Posts Tagged ‘Netflix’
Nope. Not this one anyway. The 1939 movie, “Another Thin Man” is only available on disc from Netflix. I’m sure it’s no fault of their’s. With all the recent upset about the impending split, I really enjoy the “all you can eat” streaming service. Why isn’t this movie available on Netflix streaming? I doubt it’s any fault on the part of Netflix. More than likely this is due to outdated agreements with Cable companies and DVD distribution. My wife and I no longer have cable. We use the Netflix streaming service, and still have the one disc at a time service, but are considering cutting down to just the streaming option. I do think streaming is the future,
What if they deemed to restrict the soundtrack to be limited to distribution on Edison cylinders? Or maybe 78 RPM shellac records? Sure, you can rent this from Amazon for $3. I suspect Apple will offer the same. Is anyone really paying this? It’s reasonable enough for recent releases, but too expensive for classic films. No doubt the owners of the rights these classics have forged this particular agreement. It’s potentially a death sentence for many classics. I’ll wager that most under 30 have never seen this movie, much less have even heard of it.
Even if you have to resort to old fashioned DVDs, this is still worth a look.
I’ll bet there’s a good chance that you are a Netflix subscriber. I’ve been one for years, and really have enjoyed the service. Since the addition of streaming on demand, and a Samsung player that plays Netflix online content, my wife and I have enjoyed many a film and TV show. If you are a Netflix user, you may know that the content is a somewhat limited, and a little dated.
There has been promise of a major deal Netflix has in the works, to expand online content dramatically. Even a promise of getting movies delivered about the same time they’re made available on premium TV channels. Well, not if HBO is going to get its way! HBO has control of a major chunk of film rights, spanning a number of major studios. Instead, they want to restrict delivery to their own portal. Oh great! Another online portal! Don’t we all want our content spread across 40 different web portals?
It’s not that I’m not willing to pay for it either. I believe most out there would gladly pay an additional fee for the added content. But we want it in one convenient place, and to not be required to have half a dozen boxes, and a computer piled around the living room TV. Well guess what HBO, I was a subscriber to your cable service. I just canceled my HBO cable package, and I have no intention of renewing it.
More on the HBO vs. Netflix battle.
First let me say that my experience with Netflix overall has been good. In fact, they are probably single handedly responsible for the failure of Blockbuster. I liked Blockbuster once upon a time, and rented many a movie over the years. One day they decided to change the return policy to consider noon late, rather than 6pm as was previously observed. On this day, my video returned that afternoon was charged a late fee. I told the manager if they did not waive the fee, I would never return. They did not, and I never again entered their door.
One of the main reasons they were so easy to discard was the emergence of Netflix. A wonderful service that would mail DVDs to your door for a fixed monthly fee. As many as you could possibly watch! Well, here was in fact the first snag. They began to throttle some customers. I never encountered this myself, and don’t think it’s all that out of line. As long as it’s stated in the TOS, it’s fine with me.
Now the trend is to online delivery. This has been a goal for so many years, and the technology has finally caught up. Netflix now offers quite a bit of material for “instant viewing”. Well, if you are using Internet Explorerer, or one of a number of supported devices that is. They claim it works with Firefox 2.0+, but I have not been able to get instant viewing to work with Firefox 3.X. Some of the content is encoded at decent quality, and some not quite so much.
Is Netflix to blame? I don’t think so. Could be wrong here, but I suspect there are two causes of this problem. Stupidity, and DRM. It still amazes me that so many of the content providers still do not understand how this all works. Had they led the effort to deliver online at a reasonable fee, much of the piracy so many of these same folks complain about would be a non isssue. We saw the same dissapointing effort (or lack thereof) from the music industry in past years. TEN years or so after online music delivery has been underway, DRM has now been removed. Woo hoo!
The old folks that run the film industry need to take a good look at the real cause for declining sales. There was another technology they once feared. It seemed to spell doom for the entire movie industry back in the 1950s. It was called…. wait for it… television.
