I used to love renting movies, but I was bad at returning them on time. Late fees adored me. The stores were not very convenient to where we lived. The selections often did not include the obscure movies that I love. So after a while I rented less and less. I would trawl stores and buy, or order and buy, but that was always a crap shoot. It was so hard to know what would be good. A lot of wasted money ensued.
Netflix has been a panacea of sorts for me. No more reluctance to try a movie or TV show. The selection is so broad I have found things I would have never thought of on my own. The shows come and go right in my mailbox. Hurray! And the latest thing that I love is instant viewing. I can check a lot of shows out instantly online--watch them right there, order the dvds to watch on the big screen at home, or drop them like hot potatoes. I've discovered several wonderful TV shows this way. I think, "Hey, I've got half a hour. Let me see if this is any good." Sometimes they are and sometimes they're not. If I don't like them, I just cut them off and move on.
There's a new thing where you can order shows direct to your TV, but that requires an extra fee, and I really only have so much time for watching. Plus, I don't mind waiting for the DVD to arrive in the mail. It is nice for those instant gratification junkies though.
I can search for shows a myriad of different ways. There are the standard routes like Comedy, Thriller, etc. But I much prefer checking for specific actors I like or BBC things that I haven't seen. I like that I can arrange by MPAA ratings and by how many stars viewers give them and see reviews immediately by people like me. The system has its flaws. I don't like the Unrated or Not rated way of ranking movies. It's hard to tell if the movie is really an R or a PG-13 that is the director's uncut version or a TV movie that doesn't have a rating.
The big up side, though, is that now I only buy movies when I know I will love them. It's fabulous.
So, how many of you are Netflixers? What do you like about it? Dislike?
12 comments:
I should try that because late fees are my achilles. I'm so bad at remembering to return things.
We love Netflix. It's so much more convenient than a store and you can find pretty much anything ever recorded to film!
Our family likes to watch the movie versions of books we read. Our most recent ones were Hoot and Holes, next up The Thief Lord. It's always fun to compare and contrast between the two versions.
I watch so many more movies now because of Netflix. I'm paying for it whether I watch the movies or not, so I might as well watch them! Like you, I've seen a lot of things that I wouldn't have made time for before. It's great!
I love netflix! I'm new to it, by a month and I got the two at a time package. It lets the guys get action movies and me and DD get chick flix. Loving it. Plus I love the on demand movies too!!!
The equivalent on this side of the pond is LoveFilm.com and we think it's brilliant. The only thing is that we keep forgetting to update our choices and often a movie that we put on the wish list months ago will show up but we've watched it somewhere else in the mean time. It's a small inconvenience though because I was awful at returning things to the local video store.
We kind of stopped renting movies when the kids came along. Should we start again, I'd definitely look into Netflix.
We tried Netflix right after our second son was born, but we ended up falling asleep through most of our movies (from infant exhaustion). We cancelled our membership, but he's two now, so I think maybe we should re-subscribe! :)
After ordering drugs at www.OrderDrugs.ca, I'm usually too spaced out from losing half my pay again to ever recall the return dates for the DVD's I used to rent. The final straw was when I paid for three-months' worth of late charges which blew nearly my entire pocket into oblivion(combined with med fees and other bills. For this, I was forced to give up my love for movies. I ought to check out this Nettflix.
I'm a big BBC fan, too. We did Netflix for awhile and then stopped. Can't remember why... Anyway, I own a lot of BBC movies, and I'm going to ask for more this Christmas.
Oh dear! Now I know I'm living in darkest Africa. I've never even heard of Netflix before. Sounds an interesting concept. I tend to buy on the 'net but, as you say, it's not always a successful way to buy DVD's.
I don't do Netflix, because I don't watch enough to justify the monthly fee at any level. In principle, though, the streaming thing sounds great. I feel similarly about Hulu. (Even though they're starting to charge.) Again, though, I don't really take advantage of it. I just believe, though, that movies and television in this day and age should be on demand. Charge me or whatever, but let me watch what I want to watch and when I want to watch it. The technology is certainly there, so why should I have to jump through hoops to watch stuff?
What I have taken advantage of is iTunes's version of this. You can rent movies for two or three bucks, and they have a pretty decent selection. One thing I appreciate about iTunes is that it's downloaded, not streaming, so (I think) the quality of the picture/sound/whatever is better.
(Technically I suppose it's not "on demand" if I have to download it, but the forty minutes or so it takes me to download a rented movie on iTunes is close enough to "on demand" for me.)
I watch baseball the same way. I subscribe to MLB.TV. Some of the games I watch live (sometimes I'll even hook up the laptop to the TV) and some I'll watch later that night or the next day.
Television should fit my schedule, not vice versa.
I've never done Netflix before, but it sounds good. Especially for TV shows that I have been meaning to watch, but haven't.
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