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posted by janrinok on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-need-more dept.

[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.
...
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?


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:48AM (#413807)

    </discussion>

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:51AM (#413808)

    Does this mean video rental places will come back in vogue since streaming rights are such a cluster? Did Blockbuster give up the ghost too soon?

    Does carrying old movies and TV series really matter in a world that has already seen all of them dozens of times?

    You'd be surprised (or at least I am) at what you missed the first time around.

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:19AM

      by MostCynical (2589) on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:19AM (#413814) Journal

      the "burn on demand" booth thing (Oops "Kiosk Vending Machine" - http://www.blockbuster.com.au/storelocator [blockbuster.com.au] ) outside the local grocery store is branded "Blockbuster"
      apparently there are even still some actual stores open.

      Alas, most of the available titles seem to be old, second-rate, straight-to-tv, straight-to-bargain-bin, or just sh!t.
      http://www.blockbuster.com.au/dvd/0/Action-2269/0/0/0/0/0/new-releases [blockbuster.com.au]

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:36PM

      by richtopia (3160) on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:36PM (#413961) Homepage Journal

      I believe Netflix still has physical disks if you want a larger selection. And Red Box fits the niche of most recent blockbusters.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by ncc74656 on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:46PM

        by ncc74656 (4917) on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:46PM (#413992) Homepage

        I believe Netflix still has physical disks if you want a larger selection.

        I've been a subscriber for 14 years. When they started charging $8/month for streaming, I dropped it as I had only used it once or twice while it was a free add-on. I am paying the extra $4/month for Blu-ray, however.

        I think they're cutting back on distribution centers for their disc-by-mail service, however. They used to send most of my selections from a facility here in Las Vegas, but a while back they started shipping most movies from (IIRC) Santa Ana, CA.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:40PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:40PM (#414357)

        They do have DVDs as well.... But several titles from the 80s that I'd like to see are not available there, either. Or on "extremely long wait" which can be weeksto get. Titles that I'd find in my old rental store before the "new economy" killed it. Ones that they'd restock if it got lost or stolen.

        I guess progress isn't always improvement.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:59AM (#413810)

    New stuff is generally shit.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:15AM

      by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:15AM (#413813) Journal

      +1 agree

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:33AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:33AM (#413815)

        Sharks! Lazers! Ludicrous speed!

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:03AM (#413819)

      No.

      While I also would prefer to have ALL content, old and new and even some non-mainstream, cult content, the new stuff is what makes the world go around, and some of it is what your kids will be calling old and great in a few years. It is not a possibility, it is a reality there is good stuff coming out right now and if someone doesn't notice it they're being hypocritical (harsh word but it's not as offensive as some might think). Old stuff was new stuff back in the day and seems cool to us millennials, but without financial incentives back in the day (which Netflix now also is a part of), they would have never come to be. If you force yourself to only like old stuff (because that's just fake feelings - actual non-hipster people can see beauty in any and all art because art is timeless, even though it is sometimes classified with periods of time).

      Netflix and Amazon are producing great (tv-)shows but they have yet to produce big "blockbusters", at least in what IMDB-scores respects. But I guess that might be part of the problem: if a movie doesn't get theatrical release it won't get critical acclaim. And, newsflash, that is exactly why Netflix is moving on to releasing self-produced short and feature film in actual theaters.

      • (Score: 2) by everdred on Friday October 14 2016, @05:02AM

        by everdred (110) on Friday October 14 2016, @05:02AM (#414167) Journal

        You're right, but waiting a little while after release, to let other people do the work of separating the truly good stuff from the merely hyped, is a legitimate strategy.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:14AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:14AM (#413836)

      New stuff is generally shit.

      As is old stuff. The golden age of When You Were Young is an illusion.
      The only things that past stuff has going in its favor over the present stuff is that there is so much more of it, and it's usually pre-filtered.

      "Only sick music makes money today." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
      "Ninety percent of everything is crap." -- Sturgeon's law

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:43PM (#414035)

        Its called survivor bias. Take the top movie Shawshank Redemption released in 1994. The same year that gave us this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109376/?ref_=adv_li_tt [imdb.com]

        Or one of the classic western movies The good the bad the ugly. Same year as manos hands of fate.

        For every 1 'classic' movie there are a hundred or so that will not be classic.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:26AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:26AM (#414162)

          It's not that old times made better movies, but hindsight lets us collect all the best movies that stand the test of time. You can check the critical acclaim on new movies, but often as not you'll get a flavor of the month that's forgotten about a year later.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:32PM (#413878)
      You remember only the greatest stuff from the olden days. There were some 374 American films released in 1972 [imdb.com], and only one of them was The Godfather. How many more of those films from 44 years ago do you remember?
      • (Score: 4, Funny) by jcross on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:53PM

        by jcross (4009) on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:53PM (#413890)

        I don't disagree with your point, but it's a little disingenuous to post a link sorting them by ascending star ratings. Reverse the order and you can see that a few other famous movies like Cabaret and Deliverance were also released that year. On the other hand, who could pass up a gem like "Terror at Orgy Castle"?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:45PM (#414036)

        Every Saturday night from the mid 1980s into the 1990s, the local public television station had a feature called "Movie City Showcase".[1] [archive.li]
        They would broadcast classic movies, uninterrupted and unedited. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [latimes.com]

        ...and 1972?? Feh. Try 1939.[1] [archive.li] Seriously. [wikipedia.org]

        [1] The S/N comment engine is still broken for e.g. %22 in hyperlinks.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Caballo Negro on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:35AM

    by Caballo Negro (1794) on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:35AM (#413816)
    Two reasons Netflix gets nothing from me:
    • No way to see exactly what they offer without starting a "trial period"; and
    • Reports of what they offer say there's increasingly little of the "old stuff" that is all I'm interested in.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:04AM (#413820)

      Of course they don't want your money. You're not young enough or trendy enough to deserve money. Poverty to old people! Die faster!

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by MadTinfoilHatter on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:28AM

      by MadTinfoilHatter (4635) on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:28AM (#413826)

      Another two:

      • DRM
      • The Pirate Bay has way more than 49 of the Top 250 movies on the IMDB list.
      • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Thursday October 13 2016, @12:16PM

        by jimshatt (978) on Thursday October 13 2016, @12:16PM (#413851) Journal
        In a way, Netflix is telling us to pirate those movies, because no one can be bothered.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:09PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:09PM (#413973)

        Just checked my go-to movie tracker: https://i.imgur.com/VWFhkvo.png [imgur.com]

        Netflix BTFO.

        Ironically, I donated them more money than what people give Netflix on average.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:38AM

      by theluggage (1797) on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:38AM (#413828)

      No way to see exactly what they offer without starting a "trial period";

      Believe me, its not that easy to find stuff once you're signed up, either. "The Netflix UI is brilliant" said nobody ever.

      Apparently, a simple scrolling list of titles with a sensible choice of sorting & filtering options is a technical impossibility...

      • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:44PM

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:44PM (#413938)

        Back when I subscribed the only way to find stuff on Netflix was to use a separate website. And that separate website was the only way to find out when movies were going OFF of Netflix.

        --
        "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:32PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:32PM (#413877)

      It's 10$ a month. That's less than renting a blockbuster at another service or equivalent to renting 2-3 older movies. But if you only like old movies then netflix really isn't your thing. I haven't found any service with a good catalog of old items. Amazon has a lot but you'll be paying physical copy prices for a digital stream : /

      --
      SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:47PM (#413939)

        Free at my library.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:30PM

          by Gaaark (41) on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:30PM (#413955) Journal

          I do this too, but I wish people renting at the library could actually take care of discs: scratches make for bad video viewing people!

          I guess if you find a good copy and might want to watch it twice, you have to make your own 'illegal' copy, cause next time you rent it, it may be non-watchable. :(

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @05:12AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @05:12AM (#414169)

            I guess if you find a good copy and might want to watch it twice, you have to make your own 'illegal' copy, cause next time you rent it, it may be non-watchable. :(

            I thought that was what Redbox was for.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:26PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:26PM (#414019) Journal

      No way to see exactly what they offer without starting a "trial period";
       
      There are a few third-party sites with full content lists out there. I use instantwatcher when the Netflix UI lets me down.

  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:00AM

    by theluggage (1797) on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:00AM (#413818)

    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

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:36AM (#413827) Journal

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:21AM (#413838)

        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

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:29PM (#413875)

      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

        by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:48PM (#413886) Journal

        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

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:34PM (#413881)
      Digital purchase prices are ridiculous, especially when you consider blu-ray, which can often be purchased cheaper than the digital copy, often comes with a digital copy included.
      • (Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:05PM

        by Celestial (4891) on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:05PM (#413923) Journal

        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

          by theluggage (1797) on Friday October 14 2016, @09:59AM (#414212)

          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.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:05PM (#413870)

    IMDB's list [imdb.com] has 0 movies from 2016, 7 from 2015, 8 from 2014 and 4 from 2013. When I was using it as a guide for what to watch, my local public library had a lot of the movies on DVD.

    • (Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:28PM (#413909)

      We should just get rid of libraries anyway. Does carrying old books matter in a world that has already read all of them dozens of times?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by jdavidb on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:16PM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:16PM (#413929) Homepage Journal

    Does carrying old movies and TV series really matter in a world that has already seen all of them dozens of times?

    Does carrying old movies and TV series really matter in a world where government would like to flush everything down the memory hole?

    Does preserving cultural artifacts [wikipedia.org] from religious extremists who want to destroy them really matter in a world that has already seen them for hundreds of years?

    Seriously, I sit down and watch Looney Tunes with my kids because it's an important piece of 20th century history I don't want them to miss. It's like time travel. We're big on original series Star Trek, too. Should we just stop?

    --
    ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:55PM (#413942)

      Oh you just 'triggered' me with that link. The first time I saw a picture of Bamiyan was in my history book and that is the most important thing in the whole history for me. And it is no more... looking at that cavity in mountain is just enough to prove what humankind can end-up doing.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:37PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:37PM (#413962) Journal

      Don't know really why, but i find Next Generation HARD to watch now. Original series, i could watch thousands more times, but N.G. just seems embarrassing now. Can't put my finger on why exactly.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:57PM (#413970)

        I get where you're coming from. They get harder for me the later you go, out to Voyager (I never did see any Enterprise episodes). Each one gets progressively hit-you-over-the-head PC that it is like a bad 80s kid-based movie where gotta have all the classic stereotypes: nerd, jock, plucky idealist, tomboy. The only one they left out was the kid in the wheelchair. The original series was more cowboy/western/action style even though they smacked you right in the face with simple morality messages. Kirk could wax poetic on the evils of racism while checking out the yeoman's legs, whereas they could paint the ex-Borg chick's uniform on her and nobody would dream of looking at anything but her eyes.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Celestial on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:18PM

          by Celestial (4891) on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:18PM (#413979) Journal

          I can't wait to find out how PC "Star Trek: Discovery" will be.

        • (Score: 1) by Bruke on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:22PM

          by Bruke (6247) on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:22PM (#414066)

          I actually enjoyed and would recommend Enterprise. It's got a different flavor than the others and does seem less PC. It got a bad reputation, but I think it holds up better over time than Next Generation/Voyager/DS9.

          • (Score: 1) by gmrath on Friday October 14 2016, @12:39AM

            by gmrath (4181) on Friday October 14 2016, @12:39AM (#414122)

            I Second this. Enterprise is actually pretty good. One of the cable channels plays NewGen almost 24/7. I find it to be almost unwatchable now, though I did watch when it was first out and likewise Voyager. The Original Series first because it was truly groudbreaking, then Enterprise. The rest haven't held up so well over time.

            • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday October 14 2016, @01:18AM

              by Gaaark (41) on Friday October 14 2016, @01:18AM (#414132) Journal

              Some episodes are hard to watch, but overall I'd rather watch Enterprise than N.G.
              The "here, let me rub disinfectant/antibacterial stuff on you" parts are both embarrassing and 'fascinating, captain' at the same time: unnecessary, but "okay, I'll watch you rub T'Pal's skin" (is name correct?. not going to Google).

              Not canon, at lots of points, but could be quite good!

              --
              --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @01:35PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @01:35PM (#414264)

            I watched a few episodes of Enterprise; it was too militaristic for my taste.

  • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday October 14 2016, @05:24AM

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 14 2016, @05:24AM (#414170)

    Does carrying old movies and TV series really matter in a world that has already seen all of them dozens of times?

    Having checked IMDB's list, there are over 200 that I haven't watched yet. So maybe, yes.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @05:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @05:07PM (#414365)

    I found 6 on the list that I wanted but don't have in my Plex yet. I added another 9 thinking about some of those movies (like they had Silence of the Lambs but not Red Dragon or Hannibal. Hannibal was better than Silence IMVVVHO.)

    But while I have Netflix DVD and Streaming, Hulu, and Comcast Xfinity, and could thus do this at no cost multiple ways (or just torrent them,) I'll get them on my Plex server the honest way and buy them cheap from either Amazon or for $1.00 each at my local pawn shop. Then burn them using software which I can legally own and use but wasn't legal for the maker to create or sell to me. That way I have the physical media so the MPAA can't bitch that they "lost money" by my format shifting it to something more permanent (via backups) and easier to play (from anywhere.)