BTW.....the new setup where Netflix organizes the entire series together in one spot rather than having to search out each season of a series is a great improvement. Makes it a lot easier to watch the TV series. Also lets you know how many shows you're looking at watching if you do decide to dive into a series.

It's a double-edged sword. I have some series like Scrubs, Family Guy, and South Park that are long-running, and it's hard to sort through over 100 episodes to find the one I want, which is what I do when I watch those shows.

/tk

We watched Ip Man based on the recommendations over at slickdeals (the Blu-Ray is $14). I would heartily recommend this movie for any kung fu fan...or anyone else for that matter. My wife's chief complaint is she didn't like reading the subtitles, but I got used to it after a bit.

It is an excellent movie.

See, it's not hard for me, because I am cursed to watch episodes numerically, unless I've already seen it, an episode must be watched in order. It can get a little tedious.

Blue Mountain State - raunchy series about a fictional college football team. Not normally my cup of tea but 1 episode quickly turned into 8. Waiting for the kids to go to bed so I can watch more.

Yeah, I do that for a first-watch, too (like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which I've been watching). But for stuff that I just use to zone out/relax, like old favorite episodes of Scrubs, South Park, Futurama, or Family Guy, the new series feature is particularly annoying.

/tk

Wow, there's a ton of new movies out there now. Looks like they added most of the 007 library to the list.

Now rotating between Dexter for my online viewing while waiting for mail shipments of The Wire. Too much good TV.

That is awesome. Going to make the Cliff on Jeopardy episode a priority watch soon.

And "Wings" is now being streamed.

If it weren't for sports I think I could cancel Dish and get along just fine with only netflix.

I have the same problem and am generally late to the party (i.e. took me years to stop paying for a landline, kept my starz subscription until I realized netflix provided it as part of their streaming...) so if somebody could get me out from directv's ridiculous pricing plan I would be forever grateful. I wonder if a way exists already to watch sports as everything else could easily be watched on netflix, over the air antenna, and worst case hulu+.

I guess specifically I am talking about PTI, Fox Sports Midwest for Cardinals and Tigers, and a way to watch ESPN on my TV.

I just gave up on most sports outside of broadcast NFL games and some broadcast college games. I lost watching most of the NHL, I've never watched that much NBA and MLB, and tough for ESPN hiding all the stuff on ESPN3/360 so it could be tied to needing an ESPN subscription through cable TV.

Although the non-NFL leagues are supposed to have reasonable streaming packages available if you want them. The NFL charges an arm and a leg, does it through DirecTV, and they have restrictions (sigh).

Even sports weren't worth the $80/month it would cost me to keep them.

We are in a dead spot for over the air reception of local tv. I could go with the very basic cable package (still get NFL games and espn 360 is part of the package) and save $80 or so a month. That would leave me plenty to pay for MLB over the net and still come out way ahead.

My problem is even though I'm an ~8 hour drive from Chicago MLB still puts me in the blackout area for my Cubs:mad: (at least last time I checked). If I could find a way around that I would seriously look at making the change. I do enjoy my baseball IE Cubs games though and going without isn't something I want to do.

See I'm in the "if they don't want to make it easy for me to watch, screw 'em, I've got plenty else to do" camp. I'm one of those who hasn't watched a Thursday night NFL game since they came on NFL network, and while I miss them, I don't miss paying for them. That's one less subscriber / advertising viewer they lose out on. Same for ESPN, the sports that are on it, etc. I may be just a drop in the bucket, but that bucket gets more and more full each year as people drop cable and satellite service for OTA / broadband.

If they want me to watch, they'll make it easy for me. If they'd rather cozy up to the cable companies, eh, that's their business, I'll just go play more Portal 2, or Mario Kart with the kids, or go to a movie (sigh), or other much cheaper forms of entertainment. Life's to short to pay $80/month for the privilege of watching other guys play games.

We got rid of directv and have local and netflix. I listen to the Cards on the radio. College football hasnt started. Im wondering where I can get my Iowa football. But beyond that we havent looked back.

The movie FOUR LIONS. It is a hilarious movie about 4 terrorists planning a big "job" in London. It doesn't sound hilarious, but damned if it isn't. Watch it today. Three thumbs up.

ESPN3 probably gets you a lot of the way there.

Netflix on Android phone is awesome.

Assuming you can get it. Since I don't get TV with TWC, I don't get ESPN3 over my RoadRunner connection.

You got it to stream on your Android? Which phone do you have?

Friday Night Lights. The first 4 seasons are on Netflix Instant and the 5th and final one will be up shortly (it's out on DVD). It is an incredible show, you just have to give it half a season to really hit you. The most realistic characters I've ever come across in a television show.

Marwencol is a great documentary about a former alcoholic that was beaten nearly to death and now creates and photographs pseudo-WWII scenes as a sort of self therapy.

I watched Marwencol a few weeks ago. Was really interesting.

There's Netflix streaming on iPhone as well. Just have to download the app.

Droid X. I used a modified version of the released version (since the Droid is not officially supported at this time).

It looks like they just added "Eerie, Indiana", just finished watching the "Bite the hand that feeds us" episode...that show was great when I was a kid. I'm loving Wings and Cheers as well. I'd be done with regular television as well if it weren't for sports and I'm still leaning strongly towards canceling DirectTV. If I used the $80/month towards attending Clemson football and basketball games, I might still come out alright.

This is really good, like Monty Python on jihad.

I concur, I watched it too. Odd to think that getting lost in fantasy allows for one to get reattached to reality.

Highlander. No, not any of the terrible sequels or any of the other bullshit that followed, but the original. If you haven't seen it, do so.

Highly disappointed that Veronica Mars was pulled. We were about 1/2 through season 2.

Are you sure it was pulled? It's still showing up in my Instant Queue

God Grew Tired of Us
It's about the Lost Boy's of Sudan coming over to America, learning our culture having never used running water or electricity and working to send money back home. Very interesting...

If they pull an instant watch and you have it in the queue, you still have access to it. Always wise to add things to your queue if you're in the process of watching it. I've learned that the hard way more than once.

America:The Story of Us. Watched the 1st couple episodes. There are 12 in all. Pretty good documentary. Good facts. Like 10% of all Americans can trace the heritage back to the Mayflower.

This was different.

It was in my queue, went to watch it, and it said it wasn't available.

However, it appears to be back as if you search for it it is in the options to add and play.

Odd.

I was excited to see this but I didn't really like it. Felt they focused too much on getting celebrities into the thing than putting together good information. I'd rather see historians or figures who lived out those events than hear what Puff Daddy and George Lopez thing about it.

+1. All the blowhards just ruined it.

Some nice additions recently. Particularly for South Park (the first 14 seasons) and Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead, The Man with the Screaming Brain, Alien Apocalypse) fans.

My wife and I have been rewatching Eureka, highly suggest it for anyone that would like to watch a light Sci-Fi show.

WWII in HD. Awesome documentary following personal stories with a lot of never before seen footage. Very well done.

I guess I'm now part of this thread whether I like it or not.

Gave in to wife & son and signed up for Netflix tonight.

Good news: They're both happy.
Bad news: The first movie my son joins an XBL party to watch with friends is directed by Uwe Boll (Far Cry).

I feel like such a parental failure.

Okay, noob question time I guess.

What's the deal with the instant stuff, does it come & go frequently? Checked out the instantwatcher site mentioned a few pages back in the thread & incredibly randomly saw that the 1964 Beckett expires tomorrow, notable since I was just talking about that movie here at home two days ago. The site noted that it was available for streaming for two years, is that kind of normal? long?

I have huge queues (close to 500+ dvds, 150+ instant), and most weeks there's 3-4 changes in either direction (stuff moving on and off the instant watch list). But most things seem to stay on instant watch once they get there (seems like 90 to 95% do).

Freakonomics and No Impact Man were rather good documentaries I watched. I had not seen Blazing Saddles in decades so that was fun to watch again. Mostly been watching season one of Veronica Mars.

Pulp Fiction

Anvil: The Story of Anvil is a great documentary. Tough not to root for these guys by the end of the show.

I'm showing it as available on mine and nothing about it expiring.

From what I gather, Netflix rotates movies in and out. I don't know if this is a server space issue or part of the deals they cut with the studios. Probably a mix of both.

I'd also be curious to see if movie availability is different for various regions. Netflix uses a content delivery network that is more localized so I can imagine that some of the least requested items might get rotated out of regions for more popular ones as a cost cutting measure. So maybe the servers I pull it from has it while yours doesn't right now. I had a bunch of National Geographic stuff on mine that became unavailable recently.

I'm pretty sure they use user statistics on some of the things so saving items to your instant queue is always a smart move even if it's not currently available.

I enjoyed that one too. I wish someone had pointed out the biggest problem with the band was the sound of the lead singer.

Yeah, it was sort of odd. He was the glue that kept the band together, but also seemed like the one who kept them from succeeding. But at the same time, you're really excited for him and the band during the final scene/concert.

It would be an interesting poll question. Would you rather be unknown, but financially secure or be constantly financially insecure, but have the experiences of Anvil members?

Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Clerks and The Crow are on instant.

I watched Astonishing X-Men. It covers issues 1-24 of the comic written by Joss Whedon. It's a motion comic book animation so there are some issues with it, but overall it's a quick watch considering there are 6 parts of about 11-14 minutes each with credits.

Sports Night is available streaming now. I haven't seen it (yet) but I know I've heard good things about it from others on this board.

Kids in the Hall is also available now.

Deadliest Warrior is up as well.

If you were on Sportsdigs you would have known that this was up two weeks ago at least.

I Saw The Devil. A guys kills the fiancée of an elite special agent and then the agent seeks revenge. It's a film that could be done in 30-45 minutes and it pretty much feels that way. At that point I was really wondering how the hell there was a 2:20 long movie in this. Oh, but it's a Korean psychological thriller directed by KIM Jee-woon (The Good, The Bad, The Weird and A Tale of Two Sisters). CHOI Min-sik(Oldboy) plays the killer. It's violent to the point of being uncomfortable and skips the R rating and gleefully gets an NR. Even without the ending, it was a solid building of tension and with a cop out ending still works and is way more than enjoyable. However, there is no cop out ending. The ending is beautiful in a messed up way that some Korean film makers seem to make their signature.

It was a brutal gut punch of a movie, I really enjoyed it, though it was violent, overpoweringly sad, funny in bits, horror abounds. It never dragged, it just got more twisted. Still by the end, I felt that I had watched something awesome.

Thanks for this. Amazing...amazing movie.
It is amazing to see a tragedy and chance change the direction of his life for the better. There are many more levels to this, of course, but I don't want to ruin it for those who take a chance to watch this.

I am thoroughly enjoying the 7 and a half hours of the ROCK in the WWE.

Tudor's season 3 and 4 are now on to go along with 1 and 2. Fan-fucking-tasic.

Not sure if you were aware, but a couple of obscure sci-fi series called Star Trek (TOS) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (as well as Voyager and Enterprise) are now available on Netflix Watch Instantly for the next two years at least. I hear DS9 is coming on October 1st. It's going to be a very Star Trek heavy next few months for me.

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.

Documentary about a guy who's on several medications and has a medical condition in which he breaks out into rashes and whatnot. He decided to change his diet and his life completely changed.

Absolutely.must.watch. It's one of those life changing movies... it's changed our lives, that's for sure.

I'm thinking it's time to see Reservoir Dogs again, haven't seen it in at all in several years.

If you haven't seen it, the 'When We Left Earth' documentary series it is an absolute must. Great insight and footage on the NASA program. Lots of info on the moon mission decade that I didn't know.

I saw it being new, so I added it, but didn't watch it yet.

Thanks for the info. I've been hoping these series would be available at some point. Time to start watching everything over again. :D

Watched it. I liked it a lot. Probably not the thing to watch while eating a frozen pizza and drinking pop just after getting groceries. :lol:

Yea. I remember watching that on MSNBC about three years ago. Stuck with me for days. One of the few things when people ask what it's about I tell them it's best if I say nothing. Just watch.

It's been posted before as a major tear jerker. It's in my queue. I'm trying to just be in the mood for it.

Hahaha. I've done simlar stuff - eating M&Ms while reading a diet book, eating a burger while watching Losing It with Jillian Michaels, and on and on and on :D

That was a hard one to watch. Stirred up a lot of different emotions. One of the best documentaries I have ever watched and is definitely a must see.

Black Death
Awesome flick starring Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones). During the first wave of the pleague there is word of a remote town that is unaffected. Rumors indicate the town has a witch that is protecting them from the plague. The Bishop sends out a small group lead by his leutenant to investigate. Very good and gritty.

Dear Zachary got to me like few other documentaries. I think we might have had a thread about it.

I have a question for all you Netflix experts. I'm seriously considering canceling my Directv account. I'm past the introductory rate and I get the run around when trying to redo my deal even though I know I'll end up in another commitment. So, do any of you rely on just Netflix and the Internet for your TV viewing?

Right now I have a 360 connected to the internet and I know I can watch Netflix on it. Is the quality good or should I look into buying an internet ready TV? (and if yes, then which one?) The only downside I'm seeing is the lack of sports options, but as long as I can watch the away Colts games someplace, I'll be fine.

The quality depends on your internet connection. If your 360 has a wired connection (and you have the right connection between your 360 and TV) you will get HD-level quality.

If you have a wireless connection the quality will depend on the strength of your 360 wireless connection. Mine fades in and out a bit. Sometimes I hit the HD-level quality other times I don't.

Overall, the quality can be quite excellent.

Thanks. My 360 has a wired connection through the the router. Downloads seem to work pretty well on them. I have a free month trial, so I'll give it a whirl and see how the quality is on it.

The quality should be fantastic.

What they said. I have a wired connection directly to my TV and HD programming is just as good as watching something on HD over cable (a few stutters every once in a while, though that happens).

720p is the highest streaming level that I get with a Roku player and a 20.0 MG wireless (N band) connection

Antmeister and I were trying to figure out if we should watch this, or IP Man, We went with IP Man but will probably watch Black Death sometime this week.

IP Man, yes check it out. Full of kung-fu awesomeness.

Looks like some price increases at Netflix. I don't think it's worth some of the outrage I'm reading on the internet, but it's now $16/month for 1 DVD + streaming, and $20/month for 2 DVD + streaming (the latter is a $5/month increase I think).

I think my issue is that it's the second price change in a short period of time. This gives me less confidence that this pricing is going to stay for a significant period of time.

Seriously? Yeah I think I'm canceling completely now.

Someone else here made the point about how we're really in the golden age of price/options. It's going to be a completely different deal in 5-10 years. What I get from Netflix now is worth so much more than what I pay, I just shrug these increases off. I would have needed a second job to pay Blockbuster what I get from Netflix. Except Blockbuster didn't even have every movie/TV show ever recorded to DVD. Netflix at $16/month is at least triple of the value of Cable/Satellite at $80ish/month.

Unless, of course, the majority of what your family is watching is catching up on random stuff primarily from cable.

Me - haven't watched anything yet except for being in the room with my kid

Son - after a few stray movies (albeit a couple of good ones), mostly a few missed eps of things like Ultimate Warrior, Billy the Exterminator, 70s Show

Wife - a few movies, otherwise mostly old TV (AbFab, Ally McBeal, 30something, etc)

At the moment (i.e. summer break) there's probably $20 of value in it for them. Once school starts back, I've got my doubts about that.

Hasn't Netflix been clear that they want to get away from physical discs and into streaming, so increasing price for physical media would be in line with that? Or is the streaming-only package going up noticably as well?

Yup.. I was paying like idano.. $10 or $11 for unlimited streaming and 2 DVDs last summer... now it's getting a second increase and going up to $20.


This is the problem. Outside of TV to some extent, their streaming selection still sucks. I need to look into hulu more, but I really see no way I go streaming only.


See above. If they want to do that, they'd damned well better step up their game.

and greg, looks like streaming only and dvd only aren't seeing a jump, just those plans that do both.

Kind of my feeling about it. For the vast majority of movies, if I didn't see them at release I really wasn't all that interested anyway. And for older stuff, it's a matter of convenience to rewatch, not something particularly urgent (and rarely anything I can't eventually catch somewhere on Dish).

Outside of a handful of movies I'd like to make sure my kid sees, it's really no big whoop to me.

Maybe the reason here then is that they hit subscriber limits that have triggered contract clauses, so they want to make sure that those counting as "streaming" subscribers actually use it, and don't just have it added to their physical media plan as a convenience. They could lose money on people that aren't actually streaming but are signed up for it, so they want to make sure those getting physical media also really want the streaming and use it and thus pay for it, rather than it being the throw-in it started as to get customers when Netflix got the streaming content for cheap.

FWIW, a major use for us is Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows the kids still love to watch. Plus some other movies and whatnot, but shows like Phineas & Ferb and Jimmy Neutron get a lot of the Netflix time these days.

IMO Hulu's selection is even more limited than Netflix *and* you have to sit through periodic advertising too, even if you do the Plus subscription.

720p and 1080i are basically the same. 1080p is only for Blu-ray at this point.

wade you're way off base on the selection stuff, imo. Now we haven't had cable at all in almost 9 years so there wasn't a lot of competition before, but have had netflix for almost 2 years now and hulu+ since it started, we as a family aren't even close to running out of things to watch. I guess it's what you expect. I mean, if you expect to get first run movies and all the seasons of all current tv episodes on premium cable and network tv, you might need to lower your expectations a little. I think that's all fine to work for, but that's not even in the realm of possible for anyone without a dish and DVR right now.

I have mixed feelings about the hike. On one hand it sucks that it's so close on the heels of the last hike, on the other hand, I'm with molson, we get way more value out than we pay, and third, as a shareholder, it's certainly positive for the stock price. :)

Agreed. There are plenty of things on there, once you admit you aren't going to get the latest-and-greatest. But that's why you're paying $80/month less.

I finally watched Firefly thanks to Netflix. This whole thread is full of stuff. My wife and I finally watched the first season of 24, commercial free and at our leisure. Plenty for the kids, and plenty of movies we didn't get to see the first time around and don't feel like buying Blu-Rays for. Of course, the reality is I just play more games now and don't watch as much TV as I used to, which helps as well.

that's a pretty big price jump - essentially doubling in price in less than a year (8.99 to 15.98).

their streaming selection has improved, but I don't think it's improved THAT much. I'll definitely need to think about this one.

Unless I missed it, there was no notification of the upcoming price changes when I logged into Netflix. I only heard about it through the grapevine on the net. Then when I logged into my account information and clicked see membership terms, only then did I see the change.

I think it is pretty poor form from Netflix not to have some sort of formal announcement when you log in. (unless I missed it, then oops)