great secret that the focus is now on Netflix vs. Amazon for TV and "original content".
I've recently joined Netflix - but its certainly not for the movies, which are mainly crap (...and will suffice for those rainy days when you get a craving for a crap movie). If there are any movies I want to see, I'll grab them when they show up as a special or 2-for-1 DVD/BR offer at the supermarket or, if all else fails, buy them from Amazon: unless Hollywood churns out a must-see movie every month its cheaper than joining enough subscription services o get "coverage".
I'll be interested to see what the flow of new stuff is like once I've "caught up"...
If you joined Netflix in the DVD-by-post days, I understand your disappointment, but it does look as if the online "box set" is the current new unit of entertainment.
My main frustration is not Netflix, but the lack of "streaming rental" movie choices on Amazon and the high price of streaming "buy" options, which make the physical Blu Ray look like much better value.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:36AM
For me, Netflix is skating perilously close to the edge of irrelevance, and doing it by fractions of degrees.
First, they started dropping all the blockbuster movies.
Then they dropped all the indy and foreign films.
Then the remaining good content started to come and go randomly. For example, I saw a quirky title called, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, and watched it. It turned out to be quite funny, a sort of Swedish Forrest Gump. Tried to watch it again with my wife two days later. Nope, nuh-uh, sorry. Gone.
Then there are the usage restrictions. We have the roku signed in at our place in the city, and the xbox signed in at the weekend house on Long Island. Have had that for years. Suddenly, Netflix wants to pretend somebody stole our credentials and make us change our password every weekend. And now they've started to bitch when my kids want to watch Wild Kratts in their room while my wife and I watch something else in ours.
The Netflix streaming subscription isn't expensive, $12/mo. But piss me off too much and even that pittance will feel like I'm overpaying. And these days, I'm feeling like I'm overpaying.
The poster at the top of the thread had the right answer: torrents. There is no other answer to corporations than to stop playing their game of artificial scarcity.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:21AM
For me, Netflix is skating perilously close to the edge of irrelevance, and doing it by fractions of degrees.
First, they started dropping all the blockbuster movies.
Then they dropped all the indy and foreign films.
Usually it's the licensing issues, especially geoblocking. The studios want money, but they want control even more. That's why there is something like three thousand streaming services, each with five and a half movies and asking $10 a month for access.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:29PM
If you'd like to try a new original netflix show, Stranger Things was very good.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:48PM
Stranger Things seconded. It had the feel of Stephen King with elements from the Silent Hill video game series. If Netflix can continue to create original series at that level, even if it's not every series they make, keeping the subscription is worth it.
Original series are probably the best way for them to survive, even if that's not everything we really want. Netflix seems to be in a good position to create compelling stories since they have little incentive to add filler or axe plot points to keep on a broadcast schedule. Or at least filler wouldn't make much sense since their audience is free to skip to the next episode.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by EvilSS on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:34PM
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:05PM
People sell Digital HD codes on eBay for about $5, or trade them (there are several groups on Google Plus just for this purpose). You can use this to quickly build up a library on an UltraViolet-compatible online retailer like VUDU. That's how I've built up my own VUDU library of movies.
Thanks to Comcast data caps and for other reasons I've recently discussed about in one of my journal entries, I can forget about streaming 4K Ultra HD video. So I've been buying movies I want on the new 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray as they become available. I'm up to ten movies so far on 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray, with an eleventh pre-ordered. They all come with Digital HD codes as well. If VUDU has the movie available in 4K Ultra HD as well, and you redeem the code, they'll give you a copy of the movie in 4K Ultra HD instead of just HD. So I'm essentially future-proofed for when I will eventually be able to stream 4K Ultra HD video. Well, so long as VUDU stays around, anyway. :P But they're owned by Walmart, so odds are that they'll be around a while.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday October 14 2016, @09:59AM
People sell Digital HD codes on eBay for about $5
...which is surely against the terms of the license. I've never got the point of paying money for what is still effectively a pirated copy. I'm not going to pontificate on whether you should to take the legal high ground and buy a legitimate copy, or stick it to the MPAA and torrent it for free - but paying good money for what is effectively a pirate copy just seems dumb.