Netflix - Not bad! Qwikster - uh, never mind...

Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first VHS my parents bought, cost $49 on sale at Specs in spring '85.

Raiders was our first video too. the electronics store in the mall had all the tapes behind glass w/ holes to stick your hand in to view a box. shit was wicked $$. i learned to copy rentals real quick.

When I bought the coaxial cable at Radio Shack that allowed me to copy videotapes, I was in hog heaven. This was '95, I think. I still own some of those transfers.

unless those originals has "copyguard."

I remember that for a rented video tape I saw at my sister's apt, we had to rent a VHS player too. And they were large and heavy back then.

I held out on buying a VCR until the price had plunged to about $350.

saw goonies recently for the first time on VHS and that shit looked HI-DEF, not kidding. hold on to your decks!

I have a) a baby and b) no money so I'm seeing all of my movies at home these days.

and obv it's not a huge deal to see mcgruber a month later but part of the deal with netflix is that it's "just like getting dvds from the video store except they come to your house!" except it's not, when netflix doesn't get the movies for a month after every one else. and maybe right now it's just mcgruber (which noted movie critic and bon vivante s1ocki LOVED btw) and other dumb shit but I think these staggered releases are some shady shit and probably eventually the studios are going to think "hey why don't we just hold back everything from netflix" and basically it just sucks

i wonder why all these asshole movie companies don't just bend over backwards to help out the people with no money to give them.

it's bending over backwards to release their movies on dvd to everyone at the same time?

i mean, i can see why it's a little frustrating to you, obv. But you can't deny that there is money to be made in releasing a DVD for sale ($14) a month earlier than a Netflix rental (appx $2 to $7)

Yeah I can understand the business side of it, duh. But I still think it's kind of a dick move, and one that isn't going to endear movie studios to the public (or at least the public with Netflix accounts), which is ultimately a bad business move.

Plus as far as I can tell, these movies are available at Blockbuster and other video stores, which presumably pay the studios the same amount per DVD that Netflix does. So it seems like they're specifically screwing Netflix, even though they get the same amount of money from Netflix that they do from other video stores. But maybe there's some contractual nitty-gritty here that I don't know about.

I mean obviously I'm just griping about this as a consumer because it's inconvenient to me, yeah, and ultimately I don't really care about the details of the business aspects. But are movie studios even making significant money off DVD sales of things like McGruber to individuals anymore? It seems like most of the sales would be to video stores and distributors.

well, netflix saves a little money on their contracts now and can put that money towards streaming. i would assume the studios also bought netflix off by offering more movies to add to netflix's streaming catalog. i would imagine that new releases aren't a major part of netflix's earnings anyhow. the long term streaming deals are bound to benefit them the most.

also, netflix is rolling out streaming only subscriptions

Yeah, from the reports I remember reading, jeff nailed it - in return for giving Netflix greater access to some of themajor studios' back catalogs, Netflix agreed to wait for new releases to give the studios a chance to make bigger money on sales.

But, as n/a alluded to, I don't know that it is really working as well as the studios had hoped.

i'd bet on netflix in the long run; as the times piece points out, it's less cash to break in to the streaming business than to get the postage up but NFlix has been really smart and innovative more or less from jump and they don't appear to be doing anything except moving the goalposts away from competitors at the moment

But are movie studios even making significant money off DVD sales of things like McGruber to individuals anymore?

US DVD sales of Prince of Persia were $15 million last week.

were those all to individuals or does that include sales to distributors, video stores, etc?

also Prince of Persia isn't exactly comparable to McGruber in terms of marketing push and (probably) viewer interest

those are individual sales, so it excludes distributors, rental stores, etc...

Even if McGruber only pulls in a quarter of the Prince of Persia in a week that's still nothing to sniff at from the studios. They don't like rentals getting more popular, of course.

macgruber seems like it was designed for home video

Hey guys, I am overworked and I need something as escapist as possible that can take me away from thesis work/stress for 70-90 mins. Must be on streaming NF. Any recs? Ponyo? Crank 2?

That's P-O-N-Y-O, btw. Netflix is a family service.

Ponyo is cool if you like:
- ancient species of fish
- ham

Also pretty high on old people content.

I liked it.

I don't know that I really do like those things. I like funny things

Also, I'm Jewish, so ham is pretty heavy for me, in terms of semiotics

i imagine i'd enjoy ponyo and crank 2 much more if they were the same movie.

I want to see Crank 1 but it is not there. Ditto Transporter.

You know...Crank One!

Ponyo also has a cool ancient wizard who has a water pump.

It doesn't have a lot of laughs per minute, though...at all.

Oh - Friday! I've actually never seen that

How the fuck are you going to let me watch the first disc of a series and then shitcan the whole fucking thing w no warning? This just happened with Dexter season 4

Keep an eye of what's coming up and what's going on on Instant with this: InstantWatcher

gukbe, that is exactly what i've been looking for. thanks, you're a peach!

That meant to say "what's going down" as in being taken off. there's a list.

why would they take off an incredibly popular show like dxtr!?

They're about to raise their prices too. I went up to 3 discs because it wasn't much more than 2, but gonna go back to 2 and get around to streaming more.

so i guess netflix had an issue with Showtime regarding Dexter. looks like they ironed d it out because it's back on today.

did this site just go down

yeah I can't log in. streaming works though

http://grab.by/grabs/098e51add3f6f190bf4231d25ad2ad13.png

oh man, i really wanted to see that

We’re sorry, the Netflix website and the ability to instantly watch movies are both temporarily unavailable.

However, our shipping centers are continuing to send and receive DVDs so your order is in process as usual.

wonder what specifically causes these outages

It's my fault. I tried sorting all the "steamy romances" by my predicted star rating.

Huh, now it's switched around:

We’re sorry, the Netflix website and our DVD shipping operations are temporarily down.
You can still instantly watch movies via your Netflix ready device.

i will probably take this back soon enough, since i just signed up bc there is a free 1-month trial and instant watch is a thing in canada now, but:
Canadian Netflix is some bullshit

due to two moves and my lack of organization, I now have had 4 DVDs checked out since December of 2007. I've paid the minimal fee each month to avoid having to pay replacement fees, though that's kind of moot now that I've probably made more than I would have.

The good news is, I now know where all of them are. Don't have the sleeves or the envelopes, but I can send them back and start renting again!

like, how is everything i want to watch 'not available'? The Wire, 24, the sopranos. i am trying to catch up on years of tv culture here, ca.netflix.com
xp

there's a lot of "seriously, you don't have this??"s on Netflix. I was surprised the last time I used the streaming service.

What I hate the most is when they have a sequel but not the original movie.

you have to treat it like a disorganized book store: browse for something that looks fun and interesting rather than go in expecting to find something specific