Friday, September 02, 2011

Netflix 2011 - now we miss Blockbuster

Our family's been having trouble with defective cracked Netflix DVDs for years. Now we find 1/3 of all the DVDs we receive, and 1/2 of the PG movies, are defective. This is a major bummer because we don't do TV, much less Cable. Three DVDs a week is it.

We'd switch to Netflix streaming, but it's been a bust for us. Netflix's streaming market is not PG-13 and under.

So we've had no love for Netflix, even before they raised prices. The future is not brighter - today Netflix lost a contract with Starz, a major content provider.

Now we miss Blockbuster. Too bad Netflix did 'em in.

I don't think things will get better in the near term; there's a big fight brewing between cable, content producers, copyright holders and the rest -- Amazon and Netflix, with Apple lurking in the wings. Not to mention the bit torrent gang (go Pirates!).

I think we'll drop down to a single Netflix DVD a week, timing it so we can return a defective one before the kids weekend movie slots come along. We'll try dabbling in Amazon streaming to the Mac (Flash, yech). Too bad Apple isn't really in this game.

2 comments:

Martin said...

Can you even use Netflix in spite of the usual 'fair use' clauses?

JGF said...

I think if I actually read all the contracts I've signed I couldn't touch anything made after 1960.

What's the trick in this one Martin? Something like only the account holder is allowed to view the video?

I wrote a blog post about "retina lock" and the future of DRM back in 2005 --

http://notes.kateva.org/2005/11/apple-discussions-flaw-in-itunes-2.html